We often hear that “bad” emotions cannot be suppressed, but they must be accepted and worked through. Can this be done without getting bogged down in endless reflection and regret? Educational psychologist Amy L. Iva believes the answer lies in practicing self-distancing.
In trying to acknowledge and work through emotional reactions to bad events, we often get stuck in a cycle of repetitive thoughts and only get worse. What is the best way to make sense of difficult circumstances so as not to dwell on resentment and bad memories? The answer has to do with the skill of self-distancing.
Why is self-distancing important?
When you play in your head the emotionally arousing details of how you were wronged, you react from a position of self-absorption. Self-distancing allows you to take a step back and look at yourself and the situation more objectively.
According to a study by Ethan F. Cross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, self-distancing helps you better understand your reactions, and reduces emotional pain and signs of stress.
Those who were able to self-distancing, after a few weeks or months, were much less worried about remembering an unpleasant event. They were also less likely to replay the same problem over and over again in their minds.
Through self-distancing, a bad event becomes a rewarding experience.
This helps to come to “adaptive self-reflection”: instead of diving into unpleasant memories, a person learns to reconstruct an unpleasant event, not in order to relive the pain, but in order to understand and let go. Through self-distancing, a bad event becomes a rewarding experience.
This practice has other benefits: aggressive thoughts and feelings become less, and skills of competent behavior in a conflict situation improve.
Self-distancing in practice
Imagine that two children had a fight. Let’s call them Tom and Jessica. Both feel offended, get angry and complain about each other to their parents: “he said…”, “and she did…”
This is a position of self-immersion: each one focuses only on their own feelings, not taking into account the feelings of the other. They are too angry to look at the situation from the outside.
If you give them a break from each other, and then ask them to look at the situation through the eyes of an outside observer, their attitude towards the situation will change.
A shift in perspective greatly affects perceptions and actions.
This approach may seem a bit artificial or too primitive. But numerous studies show that a shift in point of view greatly affects perception and action. Whether you are solving your own problems or teaching children how to work through problems, here are a few techniques that can help:
- Imagine an outside observer. Literally imagine a fly on the wall watching your situation. Or think about how your reasonable friend would react to this situation. A recent study found this to be a very effective method: when five-year-olds imagined Batman in difficult situations and asked themselves, «What would Batman do in this situation?» it helped them distance themselves from the problem and deal with it more effectively.
- Avoid the pronoun «I». When conducting internal dialogue, focus on third person pronouns: he, she, they. When study participants used their own names or third-person pronouns during internal dialogue, their feelings of threat and anxiety decreased, and the difficulties became surmountable.
- Write about it. Come up with a story that will help you abstract from the situation and explain the negative event. Study participants who practiced «emotional writing» were more effective at self-distancing compared to those who simply reflected on the situation or wrote on other, emotionally neutral topics. People who demonstrated a self-distancing attitude used fewer personal pronouns and words with negative emotional connotations in their notes. However, they were more likely to use explanatory words such as “because” and “why”.
- Focus on your future self. A new line of research in self-distancing is exploring how effective time-distancing can be. Ask yourself: “How will I feel about this in a week or ten years?”. Imagining time travel helps because it diverts attention from immediate circumstances. The realization that everything passes is soothing.
If you want to understand your feelings without drowning in them, these self-distancing strategies will help you in your personal and professional lives.