What does it mean to be psychologically flexible?
What happens if you're not?
How do you know if you are?
That's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Dr Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make mental health
education videos.
Psychological flexibility refers to your ability to adapt
to changing circumstances and be able to cope with any distress
that those circumstances create.
Another way of saying it is the ability to pursue your goals
even in the face of adversity.
And there's different models to conceptualize and address
this issue of cognitive flexibility.
There has been Gestalt Therapy, which is based on the idea
that the whole person is greater than the sum of your parts.
There's Cognitive Behavior Therapy with the concept of cognitive distortions.
And there's acceptance and commitment therapy
where you learn to face adverse circumstances by reframing
them around your values.
Then there's the newer approach called Radically Open Dialectical
Behavior Therapy that focuses on disengaging from your tendency
to be over controlled.
There's no one right way to address this, but for this video,
I'm going to focus on how it's defined using the Radically Open DBT approach.
Using that framework, here are five signs of cognitive inflexibility.
Inhibited emotional expression.
With this, you keep a very controlled emotional expression.
People don't know that you really have a temper or you're
very anxious.
You may refrain from talking about your feelings and exposing
your vulnerability to people.
You may also use the silent treatment to punish people.
Number two is being hypervigilant, and overly cautious.
You may be slow to warm up to people and very guarded in
new situations.
You may be very risk avoidant, only experimenting with the
unknown when you can be sure of all the possible outcomes.
You don't have much of a sense of humor in your very serious-minded.
You notice small errors that people make and feel
compelled to point them out.
In general, you experience life as hard.
Number three is rigid and rural governed behavior.
This is based on an excessive need for order and structure.
You're strongly guided by what's the right thing to do, and
you expect others to do the same.
You compulsively, rehearse and plan.
You're motivated by obligation and duty.
Number four is being aloof and distant in relationships, and
this is based on your tendency toward conflict avoidance.
You prefer to walk away from a conflict.
You may be exhausted and even annoyed by prolonged contact with people.
You tend to dismiss negative feedback and rarely apologize.
People around you may feel like they don't really know you
The last sign of psychological inflexibility
is envy and bitterness, which is linked to compulsive
striving and high social comparisons and dominance.
That's a lot.
With this characteristic, you're secretly competitive.
You may make sacrifices, then feel unappreciated.
It can take a lot for people to make you feel like they really
appreciated what you did.
You tend to be pessimistic and believe that most things in
life just don't work out.
You also believe that you're just too complex for people
to understand you.
This kind of pathological over control is thought to be caused
in part by your nature, which is your temperament
that you're born with,
your coping tendencies and your family influences,
which would be how you were nurtured.
An example of a family influence would be having parents
that considered mistakes intolerable.
You may have been punished for mistakes
instead of being punished for defiance.
Another parenting style that can contribute to this is criticizing
the emotional child or invalidating their worries.
That can make your child feel like
they can't appear vulnerable.
Similar to this style is making your child feel as though
they must always show self control.
Insisting that boys don't cry is an example of this.
Some of the psychiatric disorders can fall into the category
of under controlled or over controlled.
Examples of under control disorders are conduct disorder,
binge purge eating disorder, and some of the personality
disorders, like antisocial and borderline.
Some of the over control disorders are anorexia nervosa, autism spectrum
chronic depression, and some of the personality
disorders, like obsessive compulsive, avoidant
and paranoid personality disorder.
The dialectical behavior approach to this is using Radically
Open DBT, which is different from standard DBT.
For example, standard DBT focuses on regulating out of control
emotions, but Radically Open DBT works on social signals,
being more open and forming better connections with others.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that I mentioned earlier
takes a mindful approach to increasing your flexibility by
living more in the moment instead of being future driven.
And it also focuses on having your thoughts and decisions
be guided by your values.
I talk about how to identify your values in this video.
See you next time.