How Do You See Yourself?

Why is weight so important in our society? Is your weight one of your top concerns? Well, if it is, how do you deal with your weight? Do you get depressed about it or do you accept the way you are? Surprisingly your reaction to criticism about weight, all depends on one aspect of your psyche. In a new experiment made by a group of psychologists, it was shown that something called psychological flexibility effects your reactions to criticism and is a major cause of negative reactions related to eating disorders. I know that once again you want to know why this should matter to you. Well, most of you are close to the age of the undergraduates who were surveyed in this experiment; therefore, many of your reactions will be similar to theirs. Hopefully this post will help you identify what kind of psychological flexibility you have so that maybe you can learn to react to criticism in a better way. If you’re still wondering why this matters, just think about it. I’m sure that at one time or another you have thought negatively about your body. Everyone does so you’re definitely not alone. Maybe this article can help you respond to those thoughts in a way that will be more beneficial than harmful.

So, with that long winded introduction, I am going to explain to you exactly what this experiment is all about. Basically, this experiment wanted to see how psychological flexibility effected negative psychological outcomes and whether it effected them more than just disordered eating-related cognition. Ok, so obviously we need a vocabulary lesson right now. I’m pretty sure that, unless you’re a genius, you don’t know all those words off the top of your head. Anyways, psychological flexibility is how you react to thoughts you have whether they are negative or positive. If you have high psychological flexibility, you will react to negative thoughts by accepting them as just thoughts and not letting them effect your way of life; however, if you have low flexibility, you will react to these thoughts by letting them effect how you live, such as not going to a party or the pool because you think that you are too fat or too ugly. Now, disordered eating-related cognition sounds complicated, right, but they’re just eating disorders. I think that’s all I need to explain for right now.

Now that we understand what the experiment is about, let’s talk about what they actually did in the experiment and who participated. The psychologists surveyed college students at a 4-year university in Georgia. The students filled out four different surveys each having to do with a certain aspect of the experiment. There was one relating to psychological flexibility and how they reacted in different situations, and another for disordered eating-related cognitions. Each area was covered by a particular survey.

So, you know how they conducted the experiment and what the experiment was about, but you don’t know what the results were. Basically, the results were that psychological flexibility effects negative psychological outcomes or thoughts more than disordered eating-related cognitions, but it is even more effective when it is combined with the disordered eating-related cognitions. It was also found to be true that low psychological flexibility did cause negative psychological outcomes as well as stress in relationships with others. That means that our reactions to any situation are effected by our mind set. If we don’t let negative thoughts bother us we”ll be fine, but if we let them get to us, we will have a negative reaction, such as in disordered eating-related cognitions or stress in relationships with other people.

Although we know pretty much everything about this experiment, we don’t know why this experiment needed to be done. The experiment was addressing the discussion about how mental health is related to psychological flexibility; how you react in stressful situations in your relationships with others; and disordered eating-related cognitions. All of these had their own separate studies, but this experiment wanted to combine them all and see how they are were related to each other. How you react in stressful situations was found to be directly related to whether or not you had disordered eating-related cognitions. Psychological flexibility was found to be indirectly related to both of these areas.

Let’s remember what we’ve learned. Basically, psychological flexibility is something that effects your entire life especially if you have an eating disorder. It is related to all parts of the study in a indirect or negative way. This is important because you need to know just how effective your reactions to negative thoughts are. If you are one of those who lets negative thoughts effect how you live your life, take a step back and realize that you don’t need to let them control you. Everyone is unique so there is no need to feel like you need to be a certain way in order to fit in. I hope this has given you some insight into how your mind works and has encouraged some of you to think about your reactions the next time you have a negative thought. Have a wonderful day and enjoy being yourself! :)

Akihiko Masuda, Matthew Price, Page L. Anderson and Johanna W. Wendell
“Disordered Eating-Related Cognition and Psychological Flexibility as Predictors of Psychological Health Among College Students.” Behav Modif 2010 34: 3 http://bmo.sagepub.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/content/34/1/3.full.pdf+html

Website for photograph
http://www.thewrap.com/television/column-post/e-enters-eating-disorder-business-16756