Add distance with your own name

Label from a step back: "Sam is feeling overwhelmed" instead of "I am overwhelmed."

Why it works

Referring to yourself by name or "you" creates psychological distance, so the emotion is observed rather than fully inhabited. That distance recruits more reflective processing and less reactive spiraling — the same self-control benefit labeling provides, amplified by perspective.

How to do it

1. Notice the strong feeling and the first-person story around it.
2. Re-state it in third person: "[Your name] is feeling ___ because ___."
3. From that vantage, ask what you’d say to this person right now.

Evidence

Self-distancing research (Ethan Kross and colleagues) finds that referring to oneself in the third person reduces emotional reactivity and improves self-control during stress, with some supporting neural and behavioral evidence. Moser and colleagues (2017) add converging ERP and fMRI evidence that third-person self-talk regulates emotion without extra cognitive-control effort, suggesting the shift is nearly effortless. (observational)

Helpful for in-the-moment intensity; it is a regulation tool, not a substitute for addressing the underlying problem.

Sources

• Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., Bremner, R., Moser, J., & Ayduk, O. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304-324.
• Moser, J. S., Dougherty, A., Mattson, W. I., Katz, B., Moran, T. P., Guevarra, D., Shablack, H., Ayduk, O., Jonides, J., Berman, M. G., & Kross, E. (2017). Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI. Scientific Reports, 7, 4519.

Common mistake

Using the distance to dismiss the feeling ("they’ll be fine") rather than to view it with calmer, kinder attention.