Emotional flexibility is the key to wellbeing

One of the best gifts that you can give yourself is learning emotional flexibility skills. Thousands of research studies, either directly or indirectly, have shown the positive impact of emotional flexibility on our physical and psychological wellbeing. Since we’re in the midst of a global crisis which has changed our working lives, daily routines, and our relationships, I believe that there couldn’t be a better time to appreciate how crucial emotional flexibility can be for us in order to adapt to uncertainty and discomfort in a complex and everchanging world.    

I’m a big advocate of emotional/psychological flexibility. I love talking about why it has such importance and how we can practice and integrate those skills into our daily lives. I wish that I was taught these skills when I was younger.

I would like to share a few things about emotional flexibility in this post and hope to give you some awareness and inspiration around the power of these skills.  

The What and Why of Emotional Flexibility 

It’s difficult to learn to be resilient while being bombarded with messages that ask us to be positive all the time, that we should always see the bright side, force ourselves to feel happy, and avoid all the negativity in life. Living well is not about feeling good all the time and it’s more than momentary pleasures. It’s about being able to sit with and be comfortable with a variety of feelings in life and to move towards what matters to you the most, despite the discomfort.  It’s okay if you don’t feel positive, there is no shame on that. Acceptance and curious noticing are healthier than trying to make ourselves feel in a particular way. This is the essence of emotional flexibility.  

Discomfort is the price we pay for a good life, but it doesn’t have to be too painful. Emotional flexibility plays a big role here because it gives us the ability to shift perspectives and actions when we’re confronted with any sort of emotion or situation/event that evokes the emotion without being overwhelmed. We might not like unpleasant emotions, but emotions are not inherently good or bad. An automatic judgment of emotions as harmful or negative is rigid and counterproductive. There is no need to sort them out and put them in different cups. All emotions can (and should) fit in the same cup. Yes, some are more difficult than others, but the question is how we can feel comfortable when all those emotions are in the same cup and still move in the right direction. Those difficult emotions, like challenges or obstacles in life, are an inevitable part of being human. We are constantly learning and growing; it wouldn’t be meaningful for us to just reject certain parts of being human.  

Many of us tend to use ineffective ways of dealing with our emotions either because we don’t know what to do with them, or we don’t want to feel pain, or we think that feeling negative is bad. As a result, we attempt to change them, get stuck with them, avoid them, or push them away. However, these strategies usually backfire, and they are not effective in the long-term, though they might create some relief in the short-term. They are also exhausting processes and they generally tend to intensify the intensity of the emotion.    

Emotional flexibility, on the other hand, helps us to show up to the emotion and be willing to experience it. It is about being ourselves in a way that is compassionate regardless of our emotional experiences. By being flexible, we simply notice what is going on for us rather than making judgments about whether the emotion is positive or negative. As a result, we become open and curious about our emotions and then act in ways that are aligned with what matters to us, i-e, our values. Let me talk more about these skills and how we can practice them.  

Emotional Flexibility Skills  

A good starting point is to improve our ability to notice and label our emotions. To achieve this, we have to be willing to experience emotions as opposed to avoiding them or pushing them away. Experiential avoidance is an unwillingness to stay in contact with aspects of our experience, and this type of avoidance is a risk factor for many anxiety problems. When we’re preoccupied with avoidance, we fail to adapt to the cues in a particular situation. We might choose avoidance because we feel like it gives us control, but on the contrary, we let the emotions control us because they usually come back to us with more power when we’re unguarded.   

Emotions are great sources of information about what matters to us, what our values are, and what is going on in our lives at the time. They show us our vulnerabilities, weak spots, or strengths. Ignoring or constantly avoiding unpleasant emotions keeps us from understanding our challenges and learning about what we deeply care about. It is difficult to live well if we sweep our emotions under the rug. We can, for sure, use avoidance from time to time but when we use it as a default coping strategy, it becomes counterproductive.  

In order to notice and label your emotions, you can ask yourself what you are feeling at a particular moment. However, rather than using generic and vague phrases like “I’m feeling bad”, try finding different ways of labeling your emotions such as “I’m feeling disappointed”, or “I’m feeling guilty.” To make it easy, you might want to increase your emotional vocabulary. A quick search online will bring about many such lists. The idea of labeling emotions is that it gives us the ability to pause for a moment and make sense of what is going on. When we can’t name the emotion accurately, not only do we fall short of self-awareness, but it also becomes difficult to communicate well enough to others to get the support we need.  

Then comes the curious observation. What is the emotion telling us? What is it saying about our values and about what matters to us? If we open up to our emotions, we can discover the messages that they are trying to give us. Some emotions might feel difficult, but they are not trying to make us miserable. Every emotion has a function. Let’s say that you’re feeling guilty because you think you are not devoting enough time to your friends due to long hours. This guilt has a function here. It might be saying that you value connection and that, at the moment, you’re not having enough of it. If you’re feeling boredom, that can pinpoint the fact that you value growth and that you’re not getting enough of it. Say you’re feeling disappointed because your son has lied to you. This disappointment may be pointing out to the value of honesty in your life, or that you would like your son to value honesty as well. We wouldn’t feel those emotions if we didn’t care about whatever it is that we value. If we slow down for a bit, we can understand what is important to us with the help of our emotions. And the question is, how can we show that we care about these things in a way that matches with the person we want to be? We have a choice here. For example, we can express our disappointment in a kind way or an aggressive way. When we feel difficult emotions, we are very likely to act in ways that will make us regret our actions later on. If we could step out first and then look at the emotion, we could probably take more value-based actions.   

You can go ahead and try to make yourself not feel a certain emotion, but it doesn’t work like that. The more you try to change your emotion, the more you feel like that emotion. Emotional flexibility gives us the ability to be more comfortable with whatever emotion that we are feeling and make value-based choices. It helps us adapt to situational demands such as crisis situations. It also increases our tolerance for challenges and stressors. We will still feel anger, sadness, or loneliness, but we will experience them in a more accepting and compassionate manner. Rather than being driven by these emotions randomly, we can use them in a way that leads to a better life.  After all, emotions are not to be fixed; they are to be processed.

Knowing that emotions are trying to help us, and not destroy us, can help normalise the emotion. Being emotionally flexible requires the ability to perceive emotions as emotions. This will keep us from self-identifying with the emotion. When we do that, we will have the space that will give us the opportunity to act in accordance with our values, because we will be in control instead of being controlled by the emotion. Thus, it is about stepping out and not becoming the emotion or any non-productive stories we associate with them. One way to do that is to approach our emotions with an open and curious mind, rather than a judgmental one. No matter how hard the emotion might feel, can you be compassionate about it? Can you stay with it and still move on in a way that is consistent with where you want to go and what kind of a person you want to be? Can you observe your emotions like a researcher’s mind, without interpreting what you’re seeing, and just trying to understand what is going on? It is also helpful to know that emotions are not permanent; they come and go. Some stay for a longer period, some for shorter. If we can accept them as what they are, we don’t need to wrestle with them. A constant fight will keep us from experiencing the life itself with its richness.  

I mentioned that we sometimes get stuck with the stories we associate with an emotion. We constantly tell ourselves stories about what kind of person we are, about our relationships, or our lives in general. This is quite a useful process as these stories allow us to make sense of and organise our thoughts and beliefs. The problem begins when we start to believe every story that we tell as if they are facts when in reality, they are just thoughts and do not necessarily reflect the complete truth. If we’re not flexible enough, we self-identify with those stories. Being flexible requires asking ourselves whether those stories are helping us or hurting us and making a conscious choice that would be in our best interest. A useful way of achieving this is exercising perspective-taking. When we’re stuck in a story, it becomes very easy to have black and white thinking and be blindfolded. However, when we try to look at a particular situation or an event from different perspectives, we realize that a question might have more than one answer, a problem might have more than one solution, there might be more than one explanation for the events that are happening, and that there might be multiple ways of doing things. I sometimes visualise myself climbing a mountain and leaving all my thoughts and emotions behind. Then, after I reach the top of the mountain, I imagine myself sitting there, taking a deep breath and looking at the thoughts and emotions I left down there with a fresh, open, and curious mind. Then I look at them from that angle. Every time I change my angle, I see different options and different possibilities.  

As for understanding your values, in other words what matters to you in life, here are some questions that you might find helpful: 

• What truly is important to me?  

• What sort of a person do I want to be?  

• What qualities do I want to develop?   

• Is what you’re doing right now moving you toward your values or not?  

• Can you build habits based on your values?  

The Takeaway  

We cannot erase our memories, our experiences, our problems, and emotions, but we can change our relationship with them and ask ourselves what we can do despite their existence. We can change the unnecessary impact that they have on our behaviours. We need to have the courage to say “I’m not going to run away from my experience.”   

Emotional flexibility is being connected with our emotions and moving through them. It’s about being aware of our emotions in the present moment without being defensive, but being more open and accepting of emotional experiences and, depending on the situational demands, modifying our behaviour to pursue our values and goals. Emotional flexibility brings better emotional wellbeing outcomes and allows us to pursue a rich and meaningful life. Rather than making us pursue pleasant emotions only such as happiness, it allows us to live the richness of emotions and our deepest values even in the face of difficulties. We can achieve wellbeing even when our experiences are sometimes painful. We can have any number of thoughts or emotions and still manage to act in a way that serves how we want to live.  

To become better at emotional flexibility, I also recommend journaling. One of the benefits of journaling is that it allows us to create an emotional distance between our experiences and ourselves. It helps us to take a step back and give ourselves some space to process our emotions. Through writing, we put things into language and understand them. Applying words to emotions is a great way to deal with stress, anxiety and loss. Write like nobody is going to read. It is really therapeutic.    

If you want to do something good for yourself, try learning and practicing these skills.  

If you’re interested in learning more about emotional/psychological flexibility and receiving some consultation, you can reach me at selda@seldakoydemir.com.

Further Reading

A-Tjak, J., Davis, M., Morina, N., Powers, M., Smits, J., & Emmelkamp, P. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(1), 30–36.

Forgas, J. (2013). Don’t worry, be sad! On the cognitive, motivational, and interpersonal benefits of negative mood. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 225–232.

Hayes, S., Hayes, S., & Smith, S. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life: The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications. 

Hayes, S. C., Pistorello, J. & Levin, M. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a unified model of behavior change. The Counseling Psychologist, 40,  976-1002. 

Kashdan, T. B., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 865-878.