We should be making flexible choices in line with what really matters to us, persisting with pursuing possibilities and choosing away from what limits us.
Rigid rules can get in the way:
- They can stop us seeing all aspects of a person or situation;
- They can stop us seeing change, and new possibilities.
Rigid rules may be "old stories" about how to be liked, or stay safe.
- If I worry, I will be prepared when the worst happens;
- If I don't try, I won't fail;
- If I don't expect too much of myself, neither will anyone else.
Healthy rules for living allow us to adapt to changing circumstances in line with what matters to us.
No one can be absolutely certain about everything in life, nor have control over everything.
In changing or challenging circumstances, flexible rules can help a person make the best possible choices to support their well being and growth over the long-term.
Rules that have no "give" in them can:
- be impossible to follow, e.g. we can't change the past;
- focus our response on the short term, blurring long term costs;
- loop our focus on things we can't control e.g. stop our thoughts, always feel positive, other people's behaviour;
- get us stuck in behaviour that's no longer working for us.
Most of us don't intentionally choose to do things that don't work for us, we simply don't notice when we are stuck in loops.

-- Alison Stapleton (behavioural scientist), on #rule governed #behaviour

#RelationalFrameTheory #behavioraltheory #Psychology

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A rule for living is an adjustment we have made based on experience that has become a story of how life is.
A rule may have worked once, or many times, but we may not notice when it's not working in a new context.
When we learn something through following a rule instead of through direct experience, we may stick at it long after it's stopped working - even when it's harming us!

-- Alison Stapleton (behavioral scientist)

#RelationalFrameTheory #behavioraltheory #Psychology

Sunday evening diving deep into books for fun. Learning more about basics and history of #RelationalFrameTheory (RFT). Exciting stuff! 🤩

Already looking forward to craft my new talk for tech conferences around this. 🤓

#psychology #language #behaviour #mentalHealth

Is the statement "A is bigger than B" more closely related to "A comes before B" than to "A contains B"?

If so, if I train you to be really good at answering "bigger than" questions, will you get better at "comes before" questions more than "contains" questions?

In this paper just accepted at the Journal of Contextual Behavior Science, we attempted to find this out.

Of special interest to those doing #RelationalFrameTheory and #RelationalReasoning research:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365655597_On_the_structure_of_relational_responding