Getting Unstuck: The Practice of Psychological Flexibility
Getting Unstuck: The Practice of Psychological Flexibility
You know that feeling when you're stuck in your head, arguing with reality? When you're so identified with a thought or feeling that you can't see around it? When you're acting on old scripts and automatic pilot rather than with presence and intentionality? That's psychological rigidity.
Psychological flexibility is the opposite. It's about presence, acceptance, and intentionality. Being with what is (our thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges) without fighting them and without letting them control our actions. It's about choosing our response with intention.
Where This Comes From
Psychological flexibility is the core concept in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), but it shows up across different mindfulness-based approaches.
These approaches teach us to change our relationship with difficult internal experiences rather than trying to change these experiences directly. Instead of "how do I get rid of this anxiety?" it becomes "how do I still do what matters to me even when I'm anxious?". Instead of trying to eliminate our painful emotions, thoughts, and urges, we make room for them, get curious about what they're trying to do for us, and choose what we do next.
This isn't about suppressing emotions or pretending we're not feeling what we're feeling. It's the opposite: making room for what's actually here while reclaiming our ability to choose how we respond. Our experiences don't have to run the show. We can feel everything we're feeling and still decide what we do next.
It's About Having Range
Being honest about what we're experiencing: the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations, the urges. Making room for all of it to exist. And still choosing our actions based on what matters to us rather than just reacting to the discomfort or avoiding it.
We can feel anxiety and still take action on what's important to us. We can notice self-critical thoughts without letting them run the show. We can want things to be different and accept what actually is. We can want to avoid something and still take steps toward it because it matters. We can feel shame and stop hiding. We can feel anger without acting on the urge to lash out.
How It Works: Three Core Moves
Psychological flexibility is a practice built on three foundational skills that work together.
First: Be Aware
Notice what's actually here. What's happening in your mind and body right now? What thoughts are running through your mind? What sensations are you feeling? What's going on inside and around of you?
This is about being present with our experience instead of living in our heads about the past or future. It's the foundation for everything else.
Second: Open Up
Once we can notice what's here, the next move is being honest about it and making room for it. The anxiety, the anger, the shame, the critical thoughts, the urges, the discomfort. Not denying them, not arguing with them, not trying to fix or avoid or escape. Just allowing it all to exist.
Not because we like it. Not because it feels good. But because fighting our own experience is exhausting, it doesn't work, and it creates new kinds of problems.
This also includes seeing clearly: recognizing that thoughts are just thoughts, not facts. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we can do, what things mean? They're stories. We don't have to believe everything we think.
Third: Do What Matters
And this is where it gets good: when we can be present with what is and make room for all of it without getting tangled up in it, now we have space to choose.
Not react from old patterns, not let discomfort run the show, but actually get clear on what matters to us and act on it. Even when it's uncomfortable, even when parts of us are screaming to avoid or control or hide.
Not exactly sure what truly matters to you? This might help get you started.
This part is all about intentionality: acting like the person you want to be, even when it's uncomfortable.
Why It Matters
Most suffering comes from being psychologically rigid: fighting reality as it is, trying to avoid what we're feeling, believing every thought we have, living on autopilot instead of choosing where our energy goes.
Psychological flexibility doesn't eliminate pain. Life still hurts sometimes. There's no way around that. But it creates space around the pain so we're not drowning in it.
And it shifts what the pain is for. We can't choose whether the discomfort, the difficult emotions, the intrusive thoughts, the uncomfortable sensations show up, but we can choose what we do with them. The anxiety might be there either way. The question is whether we're anxious while avoiding our life, or anxious while living it.
It's the difference between "I feel anxious, so I can't do this" and "I feel anxious, and I'm doing this anyway because this is the life I want to be living”.
It's a Practice, Not a Destination
We'll never be perfectly psychologically flexible. We'll still get rigid, still get caught in our heads, still try to control things we can't control. That's being human.
The goal isn't perfection. It's noticing when we're stuck and having the capacity to get unstuck. It's building the muscle of coming back into the present, allowing our experience to be what it is, and choosing how we respond rather than reacting from old pain.
Psychological flexibility is how we become more fully ourselves. Not the people we think we should be, but the people we actually are, showing up for what actually matters to us, with all the messy humanness that comes with that.
It isn't eliminating discomfort. It's welcoming discomfort in order to live our most authentic, meaningful lives.
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References
Harris, R. (2008). The happiness trap: How to stop struggling and start living. Trumpeter.
Harris, R. (2009). ACT made simple: An easy-to-read primer on acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
