New Research on Coping with Stress

Best way to cope with upsets is to step back

The Economic Times of India today has a short but interesting article on overcoming stress. As the article notes, it uses a technique common to Buddhist (and other Eastern) traditions of simply letting thoughts and sensations arise and fall away – without getting caught up in them. By simply sitting and watching our minds, again without taking part in the drama therein, we get just the kind of “psychologically distanced perspective” mentioned in the article.

It’s a short article, and well worth the read. Here’s a bit:

“We aren’t very good at trying to analyse our feelings to make ourselves feel better,” said Kross, assistant professor of psychology.

“It’s an invaluable human ability to think about what we do, but reviewing our mistakes over and over, re-experiencing the same negative emotions we felt the first time around, tends to keep us stuck in negativity.

“It can be very helpful to take a sort of mental time-out, to sit back and try to review the situation from a distance,” Kross said.

This approach is widely associated with eastern philosophies like Buddhism and Taoism, and with practices like Transcendental Meditation. But according to Kross, anyone can do it with a little practice, reports Eurekalert.