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Growth Spurt: Third Person Self-Talk · The Growth Project

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  You.
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  Hello everyone. Anthony. Libra here on the Growth Project with another episode of The Growth Spurt. Really? Today's episode is all about how we can incorporate a subtle language change to help us better reduce emotional intensity. It really consists of the small change that we can adopt in our heads, aka between our ears, to help reduce some of that emotional intensity and create some emotional distance for ourselves, especially when we're processing difficult things,
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  how we frame our thinking really does shape how emotionally involved we become.
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  And sometimes the fastest way to effectively regulate our emotions can't occur via regulating the situation. It has to occur in our own heads by regulating the way that we talk to ourselves. And the tool that we're getting at here is this idea of third person self-talk. Third person self-talk involves referring to yourself by name instead of referring to yourself as I, especially when you're talking with yourself during stressful moments.
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  And so a good example of this is I'm overwhelmed right now versus Anthony is overwhelmed right now. It's subtle, it's small, but it can have a really big impact in terms of how emotionally involved you are in terms of that overwhelmed feeling.
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  What it does is it creates a certain amount of psychological distance there and reduces the emotional weight of whatever you're going through in that moment.
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  And there is quite a bit of good science behind this coming out of the University of Michigan from Ethan Cross, where they looked at brain activity during emotional reflection, and they compared the two of first person self-talk. When I am overwhelmed versus that third person self-talk and Anthony or Anthony is overwhelmed. And what we found or what they found at the University of Michigan was the brain regions that are involved in emotional reactivity and emotional processing.
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  There was some reduced activity there when they incorporated that third person self-talk, or Anthony is overwhelmed, for example. Now, what this does is
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  reduces the emotional intensity. It allows you to create some cognitive distance between yourself and the emotion in that way, and especially when emotions spike, especially when you're before a deadline, after a mistake, you're really just ruminating or replaying the same thing over and over and over in your head.
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  Take a second to pause. Take a second. Take a breath if you have to, and name the emotion in the third person. Or Anthony is frustrated right now in comparison to I am sharing now that Anthony is frustrated right now allows you to then ask a neutral, processed focus type question of what does Anthony need to do next?
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  And I won't lie, it's probably going to feel pretty awkward at first. Talking to yourself in this third person, but a good way to think about this is how would I help a friend solve a problem? Versus how would I help myself solve a problem? And we we find ourselves really emotionally involved in our own problem solving and addressing times where we came short.
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  This simple, subtle language change can help to improve that processing, to improve that critical thinking, and again, create that necessary distance for you to approach the problem with a clear mind. And that voice in your head doesn't just necessarily stop when you're not at work or when you're not at home. The use case for this really is endless.
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  So you can think about this in the context of work and performance. You can think of the context in sports and relationships anywhere you're going to high encounter, high demands or high stress. So the next time your emotions really begin to ramp up, when you feel that build up, how can you step back and talk to yourself like a friend, as opposed to just talking to yourself like you normally would?
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  See what the differences can provide and try it on for size for yourself. Until next time. Thank you.