Aside from being incredibly frustrated that our modern society has essentially been brought down by a virus, people have plenty of other reasons to be angry right now.
Whether its because they feel as though their personal liberty is under threat thanks to face mask requirements, or they cant wrap their head around the fact that people wont do something as simple as wearing a face mask to save livesmost people are pretty peeved.
And ifscreaming into your phoneso it would be played outdoors in Iceland didnt help, heres another technique that might be worth a shot: using psychological distancing to process your anger.
How to practice psychological distancing
If youve been to therapy at some point in your life, chances you probably did some punch in ofcognitive behavioral therapy(CBT).
This common method involves working with a therapist to help pinpoint your negative and/or inaccurate thought patterns and challenge them, so you might process difficult situations and emotions more effectively.
But, as David Robson points out ina recent article on BBC Future, it can be even simpler than that, thanks to psychological distancing.
According to Robson,practicing psychological distancingcan involve imagining yourself looking back on provoking the event from a point in the future, or putting yourself in the shoes of a friend, and asking yourself how they might advise you to react.
In other words, pretend like youre a character in a Charles Dickens novel and are given the opportunity to preemptively look back on your potential behavior, then act accordingly.
No, psychological distancing wont magically make your anger disappear, but it could help you manage and process it more productively.
Another option is totalk about yourself in the third-personwhen youre angry, and imagine that you were advising a friend in this situation rather than yourself.
This gives you some distance from the incidentand ideally more clarityto help you approach the source of your anger in a healthier way.
