312 - Psychological Flexibility is (also) a Triangle
What is psychological flexibility?
Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay in contact with the present moment, regardless of unpleasant thoughts and feelings, and choosing behavior based on the situation and personal values. The term originates from an analysis done by Todd Kashdan and Jonathan Rotterburg that was published in Clinical Psychology Review in 2010.
They defined four different main measures of psychological flexibility:
How much someone is able to adapt to fluctuating situational demands;
Reconfigure their mental resources;
Shift their perspective, and;
Balance competing desires, needs, and life domains.
They discovered that those who were the most able to access these skills had improved quality of life and better mental wellbeing.
The triangle
There are three different pillars that make up the process of being psychologically flexible:
Be open.
Have acceptance. This is often misunderstood as being passive or giving up, but in the model, acceptance is defined as “an action of taking or receiving what is offered” with willingness and making choices.
Defusion: the ability to identify the content of your inner experience and separate it from yourself (opposite of fusion).
Be present.
Contact with the present moment, or nonjudgmental awareness of inside and outside experience in the present moment, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Self as context: Being able to tap into the “observer self” who can see the changing content of the thoughts, feelings, sensations, roles, and identities contained inside of you.
Do what matters.
Defined as your awareness of values. Values clarify what’s important to you, and they act like a compass direction instead of a concrete goal.
Committed action: Taking concrete steps or actions towards particular goals that are guided by your values and carrying through even when the experience is unpleasant.
Relationships
A meta-analysis study from the University of Rochester found that psychological flexibility/inflexibility had greatest correlations with:
Relationship satisfaction.
Sexual satisfaction.
Social support.
Conflict.
Attachment anxiety and avoidance.
Application to non-monogamy
Rules vs. agreements, actions, or compromises that support our shared and individual values.
Handling inevitable ups and downs and change, and remembering that it is inevitable that someone will make a mistake and figuring out how to weather it.
Bringing ourselves to the present in order to support a partner going through a tough time.
Handling unexpected negative emotions such as jealousy, envy, sadness, anger, loneliness, or certain PTSD triggers.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about doing the splits with your brain. That's right. We're talking about psychological flexibility.
Dedeker: Just straight cold splits. Not even feeling it, just no problem.
Jase: Today we're going to take you through what it means to be psychologically flexible, how it looks in real life and most importantly, how psychological flexibility can have major benefits for your relationship, especially for those of us in non-traditional or non-monogamous relationships.
Emily: It looks like your brain doing the splits.
Dedeker: Brain splits.
Emily: What it looks like in real life.
Jase: Brain splits. We should title this episode Brain Splits.
Emily: Brain splits. People will be like, "What?"
Dedeker: What? Like a banana split?
Emily: Yikes.
Dedeker: Gross. What do y'all think psychological flexibility means when that term is just in the air other than brain splits?
Emily: I think it means having the wherewithal and the understanding that life is going to throw a bunch of things at you and we just have to go with the flow. We have rigidity in our life and a lot of us really want to be in control of our lives, but in reality, we're just going to have to deal with some things being out of our control, like a pandemic, for instance. None of us expected that to happen, I'm assuming. Maybe some of us did. That threw us all for a loop. Psychological flexibility. Yes.
Jase: It's like when life throws lemons at you, you dodge them like in the Matrix. You're just like . They're just like flying past.
Dedeker: Maybe you flew into them.
Emily: You catch them.
Jase: That's good.
Emily: Then you make lemonade and then lemonade just comes.
Jase: That's great. Just lemonade for days.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: I am loving this and neither of you are wrong necessarily.
Jase: Right either.
Dedeker: You're not 100% right, but you're also not wrong. In a nutshell, in a lemon peel, some of us might say, psychological flexibility is the ability to stay in contact with the present moment regardless of unpleasant things going on, such as your thoughts, your feelings, your body sensation, while at the same time, also choosing your behaviors based on the situation and your personal values. That was a lot.
Jase: That was a lot to take in.
Dedeker: That was lots of stuff to take in.
Emily: People are going to have to rewind that and then listen to you say it again so that they will get it in their brain.
Dedeker: That's the nutshell lemon peel definition. We're going to dive much, much deeper into exactly what this means. Als,o as a side note, if you're listening, if you've ever worked with a therapist who is trained in ACT or acceptance and commitment therapy, a lot of this may be familiar to you. The concept of psychological flexibility is basically the backbone of that particular modality of therapy.
The term itself comes from an analysis that was done by psychology researchers, Todd Kashdan and Jonathan Rottenberg, which was published in The Journal of Clinical Psychology Review in 2010. It's actually fairly recent.
Jase: Oh, that's pretty recent.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: In 2010? That's a decade ago.
Jase: In psychological concept terms, that's so recent.
Dedeker: It's so recent. There's so much stuff that comes out of the '70s like from Freud or whatever. Turn of the century, it's like, "This is brand new, it's fresh."
Jase: Fresh lemonade. Freshly squeezed.
Dedeker: Exactly.
Emily: I want some now.
Dedeker: Oh, God. I'm going to put the lemonade on a side table for now.
Emily: Ok, ok, ok, I’ll look at it fondly. Not grab for it anymore.
Dedeker: If we want it's there. It's just not right in front of us. These researchers examined a bunch of past studies on things like emotional regulation, on mindfulness, social psychology, neuropsychology. Basically, they were looking at what are the connections between all those things, as well as how all these things relate to our ongoing mental health.
Jase: In this paper, what they noticed was that basically, we can all realize that having positive emotions and positive thoughts and having our basic needs met like autonomy and belonging, having these fulfilled are the cornerstones of good mental health. What was missing from it is that we don't always have control over those things and that sometimes just focusing on like, "Let's have the most positive emotions and thoughts possible," leaves out the fact that we're in a world where there's conflicting forces that come along and can change that and affect us like Emily mentioned with a pandemic or a death in the family or any number of things.
In other words, positive psychology and focusing on the good is great and all, but then we have years like 2020. How the heck do you deal with it? How do you maintain mental health while actually living in a reality that's going to fluctuate and isn't always going to be happy and fulfilling and content?
Emily: Kashdan and Rottenberg officially defined four main measures of psychological flexibility. These are like the measurable ways in which you can measure psychological flexibility. Those things are how much a person is able to, one, adapt to fluctuating situational demands, two, reconfigure their mental resources, three, shift their perspective, and four, balance competing desires needs in life domains. Domains?
Dedeker: Domains. This idea that like I have these different domains in life, like my work life, my spiritual life, my partnerships, my parenting, my family, my friends, and this idea that all of those things are often happening at the same time, ongoing and we're balancing all the different needs that are required in those different arenas. Especially in the situation where it's like, maybe my relationship is going through some crap right now and things are really rough, but things with my friends are really good, but then there's work that's also getting really stressful. It's just like-
Emily: Not taking it out on your friends because there are other stressful things in your life?
Dedeker: Yes. One's ability to balance all those things.
Emily: Got it. Thank you. These guys, Kashdan and Rotteberg, they found that people who were most able to access these skills had a higher quality of life and better mental wellbeing.
Jase: You may be asking yourself, "Okay, cool. What does that actually mean?
Emily: I certainly I am.
Jase: How does this play out in real life? Let's get into that.
Dedeker: It definitely sounds that these four points that they pick out, I'm like, they're great. They seem solid. They seem reasonable, but they're also very science-y researcher-y sounding to me like reconfigure your mental resources. I'm like, "I don't know what that means." Here's the thing. I got another triangle for you.
Jase: That's good
Emily: That's fine. We love triangles, don't we? We just have so many of them.
Dedeker: We know that communication is a triangle. Love is a triangle. What other triangles we got? The savior of high roles triangle.
Emily: There are three triangles there.
Dedeker: Also, psychological flexibility is a triangle, as well as it turns out. I did not decide to put this in a triangle. Other people decided. If you're sick of triangles, go complain to these other people who made this into a triangle. We're going to stick with it for today. The way that we can convert this idea into layman's terms is by talking about these three main pillars that make up the actual process, real-life process of being psychologically flexible. Those three pillars are, one, be open, two, be present, and, three, do what matters. You got it? Got it. Great. That's our show for today. Thank you, everybody, go out. Be psychologically flexible. Have wonderful relationships and lives and tell us all about it.
Just kidding. This is the triangle. That means that from each point of the triangle there's at least two different core processes that attach to these three points together, essentially.
Emily: Like a triad.
Dedeker: Exactly, like a triad.
Emily: A triad is a triangle.
Dedeker: Like a triforce. Sacred trigonometry is really what we're talking about here.
Jase: That is what we're talking about.
Dedeker: Let's take these one at a time and let's start out by talking about being open.
Emily: Being open. What does it entail? It entails having acceptance. This is misunderstood sometimes as being like a passive person or just giving up or tolerating maybe a bad situation, but that's not what we're talking about here. In this model, acceptance is defined as an action. An action of taking or receiving what is offered with willingness and then making choices, I think based on what's occurring at that time, but having acceptance for it, which I think is a good thing. If we can't change it, then we might as well accept it. Maybe like, "What am I going to do now?"
Jase: Like acceptance as opposed to denial rather than acceptance as opposed to taking action or something like that.
Emily: Sure. No, it's acceptance and taking action. Both of those things are happening simultaneously or one after the other. The opposite of this is experiential avoidance. For an example of that, it's accepting and letting yourself experience a feeling of jealousy that's arising. That's accepting, that's a good thing versus doing everything in your power to avoid the feeling at all costs like putting really rigid rules in place or only having your partner date the same person that you are or something like that.
Dedeker: Or getting wildly drunk when it comes up so that you don't have to feel it or look at it, things like that.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Gosh, that idea of escapism is so present with I think a lot of uncomfortable feelings for people in our culture of like, "Let's just avoid it at all costs." Then the second part of being open is something called defusion. To clarify, this is different from diffusion. Defusion, it's like the opposite of fusion. This is the ability to-
Emily: To defuse.
Jase: Yes. To defuse. The ability to identify the content of your inner experience and separate it from yourself. The opposite is fusion when we identify or fuse with our thoughts. An example of this would be noticing I'm having the thought that everyone hates me and I'm a terrible person versus thinking and believing and identifying with everyone actually does hate me. I am actually a terrible person.
Jase: Dedeker wrote this in the episode specifically for me because this is mine, this is my thing.
Dedeker: You fuse.
Jase: Well, I fluctuate I think sometimes between really fusing with it and maybe being able to defuse from it, but this thought is there a lot for me. It's good stuff. Good stuff, Deds.
Dedeker: I think all of us have our own little bits of this where we fuse with thoughts and feelings and memories instead of defusing. For me, often it's stuff like imposter syndrome of really genuinely identifying and sometimes thinking and feeling that it's true, that I'm like, "Oh, I'm an imposter. I'm terrible at my job. I shouldn't be doing this. People are going to find me out." Instead of being able to defuse and just know it's like, "Huh, interesting." I'm having imposter syndrome thoughts or I'm having this experience come up in me where I'm having doubts about myself, which it feels like they're so subtly different, but turns out it actually carries quite a lot of weight.
What about you, Emily? What do you fuse and defuse in your frame?
Emily: I was just thinking about it. Mine is always all my friends and all the people in my life. Like all of them are way more impressive than I am and way smarter than I am and I'm just dum-dum and I pale in comparison to all of them.
Dedeker: What would be the like defused version of that thought?
Emily: That I have my own talents and strengths, and they are not necessarily the most cerebral ones at all times, but for whatever reason, these people love me and care about me and that's a good thing and so clearly, I must bring something to the table.
Dedeker: Well, I think I would actually categorize that as a reframe, which is not necessarily part of this model, but putting in the opposite thought or looking at the positive side of things. I feel like the defusion would be you being able to notice like, "Huh, I'm having this thought come up again. That I'm a piece of crap compared to this really impressive person around me."
Emily: No. It's just all of you, all of you. You too and my other friends and my mom and my boyfriend and blah-blah-blah. It happens less and less as the years go on, but it definitely, for years it was very prevalent.
Jase: Defusion, we're into it. We're going all work on that. I think the acceptance one's good too. I sometimes struggle with that in terms of more with daily inconveniences or setbacks or things where it's easy for me to be like, "No, no, no, this can't be happening. This can't be happening. There's got to be a way for this not to be happening." Rather than accepting it. Then taking action proactively based on that. Does that make sense?
Dedeker: Yes. I think that makes sense. We've laid out all our personal homework for the best part of the triangle.
Jase: Let's go into the next part of the triangle.
Dedeker: Our next point on the triangle is being present. One of the core processes of being present is literally that just having contact with the present moment. That's holding a nonjudgmental awareness of both your inside and outside experiences in the present moment. Even when the present moment might be uncomfortable. To highlight the opposite of this could look like hyper-focusing on past future. What am I going to have for lunch today? Just basically focusing on anything, but what's actually happening in the present moment.
I feel like conceptually, this is a concept that we're probably pretty familiar with, just because of the popularity of stuff like mindfulness meditation, and yoga practices, and a lot of these practices that really encourage that present moment awareness. I feel like we all maybe have some touchpoints to this, even though many of us are not very good at it.
Emily: Says you. You have been doing this for years.
Dedeker: It doesn't mean that I'm good at it. I have had a year's long meditation practice, but the old adage that it's a practice, it's not an accomplishment.
Emily: Although when we were all at a retreat together, you were very impressive at that trip. Which, Jase and I were like, aaaaaah. Then you were just like, "Ommm." You were just very impressive. You're levitating and we're just crying in the corner.
Dedeker: You don't know what was going on inside me. We weren't talking to each other.
Emily: I know. You were good. You're right. We weren't allowed to. Let's move on. Another element of being present is self as context. Let's go into what this means, because it was a little challenging for me to understand, but this is the ability to tap into the observer self who can see the changing content of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, roles, and identities that are contained inside you. That's like it's an ever-moving, ever-evolving thing. Your roles can change your body sensations are constantly changing. Your thoughts are constantly changing, your feelings and that's just a reality. That's the truth of what you are and who you are.
Dedeker: To drop this because all of us before this episode struggled with this one a little bit. It's a little bit hard to wrap.
Emily: Especially the next part.
Dedeker: Yes. I was going to say the next part, but it's a little hard to wrap your brain around. I feel like the self as context process reminds me of a lot of like Buddhist concepts of no-self or non-self. This idea that there isn't one part of me or my experience that I can point to and be like, "Ah, that's it. That's myself." I can't point to my brain as that's myself or my thoughts, that's myself or my feelings, that's myself because all these things are changing. It is like being able to tap into this sense of like, there's some kind of self that exists. That's able to observe all these things going on, which is like a little bit of a head trip.
Emily: Yes, no, it's great. The next word is the opposite of this, which is known as self as content. I wanted a little bit of clarification again there. I think it's essentially saying the same thing, but two different ways of thinking about it. One self as context, which I guess we're saying is more the positive and then self as content, which is the thing that we want to shy away from more.
Jase: I think it's not so much about positive or negative in terms of what the things are. I think the idea here is that either one, there's thoughts you have, there's feelings you have, there's body sensations, identities. Some that might feel good to you. Some that might feel bad. I think the difference here with self as context is like the context is myself. I'm myself and there's these things that happen. There's labels that might come up or there's identities that I have, or sensations that I have, or thoughts and feelings that I have versus self as content means like this thought I'm having, I am that thought or this relationship identity I have, I am that relationship. It's like that these things that happen in that you experience you as the self or the context within which these things happen rather than you are those things that the content is you. I think that's the distinction. I feel like I should start a series of like self-help CDs based on that.
Dedeker:
Emily: I know they wouldn't be CDs because I for one don't have a CD player.
Jase: I won't release them on CD, but I'm going to use cat analogies for all of it. It's going to be called The Power of Meow.
Dedeker: Oh, that's good.
Emily: That's really good.
Dedeker: It's really good, Jase.
Jase: Thank you.
Jase: Can't take that. We said TM after it, so no one can copy it. That's how the law works.
Dedeker: I want to drop an example that maybe can help to clarify some of this a little bit, but if you've listened to like let's say our demon dance battle episode, where we're looking at default communication patterns that you can fall into with your partner during a fight, these default pursuit, withdrawal patterns that startup, you get sucked into the dance. You don't even realize that it's happening. You go around and around and around till we're exhausted. Something that we encourage in that episode is this idea of like, can you notice when you're in the middle of the demon dance battle, can you notice when you've gotten sucked into the choreography?
It's like that noticing is the self as context, this idea that there is this observer self who can be like, "Oh wow, I'm doing that thing again, that I recognize is toxic and not helpful." I can make a choice at this point to shift it or reduce the harm or do something versus like the self as context where you're just in it.
Emily: Self as content.
Dedeker: Self as content where you're just in it in the throws of the feelings and the fight and stuff like that. Not to say that it's not important that you should be paying attention to that, but I think it's just clarifying that ability to make that shift and like step outside of yourself a little bit, or just take a two-inch setback from yourself. Does that make sense to y'all?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Thank you for the clarification.
Jase: It's very similar to the fusion defusion thing-
Dedeker: It is.
Jase: - but I guess I'm trying to understand the difference. I feel like being open in terms of defusion is more about the thoughts that you have, and this being present is more about the experiences you have or the identities you have for the roles you have.
Emily: I think it's like looking at it, the fusion was more inner circle, and then you go out to a bigger circle and that says--
Jase: That's cool.
Emily: The circle that keeps getting bigger and now we're not a triangle anymore. Ok. Different shape.
Jase: We've transformed into a circle. All right. Let's move on to the third part of the triangle and this is doing what matters. The first part of doing what matters is having an awareness of values. Values basically mean what's important to you. They act more like a compass direction rather than a concrete goal. In past episodes, I've talked about a concept like this about having buoys, which is the analogy I like of when you're out in the water and there's no landmarks around. It's hard to tell where you are, but if you have buoys that you can identify and you go, okay, I know that one over there is too far. I know this one over here is safe. Now I'm in between these, I can get a sense of how close I am to over there, where all the, I don't know, the sharks are, and over here where the cabana is, I don't know. That was a weird analogy.
Dedeker: The floating cabana.
Emily: I want to go to a floating cabana.
Dedeker: Oh, that's where we put the lemonade. Got you.
Jase: Yes. Okay. Good, good, good.
Emily: I dream of the floating cabana.
Jase: Anyway, that's the idea is identifying what your values are and being aware of them. That lacking clarity of one's values might be more rigid needing to rely on rules or particularly, rules that are set out by somebody else. Like by a religion or by your parents or by a partner or something like that. Just adhering to these, rather than having your own values that allow you to make decisions that fit with those and not just following some well, X is this, therefore I do Y.
Dedeker: I just wanted to drop in just really quickly. I know that on this podcast, we're infamous for being a little bit anti-rule but what I thought was interesting is the sentiment of like, yes, if you don't have clarity on your values, that often manifests as being more rigid and more rule-governed, it's like that came from the completely not non-monogamy related world. That's not us projecting onto this.
Jase: Right. Our example for this one is, if I have a value of myself and my partners having autonomy in our relationships, then I'm going to try to choose actions and make decisions that head in that direction like to head toward that buoy, even when it's hard versus I don't know what I value. I need to create rigid constructs or follow the rigid constructs that were laid out for me by culture or religion. As long as I follow those, I can just go, well, I must be doing it right, because I'm following the rules.
Dedeker: Definitely.
Emily: I think this is interesting because early in people's non-monogamous journeys it tends to be this I'm not quite sure what I want and what I'm interested in and where I want to go with this. I think that's why it's important to have a meeting or understanding of one another and what is it that I want this to look like ultimately. I'm assuming people will stumble and learn new things along the way but a lot of people tend to maybe just create those rules immediately without having those conversations with themselves and with their significant others, because they don't really know what they want.
Dedeker: Totally. I'm really glad you brought that up because there's a lot of people who when for the first time they're exploring some non-traditional relationship, a lot of people go into it, like you said, really not being sure, what am I trying to get out of this? What is my purpose in this? What is our shared purpose in doing this? Especially if it's an open relationship where one partner is less than thrilled about it. It can really hard to have a sense of like, well, what do I value in this? What's my purpose in this for me as well. I think that behavior of starting out the gate, trying to put in a rigid structure, it's not always bad. It's not always toxic because sometimes it's like, yes, we just need to experience some stuff first in a relatively safe feeling way. That's how we're going to start to understand our values.
I feel like the three of us very much have gone through that over the course of several years is that sometimes you have to go through some shit first before you actually have--
Dedeker: Yes exactly, exactly.
Emily: your boundaries are too.
Dedeker: Totally. Related to this is committed action. That's the process of taking concrete steps or actions toward particular goals that are guided by your values and carrying through with those actions, even when the experience is unpleasant. An example of this could be, okay, well, I know that what I value in my relationships is honest and healthy communication. I'm going to take the action of scheduling a radar with my partner. I'm going to commit to doing that even though I feel really anxious about what might come up versus the opposite of this would be stuff that in this model they refer to as "unworkable actions" that are actions that are mostly dominated by either control or avoidance or both.
The sentiment behind that might be this idea of, oh, I am just like way too scared and intimidated by the idea of doing any regular check-in with my partner. I'm going to make sure that we just avoid that at all costs or avoid any serious conversations at all costs, or just delay any awkward conversations that come up. That's a triangle, right?
Jase: Yes. Have we triangle thoroughly enough?
Dedeker: I'm going to do a super quick recap for people. The three points, the three pillars of psychological flexibility are being open by having acceptance and diffusing from your inner experience and inner thoughts, being present by maintaining contact with the present moment, and also having yourself as context tapping into that observer self and doing what matters, which means knowing what your values are and the ability to take committed action that puts you in the direction of living up to those values. Seems like a pretty good recap.
Emily: It's a lovely recap. Well done.
Dedeker: Thank you, thank you.
Emily: We're also going to talk about some science, how all of this is important for our mental health and for relationships, but before we go there, we're going to discuss some ways in which you can keep the show going for free so that we can continue bringing all of it to you for free. All right. We're back. We're going to talk a little bit about how all of this just-- It isn't just important for our own mental health, but it is very important for our relationships too. Hopefully, in our examples, you can see how the concept of psychological flexibility, how it's useful to think about in relationships. We have some science because we love science, even more science for you. A new meta-analysis study from the University of Rochester, it was published in the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science in 2020. That's new, 2020 is new, not 2010.
Emily: I don't know, I guess it's still new, but-
Dedeker: It's all relative.
Emily: -this is super new, yes. Researchers, Jennifer S. Dax, and Ronald Rogue, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but sorry, Ronald. They analyze 174 different studies to find out how psychological flexibility might influence family and romantic relationships. Their ultimate sample size was over 43,000 respondents, that's a lot--
Dedeker: Spread out between 174 different studies, to make sense.
Emily: That's true. Yes, but ultimately, it was this 43,000 respondents. It did skew more heavily towards women, 73% were women, that's a ton. It was fairly diverse, it was still two-thirds Caucasian, but the age range was between 17 and 70 years old, so a pretty big age range there.
Dedeker: Again, for most studies, it's like this is great.
Emily: This is not old and this is very skewed towards Caucasian women.
Jase: If your respondents are not just all college-aged white people, then you're already like, wow, amazing, gold star.
Dedeker: You are already earning bonus points.
Emily: Well done but do better.
Dedeker: They found a lot of fascinating stuff. They found that psychological flexibility or inflexibility had the greatest correlations with things like relationship satisfaction. Specifically, they found that a lack of being able to contact the present moment, and also generally, responding in an inflexible way to difficult thoughts, feelings, and experiences were predictive of lower levels of current relationship satisfaction, and it also predicted drops in satisfaction over time in their study across six months on the average.
Emily: That makes sense.
Dedeker: Similarly, the self is content, which they specifically defined or gave an example of it being judging or shaming yourself for difficult feelings or experiences going on, but that selfish content was associated also with lower current relationship satisfaction. They found that employing inflexible and rigid responses to daily stressors that occur within all romantic relationships probably takes a toll on those relationships and possibly erodes their overall quality as well.
They did find that being able to gently experience which is their turn of phrase for defusion, as well as finding internal compassion and acceptance of difficult or challenging thoughts or feelings, was linked to higher levels of current relationship satisfaction as well, which I think makes sense. There's a part of this that feels like is related to a little bit of how you care for yourself mentally. I don't mean like external sources of self-care or care like, talking to a therapist or going to a support group of stuff like that. It's like the ways you're able to be gentle with your inner experience or kind with your inner experience helps you to show up a little bit better in relationship, which makes sense to me.
Jase: If I think about the opposite of that when people try to deny those feelings, or escape them at all costs, or avoid them, or really latches on to those negative feelings and identifies with them, that causes us to do really weird things, like lash out at our partners over stuff that is not justified at all, or just like behaving in a not trustworthy manner or being really avoidant to our partner, when really we're just trying to avoid this other feeling of insecurity that we're having. The effort that we go through as humans sometimes to avoid feeling uncomfortable causes us to do some really messed up shit.
Emily: I was thinking about this in the context of people holding on to stuff in relationships, like holding on to really internalized feelings of despair over whatever happened within the relationship, and instead of choosing to let it go and having that acceptance, continuing to let it fester and let it be an overarching thing in the relationship. I feel like those two things are related, that the lack of psychological flexibility can cause someone to hang on to something for a really long period of time and let it permeate and go through the relationship.
Dedeker: It's also making me think of something that the Gottmans talk about a lot. They don't label this a psychological flexibility, but I think it very much matches, which is this idea that they encourage people, whenever you identify a negative trait in your partner, try to also identify that negative trait in yourself. Also, whenever you identify a positive trait in yourself, try to also identify that trait in your partner as well. That sounds very much like having some psychological flexibility, like this ability to, first of all, recognize maybe the first part of it is like, oh, I'm having this thought that my partner super annoying when it comes to X, Y, and Z.
Can I then step outside of myself and look at myself and look at my ever-changing self and see like, oh yes, there are some moments where I bring that annoying behavior to the table as well. I guess things like that. I don't know if it's necessarily like a direct link, but it does remind me of that.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: That's interesting. I remember years and years ago, someone at the church where I used to work in Seattle said, basically, they said it like anything that you criticize in someone else is really a reflection of something you don't like about yourself. They put it very broadly like that. It's something I've thought about actually a lot over the past, I don't know how long it's been since it's been, maybe like 14 years or 12 years or something since then, and it is interesting to explore that. It's usually not a one-to-one, but it's, oh, this thing that really irritates me about this person, it's because it touches on something I'm uncomfortable with accepting about myself. That's interesting that that came up in this context too.
Let's go back to this study here. Relationship satisfaction was that one that Dedeker just talked about. They also found that psychological flexibility affects sexual satisfaction. A lack of present moment awareness, basically not being in the moment, being present, was associated with lower levels of sexual satisfaction. Shout out to Jessica Graham, who it's been a while since she's been on the show. Maybe we should do that again.
Emily: We should have her back.
Jase: She talked about mindfulness as it comes to sex and being present in the moment. Absolutely. If your mind is elsewhere and you're distracted, you're not going to enjoy the sex as much . That doesn't surprise me. I'm also thinking of a hit song that we could make, sort of a parody song. It'd be like, be open, be present, do meaningful things, so I can get my satisfaction.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: Jase, you've been really prolific this episode. You have The Power of Meow, you have this psychologically flexible Benny Benassi. You're on fire today.
Emily: Well done.
Jase: Thank you. I'm just very inspired by triangles it turns out.
Emily: Apparently, jeez.
Dedeker: They're the most inspiring shape.
Jase: The next one is social support. This is another area that's affected by psychological flexibility. Lack of present moment awareness, again, same thing we were just talking about with sexual satisfaction, was also associated with individuals reporting lower levels of being supportive, empathic, and compassionate toward their partners. Dedeker introduced me to this term, phubbing, which I had never heard before.
Emily: Which is?
Jase: Dedeker, can you explain it?
Dedeker: Yes. It's a portmanteau of phone and snubbing, but it's this thing that pretty much all of us do all time.
Emily: Do people use the phone anymore?
Jase: Your cell phone, your mobile.
Dedeker: The device that we call a phone--
Emily: Do people call each other anymore?
Jase: You need to explain the term the rest of the way.
Emily: Sorry, sorry, go.
Dedeker: It's literally just like spacing out on your phone to the detriment of paying attention to people around you.
Emily: Got it.
Dedeker: That's what it is and we all do it. That's what this is.
Jase: It's like-
Jase: It's phubbing.
Jase: -your partner is stressing over, trying to carry all the groceries in the door and you're just on your phone and not paying attention.
Dedeker: Did I do that this morning?
Jase: No, I thought we both did a good job carrying groceries in.
Dedeker: Oh, good. I was a little worried.
Emily: She's like, sorry, just gong to answer this one email, oh, the celery's on the floor.
Jase: You put it all away, wow, that's great.
Emily: Let's talk about conflict. Lack of present moment awareness linked to negative conflicts behaviors, self as content, and global inflexibility were linked to higher levels of negative conflict. This suggests that responding to stressors in a really rigid and flexible and distracted manner might predispose individuals to respond to conflict within relationships in a more reactive way.
Jase: I feel like this makes me think a little bit about what I was talking about earlier of when something comes up you don't like that. Like, no, this can't be rather than accepting it and taking action, that that can lead to that very reactive I'm going to snap at this because this can't be the case. I can't handle this. I can't adapt to it and accept it. I'm just going to yell at you about it.
Emily: I think that, well, we need to be looking at ourselves as the self as context. We also need to be looking at others as they're their own self as context--
Dedeker: Wow.
Emily: -because we never are totally-- Thank you. I think I also am on fire this week.
Emily: I have to pat myself on the back once in a while.
Jase: I love it.
Emily: Because we are never fully aware of exactly what context our partners or the person that we're talking to is going through in that moment. They may have had a really shitty conversation with their mom, like right before talking to you. They said something that you off and instead of being reactive, maybe like take a moment and say, "What's going on over there? You okay? Is there something you need to talk about because you seem a little uptight or a little upset? Can we please maybe have a conversation about this," but understanding other people's contexts as well is important.
Cool. Okay. Now we're going to talk about defusion, not diffused, but defusion. Defusion was linked to lower levels of negative conflicts, behaviors suggesting that individuals' abilities to gently, that gently again, experience difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions might help them de-center from a relationship conflict. It potentially creates the space to be able to select some more kind and compassionate response to conflict instead of engaging in more reactive and aggressive behaviors. I just said that before I said that.
Dedeker: Exactly.
Dedeker: I think all of this makes so much sense because it's like in the middle of conflict, you can be really worked up and your heart's racing and you can have the thought that arises of my partner is being a total shithead right now. It's like being able to defuse from that thought to be like, okay, I'm having that thought. Maybe that's a cue that like, I need to take a little break or I need to take a deep breath or I need to calm down versus I think that fusing with that thought, a potential outcome of that is that I literally say that to my partner, I just let that fly off like you're being a shithead and then there's all the fallout and damage that's going to come from that as well.
Jase: It's something I think we've talked about on the show before, is this idea of gaining the ability to have a circuit breaker is when you're getting so worked up and caught up in these things. I think that you'll sometimes have these little glimpses of clarity of, oh, I can see myself getting spun up or I can see myself losing control here or being really reactive or just really digging into these negative feelings. It's like you'll catch this glimpse and that circuit breaker thing, I think we've talked about before, is that idea of getting better at noticing those little glimpses when they happen and grabbing onto it and pulling the plug and saying, okay, actually I need a halt for a second. I'm sorry. That was wrong. Give me a moment, whatever it is, like catching those instead of ignoring those and just being like, no, I got to keep doubling down because that's the only way to victory.
Dedeker: I'm putting together that this seems like another arena where having a strong sense of your values and being able to do that committed action is also really important because if you have a strong sense of like, I value gentle conflict resolution or I value not hurting my partner even when we disagree that even in the moment when you're, oh, I'm so pissed off and they have all the facts wrong and they're being a jerk that I can still commit to the action of like, okay, I'm going to take a break or I'm going to choose to pump the brakes, lower my speed, or I'm going to choose different words that are more gentle, more compassionate, or I'm going to ask them questions. Even though it feels hard that this seems like another arena where that area of the triangle is also really important as well.
Emily: I don't know about you two, but we say all this stuff, but I definitely still have moments where I'm an asshole in a conversation.
Dedeker: Oh, all the time. I'm talking about myself, not like, oh yes, Em’s an asshole all the time.
Emily: No, no, no. I'm just saying like word, it is all well and good to have these ideas in our head, but we're still clearly a work in progress as well. I'm sure it is sometimes easier said than done, but it's a great thing to be thinking about at all times. I love that. How can you gently choose to do gentle actions as opposed to angry and reactive ones?
Dedeker: It helps having a podcast for seven years or however many years, I forget, not important, where you are talking about these things and really having a chance to clarify your values around communication and relationships all the time. It does help in those moments where one is wanting to be an asshole to begrudgingly be like--
Emily: I talk about this thought and I
Dedeker: Exactly Oh my God, I just talked about this on a podcast.
Dedeker: The last interesting bit that I want to drop in here is related to attachment anxiety and avoidance that in this study, they found that lack of present moment awareness, self as content, and global inflexibility were all moderately linked to higher levels of attachment anxiety as well.
Jase: Love it. It's just good all around. It seems that having that psychological flexibility will also, or at least as related to having lower anxiety and less avoidant tendencies, which is a good segue way into one caveat that we did want to talk about with this study. That is that the University of Rochester researchers who put this together are very upfront about the fact that their study found correlative links rather than causative links. Quick crash course on that for anyone who doesn't know.
Basically, a correlation means that when one thing goes up, this other thing goes up, but they're not necessarily related to each other. Or maybe they're both caused by something else. All we know is that when one thing's higher, the other tends to be higher. When one thing lower, the other tends to be lower or they could be opposite of each other, like when this one's higher, this other one's lower.
Dedeker: I think the classic example that people give is that you can look at oh, ice cream sales peak in the summertime and also burglaries peak in the summertime and-
Emily: It's because of the ice cream.
Dedeker: -a causative link would be to say like, "Oh, that means that ice cream sales are causing burglaries," when it's just like, no, it's a correlation that they're both going up at the same time, but we don't know if one's causing the other or if there's some other outside cause.
Jase: Right. Exactly. Versus something a study that does find a causative link means there is more clear evidence that one thing is causing the other. Basically, a correlation means they're not necessarily causing each other, but they might be, but we don't even know what direction the causation goes. In this case, in other words, it's not entirely clear until more longitudinal studies can be done about whether psychological flexibility causes higher relationship satisfaction or if higher relationship satisfaction might help cause psychological flexibility or if they both might be correlated or caused by some other property but it is still worthwhile to see that there's this correlation and trying to have more psychological flexibility or trying to have more relationship satisfaction will likely have some cross effect on each other, if not a perfectly causative one, we just don't know yet.
Dedeker: Another important thing to point out is Kashdan and Rottenberg who were the researchers who initially coined the term, they point out the fact that it's not like all our brains start out in this same state and with the same ability to be flexible or inflexible in certain areas, that an individual's executive functioning, for instance, or a person's existing default mindsets or cognitive biases, or even just the way their personality is configured. Those all have an effect on how easy or difficult that it may be to be psychologically flexible in certain areas.
I just wanted to drop that in just to essentially support another one of our favorite mottos. Don't weaponize this shit because, for instance, executive functioning is a huge thing that like all of our brains are different in that regard or different people especially people who are on the autism spectrum or certain people with like executive functioning disorders or just differences or tweaks, it's like that really heavily influences psychological flexibility in certain arenas. Just to have some compassionate understanding for that, that not all our brains work the same way.
Jase: If I could give an analogy, Dedeker and I, for the past few weeks have been doing a physical flexibility course like a stretching course together.
Emily: We are going to talk about this.
Dedeker: We are going to talk about the stretching first, okay, good.
Jase: We’ve been doing this online--
Dedeker: Try and do some real splits, not just the brain splits.
Jase: Right. It's an online stretching course, and I think it's actually a pretty good parallel to this where it says these differences might make it more difficult to be psychologically flexible in certain areas, and absolutely when we're doing this stretching course, there are certain stretches or strength things where I'm able to do it and Dedeker is really struggling with it.
If you only looked at that moment, it's like, “Well, I guess Dedeker is just not as flexible as me,” but then if you were to wait five minutes till the next exercise in the class, when I'm crying, trying to lift my leg off the ground and Dedeker is just like, “Whoop, whoop, whoop, whatever.” Then you go, “Wow, gosh, Jase isn't flexible at all and Dedeker is.” It also really depends on the areas and the specifics too, it's not just this you are across the board or not.
Dedeker: The whoop, whoop, whoop is the sound of my leg lifting in the air, by the way.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: I could see it perfectly in my mind's eyes, it was lovely.
Emily: All right, how do we apply all of this to non-monogamy? I would argue to any relationship, some of these are non-monogamy centric, but really you can apply it to whatever relationship configuration you're a part of. We talked a lot about rules in this, and we have a whole episode on rules versus agreements featuring boundaries, so go back to that episode for sure if you want to get more into that, but things like rules and agreements, actions, compromises, all of those support are shared and individual values. I am really interested, you talked about this, Dedeker, about having an episode on values and I think we should talk about that at some point, for sure.
Dedeker: Yes. That's on the topic list and has been for a while to find some more concrete ways in exercises for figuring out what it is that you actually value.
Emily: Exactly. Think about that when you're going through this specific episode that we're talking about, and I even I'm like, “What are my values?” I think I have an idea of them, an abstract understanding, but really concretely knowing my values, and then relaying that to my partner I think is a very important thing to be able to do. You can do that in whatever relationship you're in.
Jase: Absolutely.
Emily: Let's say handling inevitable ups and downs and change, we talked about that right from the very start, just that flexibility in life, that understanding that life is going to throw you some stuff, it's going to suck, and there's not always a contingency plan for them. You just have to go with the flow at times, and that's really okay. Remembering that it is inevitable that someone in your life is going to make a mistake, they're going to piss you off, they're going to let you down, there are ways to weather that and ways to handle that.
Dedeker: Yes. I feel this is something that I'm often having to drop in as a reminder with the clients that I work with who are just opening up their relationship or new to it, is that it's so important to create structures, find ways to foster safety and a mindset that understands there's going to be some times where things start to fall apart a little bit or someone steps on somebody's toes, or someone miscommunicates, or there's a misunderstanding or things like that, and we have to be able to essentially set ourselves up so that it's the first time that happens, it doesn't all just fall apart. The whole house of cards doesn't come tumbling down, I think that really speaks to this psychological flexibility.
Other things such as, like we said, being able to bring ourselves back into the present in order to support a partner who's going through a tough time, being able to actually be there for them. Call back to our episode with Jessica Fern about her poly secure book is that that's a basis of attachment security. Is that, “Are you here? Are you here with me?” Being able to be present is a huge part of that.
Also, dealing with unexpected negative emotions that come up. All the time, I see that things like jealousy or relationship insecurity sometimes catch you totally off guard. I know for myself, 10 years into non-monogamy, every single time I think that I'm enlightened, I've figured it out, and I'm so great. It's like something comes out of left field where I'm like, “Oh shit, I was not expecting that and that's really uncomfortable. That's a really uncomfortable piece of personal growth.”
Those skills like being able to defuse, self as context can really help. Especially, because what I see all the time is people like me who've been doing this for a long time, if suddenly jealousy, envy, or something comes up, they're like, “Oh my God, I thought that I was a "good poly person" who doesn't do this anymore or doesn't feel this way anymore.” Being able to tap into that sense of compassion and stepping outside of your inner experience can also be extremely helpful.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Well, gang, how flexible do you feel? Can your brains do the splits yet?
Emily: It’s on the way, I got a good half split, definitely great half split going on. I need to use my blocks, my yoga blocks on either end of my body so that I can keep myself upright and not break, but we're getting there.
Jase: Yes. My pigeon is getting a lot better, but I’m not fully to the splits yet.
Dedeker: Yes. I know, writing this--
Emily: We’re all a work in progress.
Dedeker: Writing this episode was really interesting because it definitely helped me to see like, “Oh, I feel like I actually do this really well,” and other areas where I'm like, “I do that really poorly.”
Emily: What do you do poorly?
Dedeker: Oh my God, do you really want me to lay it out right here, right now? So many of these things.
Emily: We don’t have to, it’s fine, but yes, that surprises me.