外刊阅读20240826｜年轻人太容易“内耗”怎么办？

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We all dwell on unresolved personal conflicts from time to time. Who hasn’t ruminated on a hurtful comment or unintentional harm we might have caused someone? Feeling bad about something you did, or something done to you, is human. Congratulations on not being a psychopath! But while it’s expected that the arguments we’ve had, the negative events we’ve experienced, and the major decisions we face haunt us, overthinking can also pile on new problems.

Rumination, or “overthinking,” is a hallmark of poor mental health and unhappiness. It is a psychological tendency that, if left unchecked, can reduce our enjoyment of life, ensuring we are never satisfied for long. Yes, there are benefits to analyzing the past. But too much rumination can torment you and, worse, cloud your judgment about how to proceed into the future. The consequences of too much rumination are focusing on problems rather than solutions, sacrificing the present moment, and losing productive time, sleep, and healthy relationships.

Have you ever tried talking about yourself in the third person? The practice, called illeism, goes at least as far back as the Ancient Greeks. Illeism is a form of “self-distancing” that allows us to circumvent Solomon’s paradox: the idea that we are great at applying wise reasoning to others’ lives but terrible at applying it to our own. (Many studies validate Solomon’s paradox as social cognitive bias, though the psychological mechanism behind it remains unclear.) Distancing ourselves from our problems helps us to see them as clearly as we would another person’s.

That’s why illeism is a powerful method for breaking the cycle of rumination. It allows you to observe your thoughts and feelings objectively rather than getting caught up in an emotional storm. By referring to yourself as he, she, or they — or whatever third-person pronoun you prefer — you detach from the immediate experience and gain a broader perspective.