Your Mind Your Body

A professor of mine once shared his opinion that a one-word definition of mental illness might be “rigidity.” To me that means that mental health must have a lot to do with flexibility.

I wrote in a previous post about having flexibility in our approach to work life, but flexibility can obviously apply to every part of our lives. One of the “tricks of the trade” for psychologists is to help people rethink how they see the world around them and how they see their place in it. Fear, resentment, guilt, sadness, loneliness and—pick your favorite painful emotion—can all come about from a point of view that we hold. And please don’t misunderstand, there are times in our lives when guilt or sadness or fear are exactly what the situation calls for, but if we feel bad often, then we might just be stuck in a pattern of thinking.

And like the word “rigidity,” the word “stuck” doesn’t usually coincide with mental health.

Here are some ways to practice flexibility:

• Ask yourself some questions. “Are the things I’ve concluded really true or is there a chance I’m mistaken? Can I find out? Is my view too narrow or is there other information I’m ignoring?” For example, rather than deciding that the driver in front of you is a jerk, it helps to remember that your own driving isn’t always perfect. You may have accidentally cut people off before, too.
• Check out your perspective. Share your worries with someone you trust and see if you might gain from their way of looking at things.
• Accept that there is more than one way to do most things. I recall reading an example of a couple that fought over whether to use powder or liquid laundry detergent. I believe strongly that there are some truths and rights and wrongs and standards to strive for in life—but I am equally convinced that none of them has to do with laundry detergent.

Put together, these efforts allow for some “wiggle room” in your line of thinking, and the more wiggle room we have, the less likely we are to be stuck. Going back to the “rigidity” analogy, the more flexible we are, the less likely we are to get broken.

Photo by lamentables (from flickr)

Filed under: Being in Therapy, Lifestyle & Behaviors, Resilience, Work/Life