MINDFUL PERSPECTIVE-TAKING & THE DISTANCING SKILL

In the prior two modules, we introduced the mindful attention skills of observing and allowing, which are intended to help cultivate focused, flexible, and sustained attention on all parts of our emotional experience—the thoughts, emotions, and motivational pulls of reward and safety that are present in any given moment. The mindful attention skills are foundational to achieving effective mindful regulation. For this reason, even as we introduce new and different skills, it is important to keep growing the mindful attention “muscles” we have been developing!

Now, we will introduce the next set of mindful regulation skills, further building upon the mindful attention skills we’ve learned so far.  We call them the mindful perspective-taking skills—designed to help us relate to the thoughts that arise in our minds in a new way.

We think of allowing as an action, rather than as an attitude or an intention. When we engage in allowing, we are sustaining our attention on what’s here now…even if it is intense and unpleasant. Allowing helps us remain in contact with ALL aspects of our emotional experience, even when they signal strong motivations that might feel conflicting, or cloudy or confusing.

MINDFUL PERSPECTIVE-TAKING

The mindful perspective taking skills invite us to imagine, visualize, and talk to ourselves about the experiences that unfold in our lives. In this way, these skills are more “elaborative”—which essentially means that they require a little more mental effort and involve using images and words to help us relate better to our emotional experience and life situations.

Reactive responses like worry, rumination, and self-criticism are also forms of this elaborative, mental activity and may provide a sense of temporary control and predictability over our intense emotions. It’s why they often become our “go to” way of responding when difficult feelings arise. However, as we’ve discussed, in the long run, worry, rumination and self-criticism can 1) produce and worsen our distress, 2) cloud the motivational information provided to us by our emotions, and 3) become obstacles to gaining clarity for action.

The perspective taking skills in iERT provide an alternative to the unhelpful forms of mental elaboration that pop up in our minds, in the later stages of the unfolding of emotion—when that snowball is rolling fast down the hill. In combination with the mindful attention skills, which can help us detect emotions and underlying motivational pulls when the snowball is closer to the top of the hill, the mindful perspective taking skills give us a way to find healthy mental distance from and gain perspective on our emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Use of these skills can reduce our chances of responding in our patterned reactive ways and increase the likelihood of attaining emotional clarity and taking effective action.

DISTANCING

Just as Allowing follows Observing, the first perspective taking skill, Distancing, builds upon these two mindful attention skills. Oftentimes, when we’re in emotional distress, we struggle to gain distance from our emotions and motivations. Instead of having our emotions, it can feel like our emotions have us! One goal of this first mindful perspective taking skill, distancing, is to notice that we are not defined by our emotions and motivational pulls—they are a part of us. 

Distancing reflects our ability to observe things that come up in our minds (e.g., thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.) from a healthy distance, with greater awareness and perspective-taking to recognize that our thoughts, feelings, and motivational pulls are subjective and temporary, instead of permanent aspects of ourselves. Further, distancing reflects our ability to “see the big picture”—that one aspect of a situation is not the whole situation, that there may be more instruments playing in the orchestra besides that tuba! Being able to see the “big picture” in challenging moments allows us to focus on what is most meaningful at that time, as opposed to the distress of the moment.

We can use distancing in two ways: distancing IN TIME and distancing IN SPACE.

Gaining distance in time refers to the ability to see aspects of our emotional experience as a moment in time, like a passing storm.

Gaining distance in space refers to the capacity to observe the parts of our emotional experience from a “healthy distance”—where we can see that they are a part of us but that we are more than these experiences.

The distancing practice is designed to help you gain perspective in both time and space. You are encouraged to visualize an ancient redwood tree and then, as best as you can, become this tree to provide a stable base from which you can gain perspective. In the practice you will also be asked to “physicalize” aspects of your emotional experience—powerful emotions, motivational pulls, upsetting worrisome or ruminative thoughts, physical sensations, and self-criticisms—and imagine “placing” them out on the tree’s branches. Treating these aspects of your inner world as objects in the physical world, from which you can find an observer’s distance that is not “too close” and not “too far.” You are invited to gain a wider perspective on the emotional storms and crises of your life as one moment in time…in one place, where you are.  

As you gain familiarity with this practice—visualizing yourself from the trunk of this tree and the products of your minds as objects on your branches—you will see how it helps you become better able to sustain your attention upon your emotional experience and see that you are not defined by your emotions. We hope this practice will help you see that emotions make up one part of you and your experience, thereby making it easier for you to break patterns of reactive responding. 

IN-THE-MOMENT DISTANCING

There are many ways to practice in-the-moment distancing.

One way is “invoking the tree”—that is, reminding yourself to harness the stillness and rootedness you felt when you became the tree in your mind’s eye, during the longer, guided distancing skills practice. To gain distance in space, you might try “placing” emotions and motivational pulls on these branches and imagine self-critical, ruminative, and worried thoughts outside the tree speaking to these branches. The goal is to see more clearly the separation of your motivations from your reactive responses. To gain distance in time, you might also try to see how thoughts, feelings, and emotional crises are like passing storms in the forest. It may feel hard to use the in-the-moment skills at first but will get easier with time, and as you also practice with the formal recordings too.  

Another distancing skill we call “traveling in the car,” which helps you imagine aspects of your emotional experiences and take them on a car ride: your motivational pulls in the front seat of the car with you and your reactive responses—like the “worrier” or “criticizer”—in the back! Taking a moment to ask yourself if you are driving the car or if one of your motivational pulls is behind the wheel. Or seeing how reactive responses are serving as backseat drivers dictating commands.

You could also try, “throwing it against the wall,” by making the gesture of grabbing the jumble of thoughts and feelings you are having in your mind and throwing them against the wall like splattered paint. This imaginal act of decluttering your mind might help you gain some physical distance from thoughts and emotion and spread them out to help you observe them all at once.

Lastly, you could try “bringing it with you” by placing aspects of your emotional experience on your key ring, or as items on your person (like a piece of jewelry) or in your bag or wallet. For example, someone working as a makeup artist might choose to assign different colors in a makeup palette to their emotions, motivational pulls, and thoughts—this could help this person “observe” their emotional experience without letting it get in the way at work.

IN-THE-MOMENT SKILL REVIEW (OBSERVING + ALLOWING + DISTANCING)

You’ve now learned both mindful attention skills including Observing and Allowing as well as the first mindful perspective taking skill, Distancing. In this particular order, we encourage you to use as many skills as you need to gain clarity for action:

MINDFUL ATTENTION

STEP 1 OBSERVE (i.e., BREATHE AND NOTICE): To implement the observing skill, we breathe and notice our bodily sensations, sights and sounds near - and far - and then bring attention back to our breath.

STEP 2 ALLOW (i.e., PAUSE): Should observing not be sufficient, or if we find it difficult to remain in contact with a distressing experience, allowing can help us to face pain rather than trying to fight it. To implement the allowing skill, we can say the word “pause” or “allow.”

MINDFUL PERSPECTIVE TAKING

STEP 3 DISTANCE (i.e., GAIN PERSPECTIVE): The next step involves gaining distance in time and space. As we’ve discussed during this module, this could include “invoking the tree,” “traveling in the car,” or “bringing it with you metaphor” - or use your own metaphor!

 STEP 4 TAKE ACTION (i.e., RESPOND COUNTERACTIVELY): The iERT in-the-moment skills are meant to help us gain emotional clarity and make the best decision about action (i.e., respond counteractively). From a perspective where you can clearly hear the motivational messages, you can decide which action you want to take.