Psychological accordion effect: what is it and do you have it? – GOOD SHAPE

If at any time you went on a diet or changed your diet in search of weight loss, you must have heard about the accordion effect: the act of losing weight, gaining weight and losing weight again. Now, you know the accordion effect psychological? Yeah, the famous back and forth also has a mental version.

WHAT IS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCORDION EFFECT?

“The psychological accordion effect happens when the person insists on changing their habits for a long time”, he explains. Vanessa Gebrimpsychologist specializing in clinical psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo.

Think of all the times you’ve set goals like “study more”, “exercise more”, “spend less time on social media”, and even “lose weight”. And for a while, you Commit to these goals and takes some steps, but then gives up and comes to the conclusion that he is not managing to change.

“This effect happens when the person decides to radically change a habit, but shortly afterwards ends up behaving as before”, continues the professional.

That is, the logic is the same with food, which we mentioned at the beginning of this text: for a few weeks, you commit to a regulated diet, but then you give up because you have not been able to follow the diet on one or two occasions and conclude that you cannot change – and go back to old eating habits.

“Usually, people end up giving up on the process because they provoke these changes in a very radical way, and are unable to maintain constancy and motivation”, explains the specialist. “When it is a very extreme change, the person ends up getting discouraged and going back to square one.”

For Vanessa, people realize they are going through this process when they experience feelings followed by failure due to unsuccessful attempts to change. This often causes an even greater withdrawal of plans and life projects.

HOW TO BREAK THE PATTERN OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCORDING EFFECT?

Considered a disorder by the psychologist, the psychological accordion effect (also called ESP) needs professional advice to be treated – however much it seems like something “normal” and which everyone goes through.

“The treatment must be done with psychotherapy, since the psychologist helps a lot in the process of making the person maintain constancy and find a motivation not to give up”, he clarifies.

Another important point is that people who suffer from ESP also maintain polarized thinking – known as the “all or nothing thinking”. Do you know the “8 or 80”? So it is. This is a cognitive distortion that ends up harming people, as they have greater difficulty observing their own victories.

“Either it goes to an extreme on the 0 side, or it goes to the extreme of the 100 side”, continues Vanessa. “For example, either she stops doing the exercise, or she goes and does it in a very perfect way, but it ends up lasting a short time. The ideal, within a psychological follow-up, is for the person to be able to plan and organize himself, so that the evolution is done in microsteps. The psychologist will work on the patient’s progress little by little.”

We live in a world very accustomed to immediacy and this, of course, has consequences. One of them is our willingness to see immediate results, without considering that a gradual and, above all, constant change has much more results and durability than extreme and perfectly executed changes.

It is important to consider that the perfect is hardly achievable, even more so when we think about everyday life and its unforeseen events – things get out of control and, many times, our plans change. Search changes that start small and are possible, within a modern routine, it is essential to break out of this cycle.

“That way, it becomes much easier for the person not to give up. Quite different from keeping her thinking about the possibility of having quick and far-fetched feats, such as changing her habit extremely quickly, which makes her end up giving up on the process”, she concludes.