How to combat mental inflexibility and guilt

Many unpleasant emotional states have repeating themes of mental rigidity and guilt. They exist and are among the key factors that maintain negative states.

Lack of mental flexibility means not changing one's mind when all evidence demands it. It also means incapacity to see things from multiple angles. Thus, these people live by inflexible premises with no complexity.

Their cognitive habits are so strict that anything that breaks them causes worry.

The origin of guilt is well-studied. In Judeo-Christian communities, shame has become a strategy to handle traumatic experiences. In Genesis, Eve bit the cursed apple.

Guilt is good when it forces thought and righting. However, it is negative when it hangs around our neck like a dead weight, keeping us from moving on and serving as a poisonous reference. Guilt, when it appears everywhere, is damaging, unhealthy, and uncreative.

Guilt and inflexibility reduce mental comfort.
Both variables produce "rumination," the inability to stop thinking about something. Excessive rumination is linked to psychotic, neurotic, eating, and other illnesses.

This makes sense: if we can't perceive different facts from multiple perspectives and our preconceived assumptions don't align with what we're seeing, we'll wonder what's wrong. We will think a lot but not solve anything. Mental punishment is all we'll do to ourselves.

We'll feel bad if our inflexible environment demands answers from us and we think we're making blunders because these aren't our thoughts. Our thoughts will become “frantic, distressing and useless” with these two factors.

How can I know if guilt and inflexibility poison my life?
An example is best to determine how sharp these blades are in your sanity:

Consider a lady who has enough knowledge to believe that her social circle will handsomely reward her if she becomes a mother. In addition, his brain must constantly organise information to make his child's birth a joyous, irreplaceable moment without disagreement or doubt.

Her maternal mental model will be rigid, inflexible, and utopian: “Motherhood is beautiful because it is instinctive and I will know how to do it well because it will forever make me happy. moment". He considers uncertainties regarding this idea detrimental to his health.

This lady may be distressed by the big changes of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Her pregnancy was full with health issues, she's unhappy, and birth and postpartum weren't fun. Its expectations and light schema are then challenged with a deep existential void.

If her schema doesn't allow for ideas that might help her feel better, like that hormonal changes are coming, fatigue is exhausting, and it's okay to feel "weird." she will only see the situation as I am a bad mother for not feeling joy and guilty of this.

This individual can either punish themselves for not feeling what they should or relax their belief system to realise that parenting is difficult and does not limit them from being beautiful. These sentiments of suffering must be retained and managed because they are part of the experience, along with delight.

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