​Psychological Flexibility: the key to beat stress and perform well under pressure

When working in a pressured environment often a tough, battle-ready approach is used to push through. But this can backfire, causing your mind to see challenges as threats and resulting in feelings of panic. This can be damaging and trigger unhealthy coping mechanisms such as perfectionism, self-criticism, and a lack of self-compassion. In many professions this will make you less adaptable to unpredictable situations and more vulnerable to compassion fatigue and burnout.

Becoming more psychologically flexible is now also essential to top sporting athletes who have to perform their best under pressure. Ronnie O’ Sullivan is a great example of success, returning to claim more World Championships after his coaching with ‘The Chimp Paradox’ author and psychiatrist Steve Peters improved his psychological flexibility. But improving psychological flexibility is also a key part of evidenced-based approaches used in therapy when life is tough, helping manage anxiety and depression, and is definitely worth knowing about.

At the heart of psychological flexibility is recognising your thoughts and feelings before you react, explode, or get swept away by them. It’s also about recognising a more commonly used unhelpful strategy of resisting or blocking them (otherwise known as ‘sticking your head in the sand’). The more you block out or try to stop thoughts and feelings, the bigger the struggle, and the more they appear. This is evident if I tell you to not think about a white bear - just don’t think of a big white polar bear…what happens? Yes, you get more white bears appearing!

Instead, it’s more helpful to drop the struggle and accept it’s ok to have these difficult thoughts and feelings, notice they are there, shine a light on them (like the childhood monsters under the bed) and in accepting rather than suppressing, they have less impact. The things you fear then distract you less, so you can use more helpful, solution-focused thinking and less avoidance-focused coping mechanisms.  This means you also ‘unstick’ from behaving in ways that don’t align with your values, for example, reducing alcohol consumption, increasing physical activity, and being kinder to peers and family. A flexible values-driven approach means that you work towards your meaningful ideals and goals in a more growth and less fear-oriented way, towards what matters to you. 

5 first steps of psychological flexibility that help you perform well under pressure 

Separate yourself from your thoughts

Under pressure, the thoughts we have are not always true. They are part of a natural unhelpful thinking bias designed to get us out of a dangerous situation fast, and are linked to high cortisol and adrenaline. For example, you may be thinking “this task is too much for me, I’m going to make a mess of this”. This emotionally driven thought is not a fact and not helpful in a pressured setting. By noticing these thoughts and any related critical self-talk, you can avoid being unhelpfully caught up in and by them and get some distance from them - this is called ‘defusion’.

To step back from the thought, you can add an observation to the thought “I am thinking that this task is too much for my skills” and take another step away by saying “I am noticing that I am thinking this task is too much for me”. Creating the distance takes the sting and power out of the thought and allows you to flex around the belief and refocus on the skills and training you do have. 

Another powerful exercise to defuse negative thoughts is to imagine your life as a bus. You are the driver, and the direction of travel is set by your values, but the passengers are the thoughts and feelings that might try to direct you down dead ends or wrong roads. Your job as the driver is to stay focused on the direction of travel and not be distracted by the noisy chatter and criticism of the passengers.  You can’t kick them out or stop them from talking, so the way to stay on the road you want to go on is to notice them, and accept them in the background, all the while staying focused on where you want to go. Watch this YouTube video for more insight about this. 

Practise labelling your feelings more accurately

Under pressure you may feel overwhelmed by feelings and use emotive language (“I’m terrified” or “I’m furious”), adding fuel to the fire. Using more precise labels for emotions helps you identify what the deeper feelings related to the situation might be, such as envy, isolation, or dissatisfaction. Understanding this more nuanced emotion and naming them reduces their power and can give you a clue as to what a solution could be.

Drop the shoulds and musts

“Shoulds”, “musts” and “haves” are counterproductive under pressure and loaded with expectations and more pressure. It’s the kind of self-talk we all do and would benefit from changing. Reducing their use, and using a broader range of more open and gentle emotional language will change a panicky feeling that arises in response to  “I should do better” to an excited and less restrictive feeling arising in response to “this is an opportunity to learn and improve”.

Break some of your own rules

Switch it up and vary routines. Every day for one week, aim to do something you never normally do, like travel a different route to work. The next week aim to stop doing something you always do, maybe leave the bed unmade, but choose something that makes you feel a little uncomfortable. This helps your brain learn that you can be more agile and don’t have to do things the same way, making it easier to find alternative solutions or be more open to different situations. 

Identify and remember your values

Knowing what really matters to you is the best life compass you can have, and it helps you move in the direction you choose. Knowing why performance under pressure matters in the first place is fundamental to success. When you are clear about values you can also spot when someone violates them, which likely triggers your emotionally driven threat system (think, someone pushing in front of you in a queue).

You can use values as a measure for how to respond under pressure, so you can stay consistent with them. An easy way to identify values is to scroll through your phone photos to see if there is a theme- nature, family, friends, money, adventure, success? See a more formal way to identify values. 

Summary

Increasing psychological flexibility is a beneficial approach to coping with intense pressure at work and at home, especially the unexpected. Flexibility allows you to switch strategies based on the demands of the situation. It is associated with superior performance and better mental health.

Check out our range of help articles for stress.