We all create narratives about the events in our lives, we constantly interpret what‘s happening to us. These narratives are important because they affect how we respond: they can be either helpful or self-sabotaging. Flexible thinking is about learning to notice our narratives and rephrasing them in a way that helps us achieve our goals.

The American psychotherapist Dr. Albert Ellis proposed 4 rigid beliefs that often underpin unhelpful narratives. These are: Demandingness, Catastrophizing, Low Frustration Tolerance & Depreciation. In this context, changing our narrative means moving away from these 4 rigid beliefs, i.e., learning to remind ourselves that our wishes will not always be realized, that things could be worse, that our distress is not unbearable, and that every person or situation is complex including various aspects, thus it cannot be totally depreciated.