Regulating the impacts of negative emotional events has been a constant struggle for individuals because it exhausts their cognitive resources. However, changing their perceptions about distressing situations to change the intensity of their feelings can help lessen the effects of negative events, saving their energy from using excessive cognitive resources. Instead, they can focus their attention on more important things. One strategy under reframing is distanced self-talk – it’s ok to talk to yourself.
Distanced Self-talk
Humans value communication not only with other people but also with themselves. They engage in a constant internal dialogue or self-talk to manage their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Self-talk can be an adaptive coping strategy because it helps individuals understand and regulate what they are going through.
Distanced self-talk is the ability of individuals to reflect on their thoughts and feelings, covertly or overtly, using their own name or secondary and third-person singular pronouns. Examples of self-talk are “You can do it” or “How do you feel about it, Alex?” This introspection enhances self-regulation. Constant internal dialogue allows individuals to integrate positive and adaptive self-talk into their system, making it easier to manage their emotions when faced with another overwhelming situation.
Using distanced self-talk, they adopt a distanced observer approach. It allows individuals to think objectively about their irrational thoughts and reframe negative experiences to minimise the emotional impact of an overwhelming situation. It can also provide different perspectives about their problems and develop more creative solutions.
Emotional distance is different from emotional avoidance
Emotional distance is often associated with emotional avoidance, but self-distancing is unrelated to avoidance. Emotional distancing encourages individuals to explicitly reflect on their thoughts and feelings instead of avoiding the emotional aspects of the distressing experiences. On the other, individuals run away from their emotions in emotional avoidance, adding more negative consequences than reducing them.
Benefits of distanced self-talk
- Facilitates self-reflection that adaptively influences people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in both the short and the long term
- Leads to adaptive self-control
- Reduces emotional and physiological reactivity
- Focuses on other things instead of ruminating on what already happened or how they felt
- Promotes greater emotion regulation
- Provides greater engagement in constructive problem-solving behaviours
- Fosters optimistic appraisals of upcoming stressful events
- Promotes positive mindset
- Strengthens behaviour performance
Distanced self-talk is a useful tool in reflecting and understanding negative experiences. The distanced observer approach helps individuals see the bigger picture of their problems, giving clarity of the whole situation and helping create better coping strategies or solutions. It also equips individuals as they face future stressors or anxiety-provoking experiences. The optimistic appraisal of individuals helps them increase their beliefs in their personal resources, influencing how they cope and deal with environmental demands.
Use distanced self-talk
- Take a pause before distancing yourself from an overwhelming situation and understanding your feelings, thoughts, and reactions.
- Write your thoughts, feelings, or problems on a piece of paper to have a distanced view of them, providing a better and clearer understanding of the situation.
- Engage in regular self-talk to develop and enhance self-regulating abilities, making it easier to deal with distressing situations.
- Look at yourself in the mirror and say positive things about yourself to boost positive self-talk.
- Engage in discussions with other people to develop communication skills and extend positive communication to yourself.
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