I love everything about Time Travel. In fact, I’m pretty much obsessed with it these days watching every Time Travel or Time Loop movie known to man. Or at least the ones that appear on Amazon Prime. As a result I’m now full of useless facts and thought provoking conspiracy theories. Case in point: Did you know that America’s sweetheart Rachel McAdams has appeared in four different Time Travel movies?! Or that UFOs are really future humans traveling back in time?!
In all seriousness right now we can all use a little bit more Time Travel in our lives to help us cope with all the craziness going on. In fact, there’s even a way we can Time Travel ourselves. Thanks to our brain’s ability to achieve Mental Time Travel; an ability to envision different scenarios and change our perspective to help change our mindset. Psychology Professor Richard Lopez explains on Medium:
“So how can we get better at the sort of mental time travel that this moment demands of us? It’s the type of question I’ve built a career out of studying. In my research on emotional regulation as the director of Bard’s Regulation of Everyday Affect, Craving, and Health (REACH) Lab, I’ve found that one of the most important tools at our disposal is an empirically vetted strategy known as cognitive reappraisal.
There are two flavors of cognitive reappraisal, which involves reevaluating an emotion-eliciting stimulus — a situation, a social interaction, a self-generated thought — in order to alter its emotional impact or change behavior: distancing and simulation. Here’s how to put each of them to work in your own mind.
Psychological distancing is exactly what it sounds like: You’re putting some distance between yourself and your emotions. Adopt a point of view other than yourself in the moment — that could be yourself, someone you know, some anonymous other person — and think through the issue from this more neutral perspective to rationally assess whatever feelings you’re currently dealing with.
Let’s be honest: Seeing social media photos of someone else’s indoor dinner party feels pretty crappy. You miss being in a group, catching up over a glass of wine, seeing walls that aren’t yours. If the dual punch of envy and sadness is enough to have you thinking about taking a day off from social distancing just this once, you can use someone else’s perspective — an exhausted doctor friend, an immunocompromised colleague — to work through the moment and feel more grounded in the choices you’ve been making.
Distancing is a tactic that’s particularly suited for these times, but it’s something to keep in your psychological toolbox long after the pandemic is over. Multiple studies have demonstrated how distancing can improve our well-being, helping us to be more present, flexible, and adaptive. When we put some breathing room between ourselves and our emotions, we lessen their power, clearing the way for us to make decisions that may be less appealing in the moment but have more of a long-term payoff.
Another reappraisal tactic, simulation, helps us run through the long-term consequences — both positive and negative — of our behaviors, which can put our future selves in clearer focus.
Let’s go back to that dinner party for a minute. Play it out: If you went, you’d probably have a fun evening and then head home. Great. You might expose yourself to a potentially deadly virus, then carry that virus home to your partner or roommates and anyone else you interacted with. Less great. Or you might be fine, but spend the next week with a gnawing sense of dread or guilt as you waited to get tested. Knowing the possible outcomes is one thing, but engaging with the emotional reality of each of those outcomes helps make them feel more real.
In studies, simulation has been shown to reliably alter people’s cravings for food as well as drugs, including methamphetamine. It sounds simple, but sometimes, pausing to think through the direct cause-and-effect chain really can be enough to push us toward more sound decisions.
Taken together, these reappraisal tactics can help us build a more resilient and coherent sense of self over time. Distancing anchors us in the present, allowing us to keep our emotions in check, while simulation gives us a window into the future. In a time of what feels like infinite unknowns, cognitive reappraisal is also a way to make sure that there’s one thing you can know fully: yourself.”
Admittedly Mental Time Travel isn’t as cool as the real thing. There are no paradoxes, alternate realties, or rifts in the space-time continuum. No going back to kill Hitler or become your own grand father. No traveling to the future to see how it all plays out. But it’s still a useful skill and coping mechanism. One that we can certainly use right about now.
Leave a comment