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Welcome to Episode 381 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. And you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com where you can find out about my coaching practice, speaking engagements, books that I've written, and courses that I offer. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter and get your free AI Family Systems Coach at the website or at the links in the show notes. Finally, if you would like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can get more information and sign up at the link in the show notes. Thanks in advance for your consideration. And now, without further ado, here is episode 381, How Distanced Self-Talk Helps You Stay a Non-Anxious Presence. In Family Systems Theory, Murray Bowen developed the concept of differentiation of self, which I describe as self-defining while staying connected in a non-anxious way. It's the ability to exercise integrity in the moment of choice. Ethan Kross and his colleagues have identified a small but important skill that makes self-differentiation possible in real time.

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Bowen's observation about how relationship systems work is that when anxiety rises, people lose access to their best thinking. They are adaptive or reactive. They distance, overfunction, or underfunction. The self collapses into the emotional field. Cross starts with self-reflection. When people try to understand their feelings to feel better, they often end up ruminating, amplifying distress, and getting stuck. The mind collapses into the emotional moment. Bowen and Cross use different language, but they are both identifying the challenge of self-differentiation in anxious moments. They're describing what happens when the self gets too close to the emotional stimulus. When you are immersed, you can't see clearly, choose wisely, or lead well. Bowen tells us that differentiation is the ability to stay connected while maintaining a solid sense of self. But he doesn't give us many moment-to-moment techniques for how to do that. And this is where Cross's research fills in the gap. What he has found is that when people shift into a more distanced vantage point, what he calls self-distancing, several things happen: emotional reactivity drops, rumination decreases, wise reasoning increases, and people move from asking "What happened to me?" to "What does this mean?" Self-distancing can help create what Edwin Friedman called perspective, which is to get enough distance from the situation to think clearly.

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You then have a better chance of acting in line with your goals and values. In essence, self-distancing can help you self-differentiate in real time. When you experience anxious situations, you typically see things through your own eyes. Your automatic reactions show up first, making it difficult to think clearly because your feelings crowd out your thinking. According to Cross, self-distancing helps you see yourself in the situation from the outside, like a fly on the wall. You're still connected to the experience, but you're not consumed by it. So, what is self-distancing and how can you make it work for you? If you want to dig into the research on self-distancing, I will post an article from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology written by Izzy Gainsburg and Ethan Kross. The title of the article is "Distanced Self-Talk Changes How People Conceptualize the Self." It opens with an example where actress Jennifer Lawrence was being interviewed by the New York Times. They were asking questions about how she changed over time, and she was getting anxious. She spontaneously muttered, "Okay, get a hold of yourself, Jennifer. This isn't therapy." What Lawrence did was use what is called distanced self-talk to self-regulate in that anxious moment.

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When people use their own name or the pronoun "you," that is, when they speak to themselves in the second or third person to coach themselves through a stressful moment, they automatically create psychological distance. It's subtle but powerful. So if I'm in an anxious situation, I can say, "Jack, stay grounded. Jack, what's actually happening here?" or "What do you think is the correct response here?" This linguistic shift activates the same mental machinery we use when advising someone else, but in this case, the someone else is ourselves. It pulls us out of the emotional intensity of the moment and into a wiser, more objective stance. Cross's research shows that distant self-talk leads to self-distancing. Which can be used as a tool for self-regulation so you can think clearly in the moment. Further, the research suggests that distant self-talk can help you think of yourself in more abstract terms so you are less defined by social context. What does that mean? In other words, you will be less influenced by your identity in the relationship system. This means you are less likely to succumb to surrounding togetherness pressure. Leadership is full of emotionally charged moments— conflict, criticism, uncertainty, pressure, expectations.

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In those moments, the system is always trying to pull you into its anxiety. If you get sucked in, adaptivity or reactivity will take over, making it harder to be a non-anxious presence because you're not able to think clearly about your goals and values. You're not able to craft a non-anxious response. Self-distancing gives you a way to do that in those anxious moments. It is a way to help you to self-regulate. You mentally step back by talking to yourself in the second or third person using your name or the pronoun you. In essence, you are asking yourself, how would I coach someone else through this? But that someone else is you. You can also use this to prepare for difficult conversations by using your name to coach yourself into clarity in advance so that when you're having a hard time thinking about how you're going to handle a difficult situation, you can prepare yourself by thinking more objectively using distance self-talk. Whether you're using it to prepare yourself for anxious situations or you're using it to regulate yourself in the moment, Distant self-talk can help you lead as a non-anxious presence because it helps you to see yourself and the system at the same time.

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It's not about being detached. It's about being present without being overwhelmed by anxiety. It's about being connected without losing yourself. And it's about thinking clearly in the midst of feeling. It's what non-anxious leaders do. That's it for episode 381, a little bit shorter, but I have found this concept helpful. I hope you do too. And remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com and find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. And if you found this episode helpful, please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice and please share it with someone who would benefit. Thanks in advance for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.

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