Psychological Inflexibility in Depression

Psychological inflexibility is the dominance of ongoing personal experiences of a person over chosen values in guiding one’s action. It is involved in a wide range of psychological disorders and forms a core concept of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model of depression.

Psychological inflexibility is characteristic of three main features, cognitive fusion, experiential avoidance and lack of values clarity.

Cognitive fusion is when a person gets entangled in personal experiences and allows it to guide their behaviour. They lose contact with the present moment contingencies and engage themselves in some form of experiential avoidance.

Experiential avoidance is deliberate effort to either avoid or escape unpleasant experiences. They tend to retain the pleasant experience, which are inconsistent with their values. Though short term reduction of discomfort is achieved, it swells the unwanted experience, which is against values thus preventing further progress towards valued directions.

Lack of value clarity makes a person not know what they want in life and prevents them in moving towards long term positive consequences.

Depressogenic schemas are formed by early negative life experiences which remain latent until individual encounters negative events that activate them. Once activated, they produce negative automatic thoughts which cause depressive symptoms.

Studies conducted with the use of Acceptance and Action questionnaire, Dysfunctional attitude scale, automatic thought questionnaire and Beck description Inventory have shown that Psychological inflexibility in cognitive therapy mediates and moderates between depressogenic schemas and the frequency of negative automatic thoughts.

Psychological inflexibility is found to have an effect on depressive symptoms by increasing the frequency negative automatic thoughts.

One of the most important implications of studies conducted on the subject is promoting Psychological flexibility seems to be the main objective in prevention and treatment of depression. This is beneficial because, as compared to changing depressogenic schemas that would take time, Psychological flexibility can be promoted in a few sessions.

Ruiz, F.J, Odriozola-González, P. (2016). The role of psychological inflexibility in Beck’s cognitive model of depression in a sample of undergraduates. Anales de Psicología, 32(2), 441-447.