In your heart, like two pythons, keep opening their blood basins to you. Every step you take, you need to overcome the psychological shadow they cast on you.
Of course, it is not only the rumination of thinking, but also the consequences of self-immersion. There are many more.
The most direct way is to directly bring negative emotional feelings (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008; Smith & Alloy, 2009), and let yourself fall into the emotional quagmire.
Furthermore, it is easy to cause some negative impulsive behaviors, such as irritability, emotional loss of control, and aggressive behavior (Mischkowski D et al., 2012).
Also, self-immersion can easily lead to avoidance strategies: When I encounter a failure, I am reluctant to face a similar situation because I am worried that it will arouse my negative feelings. As a result, we are firmly trapped in a small circle, and it is difficult to make an inch.
In addition, it has a certain relationship with depression. Many studies have found that one of the characteristics of depression is that it is easier to be immersed in negative feelings and experiences, it is difficult to jump out, and it is difficult to divert attention to new things in the outside world, which leads to long-term indulging in negative emotions.
If you are an introvert and sensitive person like me, then the influence of this self-immersion will be stronger.
Why? Because if you are an introvert and sensitive person, it often means that your emotional empathy will be stronger. This means that in your brain, parts of the social-emotional area (such as the anterior insula, amygdala, and anterior cingulate gyrus) will be more active (Cox et al., 2012).
Therefore, when you encounter a situation, it will always be easier to evoke your emotional response.
This is a big weakness of introverted sensitive people: It is impossible for a person to never make mistakes, everything is perfect, but for these people, all the failures and setbacks they have experienced will become their own lives. burden. They always come out to entangle you when you need to act or face choices, making you unable to load.
Of course, not only introverted sensitive people, but other people are the same: if you want to act, you must expend more cognitive resources to eliminate, appease, and inhibit this “selfI am immersed” to overcome this unnecessary internal friction.
It’s not that we are unwilling to act, let alone “lazy”, but that we have to overcome too much resistance every time we act, which makes us exhausted, just want to avoid, just want to leave.
So, this is also an important factor in our “lack of action.”
So, how to solve this problem, from “self-immersion” to “self-extraction”?
This requires consideration of a basic theory called “psychological distance”.
What is psychological distance? Simply put, it is the cognitive distance between “I” and “the object of my thinking.” The closer we are, the more we tend to think in the first person (that is, self-immersion); the farther we are, the more we tend to think in the third person (that is, self-extraction).
A simple example: There are also two embarrassing things. One happened in your elementary school and the other happened in your university. Which one will make you more embarrassed and less willing to remember?
Of course it is the latter. Because when you recall the former, you will feel that there is almost no relationship between that person and who you are now. Although he is still you, he is no longer the “you”. Therefore, you can call the “self-extraction perspective” and look at it from the perspective of the beholder.
This is the time factor among the four major factors affecting psychological distance: we always give closer psychological distance to things that are closer in time. vice versa.
But here is a very important question: the time here is not essentially time in reality, but psychological time.
What do you mean? The brain cannot store “real time”. In the brain, there is no such feeling as “A happened one year ago in B”-The brain stores time by “coding a series of events in sequence”.
In short: When a lot of new things happen between the two states and the brain stores a lot of new information, it tends to think that the “time” between the two is relatively distant; on the contrary, Even if the two are separated for a long time, they “appear” very close to the brain.
So, why do we feel that time passes so fast when we grow up, much faster than when we were young? that’s because: After adulthood, we gradually become familiar with the world. Many things will not surprise us. As a result, for the brain, there will be fewer “events” worth storing, and our subjective feelings The time has been quickened.
Similarly, why do some of the bad experiences that some friends suffered in their childhood native families have far-reaching effects? To a large extent it lies in the fact that after adulthood, because of the existence of this kind of trauma, it is easy for us to get into “self-immersion” and be forced to adopt avoidance strategies. It has been difficult to face the past and step out. ,restart.
To give a simple example: Our life is like many bottles, representing different aspects of our life: health, values, intimacy, ideals…every time we get a little bit of growth, we put in the bottle A small stone. The more stones, the more our growth and experience in this area.
But due to childhood trauma, one of the bottles cracked, causing a crack. So, in order to prevent it from breaking, we dared not put any more stones in it, but kept it quietly in its original shape.
What will this lead to? As far as the brain is concerned, you have not really grown up in this aspect, and you are still the child who lived in the past.
But what I want to tell you is: this is not your fault. In fact, it is meaningless to pay attention to “whose fault is this”-the rift does not really exist, it only exists in your heart, in your construction.
Try to change your perspective, let yourself focus on the current life, focus on the future, accept and reconcile with the past self, and tell the past child:
Thank you for your company, but I have grown up and it is time to leave you.
Of course, is “self-extraction” necessarily better than “self-immersion”? Actually it is not.
For example: When you recall a positive situation – for example, you have been praised and recognized, and the results you have made are affirmed… At this time, is it still suitable to adopt “self-extraction”? Not suitable anymore.
Research found that when people adopt a self-extracting perspective, the negative and positive emotions they feel will become shorter (Verduyn et al., 2012; Park et al., 2014). At this time, if you use a self-immersion perspective, counterIt will bring a more lasting positive emotional experience.
Similarly, when we imagine the future, it is better to take self-immersion than self-extraction.
Why? Because the self-extraction perspective will distinguish the “future me” from the “present me”, it will lead to less motivation and make us more reluctant to work hard for the future-in psychology, it is called “Time Discount”.
Therefore, when you imagine yourself in the future, using a first-person perspective, imagining the life state you want, and being immersed in that kind of expectation and description will strengthen our inner motivation more effectively.
Therefore, we can come to a simple conclusion:
When facing the negative and the past, it is more suitable for self-extraction;
When facing the front and the future, it is more suitable for self-immersion.
But, of course, self-immersion is a more common choice, and self-extraction is a skill that requires practice. Therefore, I mainly want to share with you: how to consciously perform “self-extraction”.
The following tips can help you.
1. FESU model
In a previous article, I proposed a “FESU” model, specifically: Focus, Ease, Switch and Update.
This is a very versatile method, and it is also applicable here.
Practice paying more attention to your own state and ask yourself “What am I doing now?” In this way, when you fall into self-immersion, you will be able to notice quickly: I seem to I started to immerse myself again and started to have negative emotions.
At this time, you may wish to relax yourself and let your brain empty for a while. You can try to breathe deeply, or you can try to stand up, leave the previous position, and go out; or drink a glass of water and focus on something to calm yourself down first.
Then, consciously try to replace the self-immersive perspective with a self-extracted perspective to achieve a conversion. You can ask yourself: What lesson has this lesson taught me? What did I gain from it? What can I do if I encounter similar things in the future?
Finally, practice it over and over again. The brain is malleable. Every time you act, it is a update to it. Every time you train it, the next time you enter the possibility of “self-immersion” and “self-extraction”, it may change from 99:1.