Many of us have been in a situation where our emotions prevent us from responding appropriately and seeing the big picture. For example, in cases where we feel extreme anger, stress, anxiety, and sadness.
The best way to handle these emotionally charged situations is to step away to create psychological distance between you and the situation.

Creating Psychological Distance

Self Improvement

<ul>
<li>Time: We think differently about events that are far in the future, compared to activities in the near future. For events in the distant future, we use abstract terms that lack concrete action.</li>
<li>Space: We use abstract terms to describe events within a physically-near space than events that happen in a space further away.</li>
<li>Social distance: When we describe someone that is different to us, we use abstract qualities (them and us).</li>
<li>Hypothetically: We use abstract words and terms to describe events that may not happen compared to events that are more likely to happen.</li>
</ul>

Types of Psychological Distancing

Executive functioning is the set of abilities and behaviors that is controlled by the frontal lobe, including:
<ul>
<li>Goal-directed and planning behaviours, such as deciding how to get dressed.</li>
<li> Inhibiting responses such as waiting your turn.</li>
<li>Monitoring your behavior and correcting mistakes.</li>
<li> Changing your behavior in response to a change in the environment.</li>
</ul>
Executive functioning helps you to regulate your emotions better, which gives rise to psychological distancing.

Psychological Distancing and Executive Functioning

The executive functioning also allows us to perform the following processes important for psychological distancing.
<ul>
<li>Shifting: The ability to redirect our attention to another aspect of a problem, or from one item to another.</li>
<li>Response inhibition: The ability to restrain our emotional response.</li>
<li>Updating: The ability to &#39;update&#39; the information we are using after shifting our attention and inhibiting our initial response.</li>
</ul>
The act of psychological distancing is mostly atheoretical, meaning very little research describes how psychological distancing as a tool develops and functions in humans.

Psychological Distancing As A Tool

<ul>
<li>Self distancing allows us to gain perspective. By creating space, we can reframe the situation in more abstract terms. </li>
<li>In turn, it will enable us to respond appropriately. Our response is then not directed towards the exact event, but instead takes into account the greater context.</li>
<li>A bonus in creating psychological distancing that that we can now ignore some of the boundaries that were limiting our solutions and find a creative solution instead.</li>
</ul>

The Benefits of Self-Distancing

In an emotionally charged situation, for example, an argument, take a break for 15 minutes or physically leave the space, such as taking a walk.
By stepping out of the situation, you can disrupt the immediate intention and reframe the situation.

Take A Break To Gain Physical Distance

In an emotionally charged situation, try to imagine watching yourself from a distance. Ask yourself, &quot;what you would think of someone else&#39;s behavior is you saw them in the same situation?&quot;
By changing the focus to a third-person view, you can stop some of the immediate reactions and reconsider your behavior.

Watch Yourself from a Distance

When you find yourself in an emotionally charged situation or that your behavior is not helpful, such as procrastinating, imagine yourself in the future looking back and observing your current behavior.
This allows you to look at the current event and its consequences in a broader context. If you procrastinate now, you&#39;ll have more work later. By making a snide remark now, you may have a weakened relationship later. By spending your money now, you are unable to save it for a long-term goal.

Watch Yourself from the Future

Psychological distancing can help you gain space between yourself and your surroundings, allowing you to gain perspective, emotional, and cognitive control.

Have you ever felt so angry that you ‘can’t see straight’ ?

Many of us have been in a situation where our emotions prevent us from seeing the big picture and responding appropriately, for example:

<ul><li>We might feel swept away by our emotions, leading us to say or do hurtful things. </li><li>We might feel paralyzed by our feelings, and we’re unable to move past the emotion. </li><li>We might make bad decisions because we lose sight of the bigger picture. </li> </ul>

In these emotionally charged situations, the best thing to do is to increase the psychological distance between you and the event.

We often find ourselves in situations where we can’t see the bigger picture. For example, in cases where we feel extreme stress, anxiety, sadness, or anger, it can be challenging to grasp the consequences of this particular event. To help us, we can use the technique’ psychological distancing’.

The concept of psychological distancing is meant to describe our ability to “step back and without an immediate response, survey the environment, and reflect on the course of action instead of being dominated by immediate simulation” (pp. 337, Giesbrecht, Müller, &amp; Miller, 2010).

When reading the existing body of research about psychological distancing, there appear to be three main streams:

<ol><li>Psychological distancing can refer to the temporal distancing of events in time. For example, events in the distant future are treated differently compared to events in the near future (Trope &amp; Liberman, 2003) </li><li>Psychological distancing describes our ability to separate ourselves from people whom we dislike. Specifically, we create space between ourselves and someone else who we perceive as undesirable (Schimel et al., 2000) </li><li>Psychological distancing is rooted in developmental psychology and describes how children create space between their actions and their immediate environment (Giesbrecht et al., 2010). </li> </ol>

The first and the third streams are the roots of ‘psychological distancing’ referred to in this post. Together, they suggest the same thing, that is, increasing the distance between ourselves and something else so that we can change the view we approach and think about the current situation.

Therefore, psychological distancing is a psychological technique where we step away from a situation or position so that we can gain perspective .

Gaining perspective through psychological distancing can refer to various outcomes.

<ul><li>For example, perspective can refer to long-term aspects of planning. By gaining perspective, we are better able to define goals and meet deadlines. </li><li>Perspective can also refer to the weakened clutch of negative emotions. For example, your partner might do something that makes your blood boil. However, when you gain psychological distancing, you may realize that their behavior did not justify the intense emotional reaction that you felt. </li> </ul>

In summary, psychological distancing acts like a telescope: It allows us to zoom out from our narrow, magnified experience so that we can see events and experiences as part of a more extensive process.

Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak (2007) describe four types of psychological distancing: time, space, social distance, and hypotheticality (i.e., likelihood).

<ul><li>Time : We think about events that are far in the future differently compared to activities that will happen soon. For events in the distant future, we use more abstract terms (e.g., “Paying off my credit card” compared to near-future events (e.g., “Pay $100 towards my credit card each month” ). </li><li>Space : We use more abstract terms to describe events that occur within a physically-near space than events that happen in a space that is further away. </li><li>Social distance : When we describe someone dissimilar to us, then we use more abstract qualities and descriptors (i.e., increasing the distance between them and us) than when describing someone similar to us. </li><li>Hypotheticality : We use more abstract words and terms to describe events that are less likely to happen (i.e., events with a considerable distance) compared to events that are more likely to happen (i.e., events with a small distance). </li> </ul>

The Development of Psychological Distancing

With the above paragraph in mind, there is, however, some interesting information about how psychological distancing develops. The use of the term psychological distancing in developmental psychology literature might have been the precursor for the use of the term in clinical psychology (however, this is only a hypothesis).

Giesbrecht et al. (2010) provide a good summary of psychological distancing within developmental psychology. They posit that the roots of psychological distancing can be traced to key researchers and thinkers in the area of developmental psychology and learning (e.g., theorists such as Piaget and Vygotsky).

Various theories exist to explain the acquisition of psychological distancing. For example, there is some evidence that psychological distancing develops in children through language. Through speech, children can play in an imaginary world that did not exist before or currently. In this way, speech allows the child distance between the real world and the imaginary, hypothetical scenario.

Psychological distancing achieved through speech is not limited to only children (Sigel, 2002). Sigel (2002) makes a strong argument for how the use of language allows people of all ages to create a ‘distance’ between themselves (as they exist) and the topic of discussions.

Giesbrecht et al. (2010) argue that the three concepts of psychological distancing, executive functioning, and <a dir="ltr" href="https://positivepsychology.com/emotional-regulation-skills/">emotion regulation </a>are connected.

Their relationship is explained as follows:

<ul><li>Executive functioning allows for better regulation of our emotions. </li><li>Regulation of our emotions gives rise to psychological distancing. </li><li>Therefore, executive functioning also allows for psychological distancing. </li> </ul>

The term ‘executive functioning’ refers to a set of abilities and behaviors predominantly controlled by the frontal lobe, including (Snyder, Nussbaum, &amp; Robins, 2006):

<ul><li><a dir="ltr" href="https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-goal-setting/">Goal-directed and planning </a>behaviors (e.g., deciding how to get dressed) </li><li>Inhibiting responses (e.g., not getting distracted, or waiting your turn) </li><li>Monitoring your behavior and correcting mistakes (e.g., trying to tap a tune for example) </li><li>Changing your behavior in response to a change in the environment (e.g., changing your behavior when playing a game of ‘Simon Says’). </li> </ul>

Just like executive functioning is responsible for the cognitive processes described above, Giesbrecht et al. (2010) argue that the executive functioning also allows for us to perform the following processes that are important for psychological distancing:

<ul><li>Shifting : Specifically, the ability to rotate or divert our attention to another aspect of a problem, or to change our focus from one item to another, is very important for psychological distancing. </li><li>Response inhibition : The ability to restrain our initial emotional response to a particular situation helps us to create psychological distance. Additionally, by preventing ourselves from acting on our initial emotional response, we can respond differently. </li><li>Updating : This process refers to our ability to ‘update’ the information that we are using and focusing on during a particular situation. Specifically, after shifting our attention and inhibiting our initial response, we can reassess the available information in the current context and decide what remains important and what is no longer valuable. </li> </ul>

Psychological Distancing Theory in a Nutshell

It should be clear from the preceding sections that although there is some vague overlap between the different streams of psychological distancing, the act of psychological distancing is mostly atheoretical.

That is, very little research describes how psychological distancing – as a tool or technique – develops and functions in humans. Mainly because psychological distancing isn’t a process that evolved naturally, but rather it is a technique that we can use in response to a particular scenario.

The lack of theory is mostly a result of what we mean when we refer to ‘psychological distancing’. In positive psychology, psychological distancing is mainly used as a tool or technique in response to a particular situation.

Psychological distancing is not a psychological process that explains some aspect of human behavior, for example, it is not psychological process such as memory or perception. Instead, it is a tool that we use in specific situations for specific purposes.

As outlined above, psychological distancing allows us to create distance or space between us and something else, for example, another person, an event, or a source of intense emotion.

The benefits of self-distancing are that by creating space, we are also able to reframe the situation in more abstract terms. For example, during an argument, you might feel like your partner is angry at you for the task at hand, whereas when you create space, you might realize that your partner feels like you’re not listening to them when they complain about something.

Furthermore, by creating space and reconsidering events more abstractly, we’re also able to respond appropriately. For example, our response is not directed towards the exact event in question, but instead takes into account the greater context within which that event occurs.

A bonus of creating psychological distancing is that it also helps to develop creativity. By moving away from a more concrete problem to an abstract problem, we can ignore some of the parameters or boundaries that were limiting our solutions and find a creative solution instead.

Here are three real-life examples of psychological distancing frequently found in everyday life.

We’ve all been in a situation (or observed a similar situation) where we find ourselves in a heated debate or argument where the consequences of resorting to undesirable behavior or remarks can have serious consequences.

For example, when in an argument with your partner, you might feel the urge to attack your partner’s character (i.e., an ad hominem attack) rather than address the topic of the argument. By relying on this type of retort, you may win the argument – or at least end it – but the long-term consequences are that you might leave your partner feeling bitter and hurt.

At that pivotal point in the argument, just before you decide to skewer your partner, you could have made the better decision to step away and reflect on the bigger picture. Is the short-term 1-0 score worth the long-term hurt? Probably not.

We’ve all been there. The experience looks typically like this: You feel incredibly anxious about a task that is due the next day. You spend a lot of time pouring over all of the relevant material for the task – you consult books, websites, and write multiple drafts.

It looks like one of those evenings where you are going to stay up late so that you can submit the work on time. However, if you ‘walked away’ and took a moment to reassess you would realize that

<ol><li>actually, the deadline is for a draft and not a final product, </li><li>all of the extra work that you produced when you went down the Rabbit Hole of panic isn’t relevant anyway, and </li><li>you’ll produce better quality work after getting some rest. </li> </ol>

We’ve all experienced the situation of having too much work on our plate. For example, you might need to (1) complete your deadline (see Point 2), (2) go grocery shopping, (3) complete the second draft report, (4) arrange a visit to your GP, and… anything else… (5) Oh yes, your taxes! Each of these tasks is important on their own, but are they pressing tasks that need to be completed right now?

By putting psychological distance between yourself and work overload, you would see that four of the five tasks do not need immediate attention. You can schedule the GP for tomorrow, order your groceries online or go in a few days, your taxes are not due right now, and the second draft is not due today.

The more immediate task is Task 1, and the remaining four tasks can be scheduled for the future.

Finally, sometimes when trying to solve a problem, you’re just not able to converge on an appropriate solution. You’ve tried everything: Constructed multiple example scenarios, reworked the numbers, tried to move things around, but nothing helps. The problem cannot be solved.

In situations like these, the best decision is to step away and gain perspective. Either take a (physical temporal) break and return to the problem in a few hours or tomorrow with fresh eyes or create space by explaining the project to someone else (i.e., the <a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rubber Ducky method </a>).

By reframing the project where you explain the project and your thinking to someone else, you might uncover the solution or at least have your biases and blind spots challenged.

The first useful technique is to take a break and gain actual physical or temporal distance. For example, when in an emotionally charged situation (such as argument), recommend either taking a break for 15 minutes or leave the space and be alone, such as taking a walk.

By stepping out of the current situation, and disrupting the immediate intensity of the situation, you can reframe the situation.

When you feel overwhelmed with a multitude of tasks, use the <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eisenhower matrix technique </a>. In this technique, you create a 2 x 2 matrix. The columns include Urgent , Less Urgent, and the rows include Important and Less Important . Then assign each of the tasks that have to be completed to one of the cells within this matrix.

The Eisenhower technique helps us move away from immediate anxiety and stress, and gain perspective. Tasks listed in the Less Important – Less Urgent category do not deserve your concern right now, and instead, you can shift your attention to tasks in the Important-Urgent cell.

When you’re in an emotionally charged situation, try to imagine that you are watching yourself from a distance. By changing the focus of your perspective from an immediate ‘first person’ view to a ‘third person’ view, you can suspend some of the immediate emotional and psychological reactions that you might be experiencing.

It will also allow you to reconsider your behavior as you were observing someone else in your position: What would you think of someone else’s behavior if you saw them in the same situation?

This is one of the most useful techniques and is appropriate for multiple scenarios. When you find yourself in an emotionally charged situation or that your behavior is not helpful (e.g., when procrastinating), try to imagine yourself as Future-You who is looking back and observing your current-behavior.

By creating your temporal space, you’re less likely to focus on the immediate, concrete characteristics of the current situation and allow you to see this event and its consequences in a broader context. For example, by procrastinating now, you’ll have more work and stress later; by making that hurtful remark now, you might have a weakened relationship later.

On a side note, all of these techniques are also very useful for <a dir="ltr" href="https://positivepsychology.com/goal-setting-templates-worksheets/">goal-setting </a>. For example, imagine that you wanted to curb unnecessary financial expenditure.

Imagine that you were saving for a long-term goal (e.g., a holiday to the Maldives), and to meet this goal, you would need to save a set amount each month. Unfortunately, however, you have forfeited some of your savings for some other wants and desires, for example, new clothing and games.

Before making a purchase, pretend to be Future-You at the time of taking your holiday looking back at your expenditure: In this situation, how would you perceive your purchases? If you find yourself answering ‘unnecessary’, then it’s time to abandon the shopping cart.

At PositivePsychology.com, there are at least four tools that will help with <a dir="ltr" href="https://positivepsychology.com/growth-mindset-vs-fixed-mindset/">changing your mindset </a>and setting goals.

The first useful tool is to help ‘<a dir="ltr" href="https://pro.positivepsychology.com/tools/stop-holding-grudges/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Stop Holding Grudges </a>’. This tool aims to change mindsets, which is the same goal of psychological distancing. By changing the temporal perspective, through reflecting on the past or the future, the tool aims to bring happy and loving feelings to the foreground. The exercise is short (10 minutes) and can be implemented in a clinical setting, at work, or home.

In line with the previous tool, the exercise ‘<a dir="ltr" href="https://pro.positivepsychology.com/tools/when-hot-buttons-are-pushed/" rel="noopener noreferrer">When Hot Buttons are Pushed </a>’ is also highly recommended. In this exercise, clients learn how to <a dir="ltr" href="https://positivepsychology.com/emotion-regulation/">regulate their emotions </a>and not act impulsively on their emotional responses, including anger and fear. This exercise takes approximately 30 minutes and is well suited to group sessions or group exercises.

The next tool, ‘<a dir="ltr" href="https://pro.positivepsychology.com/tools/building-open-mindedness-in-relationships/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Building Open-Mindedness in Relationships </a>’ in the PositivePsychology.com toolkit, is also highly recommended. In this tool, clients learn how to change their mindset about their relationship and adopt a more open mindset. Changing mindsets overlaps with gaining psychological distance, and therefore should be beneficial. In total, this exercise should take only 10 minutes.

The final tool is the ‘<a dir="ltr" href="https://pro.positivepsychology.com/tools/building-self-efficacy-by-taking-small-steps/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Building Self-Efficacy by Taking Small Steps </a>’, which helps transform a very long-term goal (i.e., one with a lot of psychological distance) into a set of smaller, more immediate goals (i.e., one with less psychological distance). Unlike the advice in this post that focuses on increasing psychological distance, this tool decreases psychological distance.

Ever been told that ‘you are too emotional’ or ‘get over it’ ?

If you have to face the hard fact that your emotions are ruling you and potentially ruining your life, psychological distancing can be the answer.

Through psychological distancing, you can gain space between yourself and your immediate surroundings. Through this space, you will be able to gain perspective, emotional control, and cognitive control.

With the four types of psychological distancing that exist — spatial, temporal, social distancing, and hypothetically —  you can use the techniques that address one of these types and learn how to build distance, and gain back control of your life.

PositivePsychology.com also offers various helpful exercises that will also help clinicians and practitioners teach useful psychological distancing techniques to their patients.

Bite‑sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

What is Psychological Distancing? Four Helpful Techniques

Creating Psychological Distance

Types of Psychological Distancing

Psychological Distancing and Executive Functioning

Psychological Distancing As A Tool

The Benefits of Self-Distancing

Take A Break To Gain Physical Distance

Watch Yourself from a Distance

Watch Yourself from the Future

Self-Distancing: What It Is and How You Can Use It to Make Better Decisions

The Egocentric Bias: Why It's Hard to See Things from a Different Perspective

The ‘Batman Effect’: How having an alter ego empowers you

Bite‑sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

What is Psychological Distancing? Four Helpful Techniques

Creating Psychological Distance

Types of Psychological Distancing

Psychological Distancing and Executive Functioning

Psychological Distancing As A Tool

The Benefits of Self-Distancing

Take A Break To Gain Physical Distance

Watch Yourself from a Distance

Watch Yourself from the Future

Self-Distancing: What It Is and How You Can Use It to Make Better Decisions

The Egocentric Bias: Why It's Hard to See Things from a Different Perspective

The ‘Batman Effect’: How having an alter ego empowers you

Bite‑sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career