Resilience has received a lot of profile in recent times as something everyone needs to develop to cope better with life’s ups and downs. In my opinion, mental flexibility is even more important as it allows us to respond in more useful ways in the moment. This helps us to avoid saying or doing something that makes the situation worse, hence reducing the need to draw on our resilience reserves. This article discusses flexibility in more detail. It ends with some ideas on how to develop your own mental flexibility. 

Mental Flexibility – What is it ?

Resilience is often talked about as a key quality of those who are successful and/or those that have overcome  adversity. There are many definitions of resilience but the one I feel sums it up the best  is, the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Resilience has been studied  extensively and is considered a protective factor against many physical and mental health issues. In unpacking resilience  it in turn is comprised of many elements such as optimism and flexibility. Optimism is linked to constructs  such as hope and agency which is the belief and ability to develop and implement strategies to deal with adverse situations. Another quality, which is the focus of this post, is flexibility. From my perspective as a psychologist I am particularly interested in emotional and cognitive flexibility. For me flexibility implies having a range of responses to situations, and the ability to choose which response to utilise in a given situation.

The opposite of flexibility is rigidity and for many people I work with it is an inability to utilise more useful  responses which is  problematic. Often they have a history with a particular  type of response and at one point in time this has worked well. The human brain, being the highly efficient  machine that it is, unless directed otherwise  tends to utilise the same response to initially very similar situations, and eventually move towards using this same response in a wider range of situations.

In my clinical experience,  cognitive flexibility increases when we are able to reflect on a situation before acting. In reflecting we can objectively view the situation and make conclusions and respond  and  take action on what is known and consider what is in  our best interest.  It avoids assumption and catastrophic thinking.

Emotional flexibility is the ability to have a wide range of emotional expressions and contain them within the normal range of intensity.  Emotions are our bodies way of processing life experiences. When we allow them to occur they tend to pass through which allows for the next emotion to occur.

Suppression is an example of where if we are not ok with emotions we will supress them. Suppression often result in physical health problems or behaviour issues such as addcitons. Equally overwhelm is where the intensity is beyond what is appropriate for the situation. It is often fuelled by negative thoughts which increase the perceived consequences of the situation and are not supported by the facts of the situation.   An example is the valid grief of a relationship breakup being exaggerated by a thought that I will never have another relationship.

Tips for Developing Mental Flexibility

I will leave you with a few tips for starting to build your flexibility:

• Notice your body’s natural reaction to situations and attempt to connect to it as a way of slowing the process. If all else fails breath deeply.
• Notice your thoughts and feeling responses as an observer.
• When thinking avoid assuming intent and therefore having negative and catastrophic thinking, unless there is current evidence that supports this.
• Consider your options, weight the pros and cons, and make a decision in regards to the meaning, and then associated action and approach to the situation.

Read more: Increasing your mental flexibility – replace the lens of right and wrong, with useful