From the Mental Elf - "Psychological decentering: seeing the bigger picture"

Interesting Results re "Distancing" technique from Marc Bennett in Mental Elf last accessed 21-12-20

Link to full blog

From Blog - 

"Characterising distancing"

"Power and LaBar offered a framework that describes distancing. The central idea is that the psychological content of difficult thoughts and memories is housed in one’s mind. This could be, for example, a mental image of being embarrassed in a social context. This content can become closely associated with the mental image one has of their self. Distancing works by separating between these two mental images and this can be achieved in four ways:

• Distance could be introduced spatially. This is done by imagining that the difficult mental content is far away (“imagine the embarrassing scene but from a distance “).
• Distance could be introduced temporally. This is done by imagining that the difficult mental content is in the past or future (“imagine the embarrassing scene but as if 20 years have passed”).
• Distance could be introduced objectively. This is done by imagining the event from the point of view of a neutral person (“imagine the embarrassing scene but as if you are that really relaxed person that you admire”).
• Distance could be introduced hypothetically. This is done by imagining the event from the point of view of a neutral person (“imagine the embarrassing scene but accept that your mental representation may not be very precise”).

It was reasoned that generating these new perspectives creates opportunities for alternative, more adaptive emotional reactions."