How to hack your happy – the magic tool that will change your life

This is the one, simple thing you need to know if you struggle with anxiety, doubt or shame

This is the one, simple thing you need to know if you struggle with anxiety, doubt or shame

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed by a negative emotion such as shame, regret, anger or anxiety? Do you have a way of healthily processing these feelings, or do you just let them sweep you away? This short post is about how and why you should learn to use this simple but powerful tool for emotion regulation – self-distancing. 

But first, why do we even need a tool for emotion regulation? Well, because we don't tend to do emotions all that well naturally. 

The problem with "why?"

When we've been struck by a strong negative emotion, in a vain attempt to take control, we tend to ask ourselves various versions of one simple question: why?

• Why am I feeling this way?

• Why is this happening to me?

• Why are they treating me like this?

• Why me? 

• Why? Why? Why?

We ask “why?” because we want answers. But when it comes to personal problems, “why?” can be remarkably bad at yielding accurate explanations or useful solutions. Instead, it tends to inspire a whole new string of “why?” questions that can lead us down the rabbit hole of anxious introspection. 

So, if our automatic defences aren't so hot, what can we do instead? 

Introducing self-distancing

In 2016, researchers Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk published their extensive research on the psychological and behavioural benefits of self-distancing.

“We hypothesized that people’s attempts to reflect adaptively on their negative feelings often fail because they focus on their experiences from a psychologically immersed perspective, which makes it difficult for people to reason objectively without getting caught up in the emotionally arousing details of what happened to them. Thus, we hypothesized that a mechanism was needed to allow people to “take a step back” from their experience so that they could work-through it more effectively. We called this process self-distancing.”

They argued that our frequent failure to reflect adaptively on negative emotions was due to the tendency to explore difficult experiences from a psychologically immersed perspective – that is, from the inside out, as if we're inside the experience, living the same story. When we do this, it's all too easy to get caught up in the negative emotions we have about the challenge.

To avoid this, they suggested, we would need to learn how to step back from our experiences so we could work through them more effectively. This, they called self-distancing. 

Whether we do it in writing, through self-talk, in conversation, or using mental imagery, self-distancing enables us to avoid the temptation to lose ourselves in the “why?”, and instead to examine the “what?”, "where?" and “how, exactly?” in a more objective way. And, in doing so, it teaches us to see ourselves in a similar way to how we might connect with a struggling friend. It’s this extra space that enables the healing because it encourages self-empathy — the otherwise elusive compassionate perspective on our own behaviours, decisions and reactions.

Self-immersed vs. self-distanced writing

People who self-distance when they write about their challenges automatically focus less on recounting distressing experiences and more on reconstruing them in a way that provides insight and closure

You can think of the difference like this:

Self-immersed – to relive the experience
Self-distanced – to reconstruct or reconstrue

Writing from a self-immersed position is to relive the event, and feel everything the same way all over again.To write from a self-distanced position is to create space for objective appraisal. We may imagine that we can view a past event as if we were a fly on the wall, as I asked you to do in the previous post, or we could use any number of the other tools that I'll be sharing later, all of which enable us to re-write the story, rather than relive it. 

Why is self-distancing so important?

But it's cathartic to relive our experiences, I hear you cry, and we need to feel our feelings. Yes, we do, you're right. Self-distancing doesn't stop us from feeling (frankly, it's not that powerful, which is a good thing). 

But… the idea of cathartically releasing emotions through the act of reliving the pain is a little out-of-date, and probably not all that helpful. Discoveries from the world of neuroscience suggest that reliving painful experiences in an immersive way can actually compound negative emotions – that is, make them worse, stronger. Rather than bringing about a cathartic release, as was believed in the past, rehashing old pain may stack new layers of negative emotion over the original imprint, making the memory feel worse and its effects more damaging. Self-distancing offers a solution to that problem. 

The benefits of self-distancing

A wealth of studies on this tool show it to improve a whole bunch of behavioural, psychological and physiological symptoms, including:

• Significant reductions in anxiety, resentment, guilt or shame in the short-term after writing. And, in the long-term, these positive effects appear to increase rather than decrease. 

• Decreased aggressiveness after provocation;

• Participants adopting a self-distanced perspective when addressing traumatic events have been shown to display less cardiovascular reactivity during the process than those who self-immerse, as well as a faster return to their blood pressure baseline afterwards. 

These studies could suggest that self-distancing facilitates physiological recovery from stress as well as management of difficult emotions in the now.

All that said, data on the efficacy of self-distancing from trauma memories is mixed.

Other research has shown that PTSD symptoms are associated with an increased tendency to spontaneously adopt a distanced perspective when recalling a trauma memory, and that this predicts the development of PTSD. So the jury's out, basically. And if you have trauma you'd like to process through expressive writing or otherwise, please do so under the guidance of a therapist or doctor.

The parallel universe – a protocol for practising your self-distancing skills

Assuming you feel comfortable to continue, I'd like to share with you a rather magical way to try this out.

Close your eyes for a moment and take a deep breath, because I'd like you to imagine that, at this very moment, a parallel universe splits off from this one, and that you can see it. 

The version of you in the other reality is identical in every way – they have all the same memories, thoughts, feelings and experiences as you…. except for one thing, and that's that they don't know about the split, about this reality – and about you. They're just carrying on as usual.

So, take a moment to imagine this other you going about their day as if you're watching a movie of your parallel life. 

Imagine your distant self in situations that challenge them in some way, where they feel anxious, or vulnerable, where they question their ability or self-worth, as we all do from time to time. 

But then also imagine them in situations that bring them alive. Imagine them connecting with things or people that they truly value, doing the things that excite them, and also the things that just happen in a normal day.

As you observe this other you, I'd like you to see if you can tap into a feeling of compassion – that wise and kind way of looking at another human being that we all know how to do when we don't feel so involved. Take a moment with that – you can pause raeding, if you like – and then, when you're ready, I'd like you to consider this question: 

If there were one thing you wish you could tell that version of you – one compassionate message that, if you were to convey it, would make the biggest difference to their life, what would it be?

When you have it, write that message down as if you're writing to this other version of yourself so you can read it for yourself later. And, if you feel comfortable sharing, I'd love to hear your messages in the comments, too.

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Thank you for reading!

We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.

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