Have you ever wanted to be flexible? The idea of being flexible is tied up with a notion of feeling free or easy, and is usually a physical description. But what about being psychologically flexible? This might sound like a bit of a complicated idea, yet there is something just as appealing about being mentally and emotionally flexible as there is about being physically so. Fortunately enough if you like this idea - and even if you don’t feel naturally inclined to be so flexible - there is a way that these qualities can be broken down into components you can cultivate for yourself. Emerging out of a field of psychology that has become ‘Acceptance Commitment Therapy’ or ACT, these 6 components or traits are able to be developed like psychological ‘muscles’.
True to it’s name, the first of these components is the notion of acceptance. When we find ourselves in difficult situations we often begin some kind of struggle. This struggle can manifest in worry or anxiety, fear, anger, aggression or even feelings of depression or retreat. Yet learning to, even momentarily, sit in acceptance of the situation we find ourselves and observe the way we feel can begin to restore our ability to for control.
Contact with the present moment lets us carry forward from our initial acceptance to be fully present in the moment we find ourselves. Once we have sat in observation of our sense of our internal feelings, observing all of the things we can sense in the present moment can give us a way to objectively observe the context we find ourselves in.
Becoming consciously aware of our values lets us spend time distilling the things most important to us. If you’ve ever found yourself reacting or behaving in a way which you don’t believe to be consistent with how you would like to react or behave, reflecting on our values can give us pause to recalibrate those responses.
Committed action helps us to plot a path from where we are to where we would like to be. In our journey toward increasing our psychological flexibility, we’ll find ourself sometimes off track or in need of orientation regarding how we’re doing. By using committed actions, we can resolve ourself to certain strategies that help us move ever towards a life that is true to our values and our own sense of who we are as individuals. It’s vitally important, though, that committed actions are small enough to be realistic but still represent the kinds of action that help us on this journey.
It’s almost certain that our struggles to achieve important things will not always go to plan. That’s why the notion of ‘self as context’ is so important. This means that you ought to remind yourself that the way you think and feel is always changing. So when we find ourselves in different situations, or even when we take committed action, we might feel different from time to time. Emotions and thoughts are really ever changing, but who you are is not so variable. There is a saying that ‘your feelings and thoughts are like the weather, and you are like the sky’.
Lastly, as you develop these skills you will develop skills of ‘defusion’. This is a special concept of being able to ‘unhook’ from internal judgments you make about yourself and express self-compassion. This ability to treat yourself gently enables you to continue on, and even to better express compassion towards others.
If you find yourself interested in these concepts, a practicing psychologist with an interest in ACT may be help you to explore these further with your specific needs in mind. We consider that the physical and psychological are integral to one another, just as there is only one you. We use tools from practices like ACT to help us treat physical and psychological conditions with movement as medicine. From pain and fatigue, to depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, we’re interest in helping people actually get better so they can get more out of life. If you’d like to know more about how we do this, reach out.