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Psychological Flexibility: How to Face Change and Unknowns

As masks come off, big, conflicting emotions come on. Here's how to manage them.

Key points

  • Rigid thinking can leave us susceptible to mental health concerns in times of constant change and unknown.
  • Maintaining a sense of psychological flexibility can help us adapt and remain healthy when we feel out of control.
  • Actions that can help us develop and maintain flexibility include being aware, shifting our mindsets, and maintaining balance in life.
Emmy Paw / Pexels
Source: Emmy Paw / Pexels

As the United States moves away from masking requirements, people are experiencing a wide range of internal and external responses.

With as many views on the pandemic and its resulting safety regulations as there are people in the world, it makes sense that there will be plentiful and conflicting opinions and feelings swirling in the collective consciousness for quite some time.

While we have heard much about resilience and grit as important tools for maintaining mental and emotional wellbeing in this time of constant need for adapting, psychological flexibility seems an equally important trait to develop.

In short, 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.

With the pandemic still very much in play, it’s impossible to know or predict, with certainty, what will happen next. We face the unknown as far as future variants, reaching relative immunity, and whether we’ll face further shutdowns or returns to masking mandates. Individuals lacking flexibility in their response to these unknowns are at risk of finding themselves in states of fear, anxiety, anger, and despair.

When these same 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.

Todd Kashdan’s four pillars of psychological flexibility guide how to develop and maintain this important trait within ourselves. Doing so can increase our thriving and diminish the risk of serious mental, relational, and emotional difficulties. Taking the following four “actions” can keep us psychologically flexible.

Recognize and adapt to various situational demands.

As humans, we crave simplicity in decision making and action-taking. To mitigate the need for deep critical thought in the smallest of decision points, we develop largely unconscious black and white guidelines for how we will behave in the world.

In this time of hyper-awareness about the actions needed to ensure personal and public health, we have looked for (and then, often, resented) external guidance on how to protect ourselves and others. The experience of these guidelines being “imposed” from the outside rather than “enacted” from one's own internal sense of values has contributed to the feeling that one’s freedoms have been limited.

At this point in time, as external guidelines are easing, it’s important for everyone to make sure that they have a full picture of how Covid has made its mark. To become flexible in determining what is required of each of us at this point in the pandemic (to mask or not in different situations, to take the vaccine or not, etc.), it’s crucial to understand that our single story is not the only story of needs and wants.

For those living in the privileged place of having lost neither loved ones nor health, neither income nor job, neither opportunities to learn in person nor work remotely, it is crucial to remember that millions of others have not experienced these privileges. It’s also important to remember that young children and some immunocompromised individuals are still not able to take the vaccine and remain at high risk.

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.

In the last two years, an emphasis on personal freedoms has often trumped attendance to communal health. As we step into the next phase of the pandemic, it will be important to enjoy moments that require less hypervigilance as they are appropriate while remaining willing to shift our behavior if the evidence requires it. Rather than living with heightened anxiety about what happens next, this is the time to work at being fully present where we are while developing flexibility for coping with whatever comes next.

Suppose we find ourselves spending more of our time fearing that masking mandates will return, angry that they have been lifted, or judgmental about those whose mindsets differ from our own. In that case, we remain rigid and rob ourselves of opportunities to be present to what is.

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.

Assessing who and what really matters to you is crucial at this time. If Covid taught us anything, it’s that we are able to do things and maintain relationships in ways we never thought possible. It also clarified who is truly part of our relational inner circle and who is not.

While there is much out of our control at this time, we have immense agency over our efforts to maintain lives aligned with our values. Getting clear about the domains in which we truly value being involved and letting go of those we don’t will help us maintain a realistic and sustainable balance.

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.

This re-starting of communal life offers a “do-over” for us both personally and collectively. As we all work to take seriously what we learned about ourselves, each other, and life in general over the last two years, it’s crucial to get serious about the most important things to us. Our values can guide us as we set the trajectory for moving forward. If we know clearly, where we are going, we can see spontaneous changes, complex unknowns, and even “failures” as part of a flexible path that moves us toward greater health.

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?

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