You know what appears to make distance between thoughts and reactions, but isn’t so damn “brain expensive”? Talking about yourself in the third person. In chapter four of Chatter, Kross talks about his research into what happens when people are coached to talk about themselves in the third person when reflecting on states of anxiety, uncertainty, and fear. He calls this “distanced self-talk”. The research they did showed that people that used this third person distanced self-talk experienced lower levels of distress when in anxious situations, ruminated less about anxious experiences, and were better able to objectively define the true level of threat in those experiences.

Pretty cool, and likely useful in our context, right?

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