Everyone else gets to share and show their worry.
You absorb it from every direction. The board. The leadership team. The people watching your face in the all-hands. And you’re expected to give nothing back but steadiness. Your board wants conviction. Your leadership team reads your tone before they read the numbers. Your people decide how anxious to be based on how you walked into the room. The pressure doesn’t just come from the situation. It comes from having to manage your own response to it without an audience, without much space, and largely without acknowledgement that you’re doing it at all.
And the situation right now is considerable. The political ground keeps shifting. Trade relationships that seemed settled are being renegotiated overnight. Economic forecasts change week to week. Decisions made in rooms you have no access to are landing on your desk as problems to solve.
This is the context most CEOs are operating in right now. And it’s exactly where Psychological Flexibility matters most.
What it Actually Is
Psychological flexibility is the capacity to remain present and engaged with what’s actually happening, including the difficult, uncertain, uncomfortable parts, while still choosing actions that reflect what matters to you and your organisation.
It’s not resilience-as-performance. It’s not “stay positive” or “project confidence and the team will follow” as a way of bypassing legitimate concern. It’s something more honest: the ability to function well in the presence of discomfort, rather than only after it passes. Or “when I’m in a better headspace.”
When flexibility is low, that pressure tends to leak anyway. Into short responses. Overcorrection. Decisions made from a need to feel in control rather than from clear thinking.
On Fusion And Defusion, Because This Is Where It Gets Practical
One of the core concepts here is cognitive fusion, getting so entangled with a thought that it feels like fact. When you’re fused, “we’re not going to get through this” or “I’m making the wrong calls” doesn’t register as a thought. It registers as reality. And you respond accordingly, doubling down, pulling back, or going through the motions while something tightens underneath. Thoughts are not facts.
Defusion is the practice of stepping back from that entanglement. Not arguing with the thought. Not forcing confidence over the top of it. Just noticing it:
From: “I’m making the wrong calls and the business is going to suffer for it.” To: “I’m noticing the thought that I’m making the wrong calls and the business is going to suffer for it.”
That shift sounds small. It isn’t. The gap between having a thought and being consumed by it is where clear judgement lives. You can carry genuine uncertainty about the road ahead and still lead with intention. You can feel the weight of what’s on you and still choose how you show up to the people who need you present. These two experiences can coexist.
The worry is real. It doesn’t have to be the one making decisions.
Experiential Avoidance, And Why It Costs You
Research consistently shows that trying to suppress, escape, or control internal experiences, pushing the doubt down, projecting confidence you don’t feel, filling the diary so there’s no space to sit with it, tends to increase distress over time, not reduce it. This can also lead to unhealthy coping skills such as alcohol, drugs, bad diet, working even longer hours. This is called experiential avoidance, and it’s particularly common at the top, where admitting uncertainty can feel like a liability.
But the cost accumulates. Energy spent maintaining the performance of certainty is energy not available for strategic thinking, genuine connection with your leadership team, or the kind of clear-eyed decision making your role actually demands.
Flexibility doesn’t ask you to feel fine about what’s uncertain. It asks you to stop spending so much resource fighting the fact that you don’t, so that something more useful can happen instead.
What This Looks Like In Practice
Rigid responses under pressure tend to show up as shorter feedback loops, less tolerance for challenge from direct reports, decisions made to relieve internal discomfort rather than serve the business, or a brittle composure that the people closest to you can already read.
Flexible responses look quieter and often more powerful. Saying to your leadership team, “I don’t have full certainty on this, and here’s how I’m thinking about it” rather than projecting a confidence that creates distance. Making a considered call rather than a reactive one. Staying genuinely curious in a conversation rather than managing its outcome.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You do need to be actually present for the questions.
This Is A Skill, Not A Trait
Psychological flexibility is not a personality type or a leadership style you either have or don’t. It’s built through small, repeated practices, noticing when you’re fused with a thought, naming what you’re actually feeling rather than managing around it, choosing a values-guided response rather than a pressure-driven one.
The patterns that make this hard at CEO level, self-protection, reputation management, the habit of being the one who holds it together, are usually learned, not chosen. They often served you well on the way up. A flexible approach doesn’t ask you to abandon them. It just offers a broader repertoire when they stop being enough.
A Practical Challenge
Notice a moment this week when you feel internal resistance, the quiet doubt before a board presentation, the frustration after a difficult conversation, the low-grade anxiety that follows you into the next meeting.
Silently acknowledge it: “I’m noticing the thought that…” or “I’m carrying some…”
Then ask: “If I were leading from my values right now rather than from this feeling, what would the next clear step look like?”
You don’t have to resolve the uncertainty. You just have to make the next good decision.
Margie Ireland | Leadership Psychologist (MAPS) (COPS)
If you are a senior executive experiencing these challenges, I offer a confidential assessment that helps get underneath what might be going on, so we can determine the best next steps together. Sometimes the most strategic decision you can make is getting the right support for yourself. Email me directly margie@margieireland.com.
This is one of the frameworks I draw on most when working with CEOs and senior leaders, people carrying significant pressure with very few places to put it. If it resonates, I’d welcome a conversation.
