Lack Of Mental Flexibility And Guilt: The Knives Of Your Mental Health

If we review recurring points in negative emotional states, we will find that mental lack of flexibility and guilt appear regularly in many of them. We could even say that, in addition to appearing, they are one of the main agents that make these negative states remain.

The lack of mental flexibility speaks of the inability to change your mind when all reasons advocate it. It also refers to the inability to look at a situation from different points of view. Thus, these people handle reality based on very rigid premises and with few nuances.

The origin of guilt is well studied. It could be said that in certain societies of the Judeo-Christian tradition,  guilt has permeated the way of processing painful events. In fact, if we go to genesis we will find a guilty Eva for having bitten that damn apple.

Guilt has a positive side in that it imposes an exercise of reflection and repair of damage. On the other hand, it shows its negative face when it is suspended from our neck like a dead weight, preventing us from moving forward and serving as a poisoned place of reference. Also, when it occurs in a generalized way and for everything, guilt is a totally destructive feeling: it is not useful, it is not healing and there is nothing creative that can inspire.

Guilt and inflexibility keep us from mental comfort

These two factors cause “rumination”, a concept within psychology that refers to the inability to stop thinking about something. Excessive rumination has been associated with psychotic disorders, neuroticism, eating disorders, and many other disorders.

This relationship is logical: if we are unable to see different events from different points of view, if all our preconceived ideas do not fit with what we are living … we will think about what is wrong with us. And we will think a lot, but to solve nothing. It will simply be a mental self-punishment inflicted by ourselves.

If, in addition to this, due to this inflexibility, the environment in which we find ourselves demands answers from us and we believe we are continually making mistakes because they are not the ideas with which we started in our mind, we are going to feel guilty. With these two aspects operating in our mind, it will acquire a “frantic, anguishing and useless” activity.

How to know if inflexibility and guilt “make my life bitter”

To know how sharp these two knives are on your mental health, it is best to see an example:

Imagine a woman who has received enough information to bear a prophecy very much in mind: in the case of being a mother, she would be generously rewarded by her social circle. In addition, your brain constantly has to process information:  the birth of your child will be something happy and irreplaceable, devoid of contradictions and moments of doubt.

Your mental scheme about motherhood will be rigid, inflexible and utopian : motherhood is beautiful because it is something instinctive and I will know how to do it well because it is beautiful, instinctive and that will simply make me happy at all times. In his scheme, doubts about this idea are inadmissible and dangerous for his well-being.

This woman, when experiencing the great change that a pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum entails, can feel upset. Her pregnancy has been fraught with physical discomfort, her mood is not as cheerful as she expected, and the delivery and postpartum were not a rewarding experience. Then a very deep sense of existential emptiness appears that directly confronts your expectations and your weightless scheme.

Thus, if your scheme does not allow for ideas that can alleviate the way you feel, such as that hormonal changes occur, that tiredness is exhausting, and that it is normal to feel something “strange”, she will evaluate all this in only one way: I am a bad mother for not feeling only joy and I am guilty for  it.

This person can only act in two ways : continue to punish himself for not feeling what he should, or on the contrary, relax his belief system to understand that motherhood is a complex experience but it is still wonderful. That you have to harbor all those feelings of pain and manage them because they are part, as well as the joy, of the moment you are living.

In order to do this, you must fight not the feelings that you think should not be in your head, but the belief system and guilt that are preventing you from experiencing them in a healthy and fluid way.

How to combat mental inflexibility and guilt

There are several ways to combat these two great enemies of your well-being, from different fields and in different ways, from the most theoretical to the most practical. Let’s see some of them:

• It is time to relax. That doesn’t mean you just lie in bed doing nothing for hours. Having a calm mind is practicing awareness, discover Mindfulness and some readings, such as those of the author Eckhar Tolle.

• Practice what you have learned.  It is not easy to start practicing this form of relaxation so help yourself with this. Look for easy and pleasant situations , such  as taking a walk, painting, or reading. If you start doing it in those contexts, you can progressively apply it to others, such as being in the office processing orders or teaching a class in front of 20 children.
• Seek professional help.  It is important to work your rigid and erroneous schemes. A cognitively oriented psychologist is a specialized professional to help you dismantle everything that is making you suffer unnecessarily, in addition to structuring and exploiting those ideas that you have and that are healing for you. It is not “a brainwashing”, it is an aid from which you will take whatever you want.
• Check your beliefs.  We cannot review our beliefs without having previously relaxed some tension. If you are already calmer, you have to review your beliefs, that is: review what preconceived ways of thinking and acting keep you from being in harmony.

• Make progressive changes. Saying that you are going to stop being so “squared” that you are going to flow a little more and that you are going to open yourself up to new perspectives in life is a very encouraging attitude. However, it is best that you redirect it to concrete facts.
• The results of your interactions will always be better than the ghosts in your mind.  If you mess up, feel anxious or confused, don’t be afraid. There is no harm in asking yourself questions and working on a mental level, quite the opposite. The foundations that are solid will stay, the rest will fall and you will have the opportunity to build more successful and flexible ones.