Psychological Distancing As A Tool

• It can help people cope with difficult events from their past.
• It can  help people deal with socially distressful situations.
• Useful because of our tendency to display high levels of wise reasoning when we give advice to others, but not when we decide how to act for ourselves.
• It reduces decisional biases and improves decision-making during times of information overload.

• Use self-distancing language:  refer to yourself in the second or third-person.
• Try to view the situation from an alternative viewpoint, that is different from your own.
• Try to visualize the perspective of  someone you admire, and then ask yourself what would they do in that situation.
• Try expressive writing: write about your thoughts and feelings when you’re trying to analyze an event that you’ve experienced.

• When you are giving a public talk, you assume that your nervousness is more apparent to others than is actually the case.
• You overestimate the amount of work that you contributed to a group project.
• You might believe that your colleagues all share your political beliefs and social values.
• You might remember yourself as having been the key player in a past event, despite the fact that you only played a relatively minor role in it.

It occurs primarily due to the fact that we tend to naturally examine and remember events primarily through our personal point of view.

Even when we realize that we should adjust our perspective to see things through other people’s eyes, we tend to anchor this new perspective to our own, and we often fail to adjust from our original viewpoint enough to properly assess how other people feel.

Research shows that small shifts in perspective can help people in controlling their emotions.

In an experiment, when people viewed themselves as "distanced" from a situation, they were less anxious than the group that viewed themselves as in the middle of the situation.

Self-distancing enables people to focus on the bigger picture rather than concentrating on immediate feelings. It improves the sense of emotional regulation, self-control, and general poise.

In a study, participants were asked to practice self-distancing when faced with various kinds of food - for example, fruit instead of candy. When participants asked, "What does David want?" instead of "What do I want?" they were more likely to choose the healthier option.

As losing resources is more likely to cause burnout than gaining resources is to mitigate it, dealing with the negative aspects is more beneficial than using positive “band-aid” fixes. You want to drive down uncertainty and inefficiency to ensure that you aren’t doing unnecessary tasks and minimize your emotional exhaustion. To do that:

1. Create a chart and place your major goal at its top, followed by layers of very specific subgoals needed to attain the major goal.
2. Find and fix the inefficiencies in your goal hierarchy.
3. Determine the attainability of each goal.

• Chronic fatigue
• Insomnia
• Impaired concentration/ forgetfulness
• Loss of appetite
• Anxiety
• Increased illness
• Physical symptoms
• Chest pain
• Shortness of breath
• Dizziness
• Gastrointestinal pain
• Depression
• Interpersonal problems.

The ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions. -Salovey and Mayer (1990)

It manifests itself in the kind of statements we make about ourselves, in relation to our emotional skills and success.

Qualities such as confidence, awareness and optimism, come under the umbrella of emotional intelligence. 

• Humorous information receives increased attention during the perception stage.
• Improved encoding. Our brain gives preferential treatment to humorous information when it comes to storing it in our memory.
• The use of humor serves as a distraction from negative emotions, such as anger or anxiety, that people might experience when processing certain information.
• Reading or viewing something humorous has a positive and energizing effect.
• Adding humor to the information that you are presenting can make it more interesting to others.

The use of positive, nonaggressive humor is associated with 

• improved learning outcomes, 
• a relaxed learning environment, 
• better student evaluations, 
• an increased motivation to learn, 
• improved information recall, 
• an increased degree of student satisfaction throughout the learning process.

The use of negative or aggressive humor, especially if aimed at particular students, will produce the opposite effect.

People who have high self-control aren’t missing out on enjoyment. Not being able to resist temptation and enjoying life are not the same things.

They tend to eat in a healthily way, exercise more, sleep better, drink less alcohol, smoke fewer cigarettes, achieve higher grades at university, have more peaceful relationships, and are more financially secure.

Research showed that self-control is ultimately limited by our biology. We can’t exercise effortful self-control indefinitely – the brain has to do regular maintenance to remain functional.

The available research on the topic mostly shows us that, when faced with a disaster, people tend to be more caring and more concerned about the ones around them. 

Different forms of selflessness are easily reachable by individuals during natural disasters.

While technology may enable us today to stay connected with our friends, families as well as to keep working, it does not bring us the key to solidarity. 

The issue emerges whenever there are long periods of time that require social distancing, as individuals are forced to stay away from their group of friends or families. In order to still remain socially active, one might want to consider becoming more involved in the local community's activities.

While real-time communication inside of a team might lead to solving faster some issues, it also has various disadvantages. 

For instance, having your colleagues come to ask you questions to which you feel pressured to answer on the spot leads to you being continuously interrupted, which results in being less productive and feeling stressed or even getting a burnout, as you try to do everything in proper time.

When the employees are provided with control as to when they are willing to communicate with their co-workers, there are many advantages that emerge. 

For instance, having the freedom to decide exactly how your working day should look like leads to more satisfied employees as well as to better communication within the team. Further benefits vary from feeling less stressed due to better planning to greater transparency and more efficient work.

When a psychological manipulator insists on violating your boundaries, and won’t take “no” for an answer, deploy consequence.

Effectively articulated, consequence gives pause to the manipulative individual, and compels her or him to shift from violation to respect.

Diplomatically but firmly. A well articulated “no” allows you to stand your ground while maintaining a workable relationship.