Regulate Your Emotions with Distanced Self-Talk

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Want to experience less overwhelm and more understanding for your emotions? Talk to yourself like a fierce friend would. 

Self-compassion, according to Scripture, is the foundation of our ability to love others like ourselves. But the reverse can also be true. We can channel the love of others to learn to be kind to ourselves. How do we do this? Allow us to share with you the evidence-based practice of “distanced self-talk.” 

Distanced self-talk is a practice in which you address yourself as you would another person, silently swapping “I” for your own name and second- or third-person pronouns when you reflect on something stressful (for example, “Luke is worried” instead of “I am worried”). This creates a healthy “psychological distance” from your first-hand experience of an emotion, so that you can respond as a second-hand (kinder, wiser) observer would. In his TED Talk, psychologist Ethan Kross describes how the practice can serve as a helpful remedy to Solomon’s Paradox—the phenomenon of giving great advice to other people but stumbling mightily to take our own! What's more, according to twenty years of research from Kross’s Emotion and Self-Control Lab at the University of Michigan, distanced self-talk can help in a variety of situations such as regulating your emotions and boosting your problem-solving. It can also help reduce anxiety, improve performance, and lead to greater overall well-being.  

When you might use distanced self-talk:

• Before a hard conversation or decision, to think it through with a clearer head 
• In the middle of a spiral, when you notice you're stuck in the same feeling
• Right after a conflict or a hurtful moment, before you respond 
• Before preaching, counseling, or showing up for someone else while carrying your own stress
• Anytime you catch yourself telling the same “I” story over and over without it going anywhere 

Brain imaging research shows this shift gives people the benefits of psychological distance almost automatically, without the effort of consciously forcing yourself to calm down. This isn't just an anxiety tool: studies have tested it across worry, anger, sadness, shame, and grief, and across a wide range of intensity, from a minor irritation to a genuinely painful loss. It is not about suppressing feelings. It works by helping you access the same clear, compassionate perspective you would naturally offer a friend, instead of the harsher one most of us default to when we are the one struggling. Emotions like anger and anxiety aren't malfunctions. They evolved to do a job, usually to alert you that something needs attention. The goal was never to talk yourself out of feeling them. It's to keep them from taking the wheel before you've had a chance to think, according to Kross.

In a world that feels more divided every day, it’s important to remember that the purpose of self-compassion isn't just our own personal well-being. It’s about building up a muscle that can be aimed both inward and outward. In other words, self-compassion helps right-size our relationship to the world and compels us to right action in our small slice of it, because we are not ensnared in shame or overwhelm. At the end of his own walk toward the cross, Jesus addressed his disciples as friends in a farewell address, pleading with them to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Jesus modeled for us how to be a fierce friend to others—by tapping into the fierce agape love God has for us. 

'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them — Matthew 22: 37-40 (MSG)

Learn More About Distanced Self-Talk