Both emotions are necessary, and sadness is as valid a part of life as Joy. Now there is a case for not only accepting sadness but embodying her, too. Researchers from Hong Kong and Texas recently found that individuals asked to think of their sadness as a person reported feeling less sad afterwards, a result they attributed to the increased distance perceived between the self and the emotion.
Study participants were asked to imagine sadness's personality, appearance, conversational style and how they might interact with them. In doing so, the idea was they would make it separate and less relevant to them. "The underlying mechanics of it is detachment - when they think about sadness as a person, it's like they are endowing independence to the emotion. They feel detached from it, and that's why they would feel less sad afterwards," says Li Yang, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and corresponding author of the paper, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, reports guardian.com.
Sadness is well established by research as leading people to focus on short-term and often indulgent rewards. By picturing their sadness with human traits and characteristics, study participants ameliorated its effect and were then more likely to display self-control. Such anthropomorphic thinking was even shown to be an effective advance strategy, preparing consumers to choose a healthier (or more practical) option. Even a simple change in language can help change your perspective.
In a study published in the journal Nature, it is found that switching your self-talk from first person to third person may be helpful in managing emotions during stressful times. The example they gave was a man upset about being dumped: he was found to be less emotionally reactive when he reflected on his feelings in the third person ("Why is John upset?") than when he addressed himself directly ("Why am I upset?")
Talking about yourself to yourself as you would a friend is a common recommendation of therapists to highlight how hard we can be on ourselves, often without even realising it. But the science of self-distancing is more involved than our simply being kinder about others than we are about ourselves.
A simple switch in pronouns manipulates the mind into creating psychological distance, allowing us to bypass some of those counterproductive mechanisms and to reason more objectively and perhaps come to terms with our emotions. The strength of the strategy lies in its relative simplicity, especially compared with visualising yourself from a distance.
