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Psychological flexibility is a fundamental skill for mental health.
WHY DOES psychotherapy work? The practice involves an element of mystery-just what is it about therapy that can generate such profound change?
About five years ago, my colleagues-Stefan Hofmann, Joe Ciarrochi, Baljinder Sahdra, and Fred Chin-and I decided to look at all successful mediational studies done on a psychosocial intervention in a randomized controlled trial targeting a mental health outcome. We had no idea what we were in for. It was a huge effort that took nearly 50 people over four years. More than 54,000 studies were rated twice to see if the analyses were properly done; we ended up with 281 clear findings using 73 different measures. The results were published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy.
As you might have guessed, we discovered that there is not just one pathway to change, but many, each supporting people differently in different contexts. The surprising finding, however, was that one particular combination of skills proved far more commonly effective than anything else. It was more frequently found than selfesteem; support from friends, family, or a therapist; or even whether or not a client had negative, dysfunctional thoughts. The most common pathway to change relied upon psychological flexibility. Flexibility skills and closely related concepts accounted for about 55 percent of the explanation for successful...