Psychological flexibility and health on World Health Day 2025
Much of preventable poor health is impacted by our behaviour. If we make changes to our behaviour, we can improve both our physical and mental health.
On World Health Day 2025, I thought I'd share some of what we know about improving physical and mental health by increasing our psychological flexibility.
What is psychological flexibility?
There is a large and growing body of evidence for the benefits of having greater psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is a set of skills that we can develop with practice. They relate to how we think about ourselves, our actions and what matters to us. There are six developable skills:
Present moment awareness is about being centred and in contact with present experiences, rather than ‘time travelling’ or avoiding present experiences
Self-as-context is about our ability to take different perspectives, including observing our own lived experiences, and hold stories about ourselves lightly
Defusion is our ability to see the thoughts, feelings and emotions we experience without needing to avoid them
Acceptance is our willingness to take action towards the things that are meaningful and important to us, even if that brings up difficult thoughts, feelings and emotions
Values are the things that bring meaning, purpose and vitality to us
Committed action is about moving towards the things that bring meaning, purpose and vitality to us
When we bring these skills together and use them more, then we are able to make better longer term decisions about what we want to do and who we want to be in the world.
Psychological flexibility and physical health
Why does a psychological skill have an impact on our physical health? Often what gets in the way of us exercising, eating well or taking good care of ourselves is within our control but difficult to do. For example, feeling like there is not enough time to take a walk or do some exercise. We often don’t prioritise that time; feeling like it’s selfish or not as important as looking after others or working. We can also have a poor relationship with our bodies, feeling ashamed of how we look, or weak because we are not doing what we ‘should’ to look after ourselves.
These things can be the case whatever form of physical health we’re thinking about, from our general fitness to coping with a chronic health condition. Regardless of the context, often the same things are at play, such as:
Thoughts that are difficult to ignore, like cravings for food or fear of triggering pain
Trying to motivate ourselves with ‘commands’ about our behaviour that we ‘must’ do
Experiencing difficult emotions and negative self-talk when we take action towards our goals
Increasing psychological flexibility gives us a set of skills that help to move us towards our goals and more effectively respond to the challenges above. For example, when we can see our thoughts as just thoughts (using defusion skills) then that gives us more opportunity to decide what we really want to do. Similarly, replacing our internal ‘commands’ about our health with values-based goals that reflect what really matters to us and the advantages of the changes we decide to make (using committed action skills) is more motivating.
For better physical health, making psychologically flexible behavioural changes, even if those are simple and small values-based changes with self-compassion, can lead to longer term success.
Psychological flexibility and mental health
Having explored the way psychological flexibility skills help us improve physical health, the impact it can have on mental health might be easier to see. It tends to be the same kinds of things that impact us negatively in terms of our mental health as our physical health - such as experiencing difficult thoughts, having thoughts that are difficult to ignore, or not having useful ‘self-talk’. Having higher psychological flexibility means we have skills that can make coping with mental health challenges easier.
The six skills of psychological flexibility work together to help us notice thinking or behavioural patterns that are unhelpful because:
They don’t serve us well in the longer term. We might be doing something that gives us relief in the short term, like avoiding a difficult thought or feeling by distracting ourselves from that thought, but that can start to take over and control what we do. Longer term it might be better to be willing to let a difficult thought or feeling be there.
They used to be helpful but now mean we are doing things that don’t work well for us. These could be things we have done at times in our life when we have felt unsafe, but now get in the way of us having real or meaningful connections with our values (i.e. the things that matter to us).
It can be really difficult to notice these patterns and even more difficult to address them. The best way is to focus on doing what matters to you, and doing it with a big dose of compassion for yourself.
It sounds so simple, but it can be difficult to notice and then change what you’re doing. The first step is to spend some time thinking about what is important to you and the person you want to be in the world (your values). The next step is to take action towards those values with compassion and self-care, building your skills of defusion, acceptance, present moment awareness and self-as-context along the way.
How can I learn more about this?
I offer coaching for individuals who want to increase their psychological flexibility. If you’d like to find out more, then you can set up a chemistry call with me using the link here.
I run training for coaching practitioners who want to learn more about psychological flexibility, Acceptance and Commitment Coaching, and how to help their clients develop these skills. You can find out more here.
Some helpful resources are:
The World Health Organisations World Health Day webpage - https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day
The book A Liberated Mind provides a great introduction to the six skills of psychological flexibility and how to use those skills in your life Hayes, S. (2019). A liberated mind: The essential guide to ACT. Random House.
This paper summarises the evidence for higher psychological flexibility as a protective factor in both physical and mental health. Gloster, A. T., Meyer, A. H., & Lieb, R. (2017). Psychological flexibility as a malleable public health target: Evidence from a representative sample. Journal of contextual behavioral science, 6(2), 166-171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2017.02.003