For may decades, clinicians have known that psychotherapy works. However, very few research has ever delved into asking the reason why. As a result, many hypotheses and schools of thoughts came about without anyone truly ever knowing why psychotherapy was working. At someone point, people have to starting asking themselves why certain methods work and why others do not.
This is exactly what a team of researchers set out to investigate almost five years ago and recently published their study in journal Behaviour Research and Therapy. They analyzed 54,633 existing studies in a method known as mediational analysis. Through this strict analysis, they were able to identify 281 studies with clear findings using 73 different measures.
Unsurprisingly, they uncovered that there is more than one pathway for change depending on the individual and contexts. However, they find one particular skill set that stood out a far more effective than all the other ones, psychological flexibility and mindfulness skills. They found that this one skill set accounted for approximately 45% of everthing we know why therapy worked. Furthermore, adding other concepts similar to how psychological flexibility and mindfulness worked, the skill set was found to be successful in almost 55% of the findings.
It turns out psychological flexibility helps one deal with negative motion more effectively with meaningful outcomes.
Psychological flexibility has three pillars:
- Awareness: This is noticing what is happening in the present moment. It also means witnessing the self witnessing. Examples of awareness if noticing what thoughts and feelings show up and how thoughts and emotions can manifest as sensation in the body. This is also experiencing the afore mentioned experience beyond what words can offer.
- Openness: allowing difficult thoughts and painful feelings to be exactly as they are without needing them to change or disappear. In other words, this is dropping the internal fight with what is not agreeable or unpleasant. This can also mean dropping the struggle to attach to what is pleasant or agreeable. This is simply allowing thoughts, emotions, and sensations to be what they are, as they are.
- Valued Engagement: this is knowing what matters to you and focusing on taking the appropriate actions to move in that direction. This pillar is also allowing one’s self to be guided by values and personal qualities, regardless of what the outcome is. Also, such outcomes need to be true to one’s self, and not a result of societal pressures.
Cultivate these pillars of psychological flexibility and mindfulness and watch yourself change for the better.
SC Hayes et al. Evolving an idionomic approach to processes of change: towards a unified personalized science of human improvement. Behaviour Research and Therapy (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2022.104155
