<p>Clinicians frequently encounter clients whose difficulties cut across diagnostic categories, vary across situations, and change over time. This article presents a process-based framework in which psychological functioning is understood in terms of ongoing experiential organization. Three interrelated processes are proposed: interpretive activity, experiential rendering, and homeostatic regulation. Interpretive activity refers to the ongoing organization of meaning through which situations, memories, bodily sensations, and anticipated futures become psychologically significant. Experiential rendering refers to the process through which these meanings become emotionally compelling and subjectively real. Homeostatic regulation refers to intrinsic tendencies toward adaptation, reorganization, and psychological flexibility. Within this framework, distress is understood less as the presence of specific symptoms than as a pattern of experiential constriction in which interpretations acquire increasing experiential authority and alternative perspectives become less accessible. Emotions are conceptualized as directional signals that provide information about the current organization of experience. Implications are discussed for case formulation, therapeutic stance, psychological change and future research.</p>