Rainy Day Healing

 

Making My Peace … with the third person

 

I’m looking for ways not to make life’s ups and downs, especially the downs, so personal. You know … not everything is happening to me, just around me. The guy who bumped into me, knocking my shopping to the ground, doesn’t know me, never met me, doesn’t even care whether I exist or not, and most likely doesn’t even see me. He’s in a hurry. He has his own worries. This is not about me. It’s about a third-party – a third person – that is, not me, but something or somebody else.

And I have found a way not to make things so personal. It’s a technique I’ve done all my life without realising that I was doing it or how effective it was. When an acquaintance asked how I remained calm, it made me think. Now I know. And there’s research about it too.

It’s the third person technique.

 

In your head – with self-talk, head-talk, and so on – say he, she, they, them, it, that person – anything but I. No I. Even when referring to yourself. Saying “you” to yourself is second person talk, not third person talk. So, say your name or someone else’s name or just he, she, it, them.

For example, instead of saying to yourself “I’m late now because I’ve got to pick up my shopping. What am I going to do?” – say instead, “she is late because she dropped her shopping and has to pick it up and run for the bus now.” Or – this is what I do – “Oh Martina, you’d better pick up the shopping and pick up your pace. Get a move on girl!” It’s like talking to an imaginary friend – a third person!

I often explain things in my head so that I don’t forget what to do, but I generally don’t use the first person – I. Not I. I say things like, “Okay, go to the mall, buy the stationary there, then go to the new shop across the road to buy the gifts …” It’s like talking to a third person.

See, not an “I” in the whole sentence, the whole paragraph, the whole self-talk. So, talk to a third person – talk to lots of people – talk to an audience – all in your head.

I know, I know. Readers are saying, “But Martina, isn’t referring to yourself in the third person a form of dissociative identity disorder? D.I.D? Like you might be crazy, Martina?”

And Martina would say (see what I did there?), “Well, not really. It’s DID if Martina has other signs of DID, such as memory loss, confusion, dementia, clinical depression, out-of-body experiences, and so on. Which she doesn’t have.”

Then other readers point out that not everyone self-talks. Although self-talk is regarded as common, usual, regular, and normal, there are people who can’t self-talk. It’s rare, but …

What does the research say? 

 

 

 

Professor Ethan Kross from the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It (2021), says talking to yourself in the third person helps to psychologically distance yourself from preconceived worries about a situation and helps to adopt a more objective stance. It helps prevent over-thinking and over-analysis about the situation, especially for people who are their own harshest critic. Through third person self-talk, people ruminate less about negative events and therefore prevent themselves from over-worry and over-anxiety.

It’s called self-distancing. It’s also called illeism.

Researchers tested the effects of third person self-talk. Some participants were asked to talk silently to themselves in the third person (we, he, she, etc.) in a public speaking task, while others could talk to themselves in the first person (I). The researchers found that people speaking to themselves in the third person were calmer, appeared more confident, felt less stressed during their public speaking task, and performed better than the people who spoke to themselves in the first person.

Psychologist Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who also worked with Ethan Kross, found that people who self-distance tend to be humbler, and more likely to consider other perspectives and other people’s points of view. Grossmann asked nearly 300 participants to describe a challenging situation and keep a journal for a month to daily describe a challenging situation they had just experienced, such as a disagreement. They were scored on their journal entries against first-person and third-person criteria. After the month, all participants undertook a “wise-reasoning” test – which they had previously undertaken before the experiment.

Grossmann found that the control group over-estimated what they thought their scores would be, but actually there was no change in their before-and-after wise-reasoning test scores. The people who wrote in the third person in their journals more accurately guessed their scores and had scored better in the post-experiment wise-reasoning test. They had increased their “wisdom” and had found better ways to cope with challenging situations.

 

Making her peace with third parties, Martina learned the following:

• She too can be the third person in her life,
• She can distance herself from her negative talk,
• She can self-distance in any situation without people knowing because she is talking only in her own head,
• She can smile to herself when self-distancing,
• She pretends, in her head, that she is talking to an audience, and it helps to improve her public speaking when she is talking aloud to real people,
• She likes illeism and being an illeist,
• She doesn’t think being an illeist is wacky at all.

 

 

 

 

Martina Nicolls: Rainy Day Healing – MAKING MY PEACE