People usually talk to themselves in the first person. When trying to understand our feelings or sort out why we’re feeling anxious, we ask ourselves questions like “Why am I so upset?” or “What’s causing me to feel this way?” We use words like “I,” “me,” or “my” (all first-person pronouns) to refer to ourselves.
One group of people were told to stick with this standard approach. They were asked to use first-person pronouns when trying to understand their feelings and to ask themselves questions like “Why do I feel this way?” or “What are the underlying causes and reasons for my feelings?”
The other group used language to take a slightly different perspective. Rather than trying to understand their anxiety from their own vantage point, they were asked to take an outsider’s perspective. Rather than referring to themselves using “I” or “me,” they were encouraged to talk to themselves like someone else would, using words like “you,” their name, or “he” or “she” instead.