Psychological Flexibility: How to Face Change and Unknowns
Psychological flexibility refers to a person’s ability to accept, work through, and adjust to difficult situations and realities and keep doing so amidst consistent change. Its presence seems to help people avoid negative outcomes when facing adversity, thereby promoting better mental health.
Participants in a study by Masuda and Tully found that subjects reporting high levels of psychological flexibility were less likely to experience somatization (the experience of medical concerns with no discernible organic cause), depression, anxiety, and general psychological distress than those who reported lower levels of the trait.
When people lack strategies for working through their emotions, they are at risk for denying or misdirecting them. Emotions that are not addressed and worked through then become the breeding ground for coping strategies that might hurt them, interpersonal experiences of conflict and avoidance, as well as mental health maladies such as depression, anxiety, and more.
Recognize and adapt to various situational demands.
To increase flexibility: Fill out your picture of the pandemic by seeking out stories other than yours—work at developing empathy for those that cannot take the vaccine or remove their masks. Become curious about your role within your community and identify the things you value about your neighbors, then live from the center of these realities.
Shift mindsets or behavioral repertoires when these strategies compromise personal or social functioning.
To increase flexibility: Practice looking for silver linings. Recognize places where your thinking becomes black and white and identify the grey areas. Even if you can’t accept them, identifying them will help develop your thinking and coping flexibility.
Maintain a balance among important life domains.
To increase flexibility, draw three circles, a small one in the center with two surrounding it, and space between them. In the center circle, write the people and activities that are most important to you. Be realistic about who and what is there and how they fit within your ability to maintain balance while engaging them. Place the other people and activities, in terms of importance, in the outer rings. Consider a life where you keep this awareness and live accordingly. Identify the people or activities that may need to be moved completely off your plate.
Be aware, open, and committed to behaviors that are congruent with deeply held values.
To increase flexibility: Using a values list, identify the three values that are most important to you. Considering how you use your time and energy, assess the goodness of fit between your lived life and your stated values. Are you investing in actions, relationships, and personal processes (self-reflection, therapy, etc.) that keep you aligned with your values, or have other things taken over in directing your trajectory? Are there habits or roles you’ve taken on that conflict with your values? What would life look like if you worked to change or omit these?
Reflection;
Being flexible in the way we think helps us to face the unknowns more efficiently.
How do you react to change and unknowns?
#Change #EmotionalRegulation #MentalHealth
@comfortableNight4463
I think mental flexibility is very important as most things in life require some degree of uncertainty and without flexibility, it is much more difficult to accept this uncertainty and to cope with it.
How do you react to change and unknowns?
@globalBraid3744 You're most welcome and thank you for sharing your insight!
