Psychological Flexibility Improves Your Health and Well-Being…

Kashdan, T., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Psychological Flexibility as a Fundamental Aspect of Health. Clinical Psychology Review DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.001

Positive psychology accentuates the obvious: cultivating good emotions is beneficial for your health and well-being, whereas cultivating bad emotions is not. Not that most of necessarily ‘cultivate’ emotions of either persuasion, since life tends to throw roses and shite at and upon us, in varying degrees across the lifespan. Structural considerations notwithstanding, I would say that our adaptability to life and its myriad experiences makes for the telling difference between those who prosper and those who merely plod along or perish. In this article, Kashdan and Rottenberg (2010), describe this subjective capacity to productively duck, weave, and stretch as ‘psychological flexibility’…

‘Psychological flexibility…refers to a number of dynamic processes that unfold over time. This could be reflected by how a person: (1) adapts to fluctuating situational demands, (2) reconfigures mental resources, (3) shifts perspective, and (4) balances competing desires, needs, and life domains’ (p.866).

So are we stuck with the mindset we get at birth or can we, to rip off the cliché, grow, and change until we hit that inevitable daisy patch?

Having witnessed myself, so many troubled men effectively dig themselves out of enormously bleak histories; I would contend that life is indeed all about the promise of positive change…

Further, and as the authors (2010) here suggest, we can either get busy accepting the reality of our ‘emotional experiences’ (p.868) or we can waste precious time navel-gazing, trying to get a grip on what those experiences actually mean. Middle-class self-indulgence encourages hyper-neurosis and flames our innate capacity to worry ourselves sick about worrying ourselves sick. Like psychiatrist, Marsha Linehan, I would say drop that futile crap and instead focus on just this moment. After all, it is better to validate the reality of what we are experiencing right now, rather than conjecture endlessly over what ‘could’ have been.

I have witnessed many a promising existence defiantly scuttled on the rocks, due to intense, obsessive reflections on a hypothetical past that could never be actualised… 

So how does psychological flexibility relate to our mental health?

When we think of psychopathology, we seldom think of psychological inflexibility as a predominant causative agent and yet that is what Kashdan and Rottenberg (2010, p.869) somewhat controversially propose. For example, medical orthodoxy tells us that depression is a biochemical disorder like cancer or heart disease and therefore, should be treated in a similar fashion. That is, primarily with drugs or other pharmacological agents. However, the authors (2010) alternatively deconstruct depression as the sum set of several psychologically inflexible elements. They state that ‘rumination’, for one, involves ‘stereotypical and perserverative thinking about the reasons for and meaning of one’s own sad, dysphoric affect’ (p.869)…

In other words, we can think, talk and act ourselves into a bleak hole…

So how can we improve our psychological flexibility?

Kashdan and Rottenberg (2010) discuss ‘three critical factors’ (p.870) which they claim are integral to the production and persistence of psychological flexibility…

1. Executive functioning;
2. Default mental states; and
3. Personality configurations.

Within personality configurations, they refer to ‘openness to experience’ (2010, p.873) as an essential component of psychological flexibility (2010, p.873). This component has particular implications for men, since most of us are taught from birth to be rigid in our thinking and closed to new ideas. For those men who take on rather than challenge that harmful thinking style, any divergence of experience to which they are exposed can cause them great upset. That might be something as simple as the remote control for the TV not being where it should or the wife heading out the door at the first inkling of domestic violence or restructuring at work which results in an effective demotion.

The upshot of all of this is, thankfully, whatever our antecedence, we can become more psychologically flexible…

1) by constructively engaging with therapeutic approaches such as dialectical behaviour therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy and self-determination therapy (2010, p.875),

-and/or-

2) by otherwise learning to accept that shite does happen, and bunches of roses too, and that chaos and wonderment are features of life that we should embrace with gusto…