Stepping back or stepping in: A qualitative investigation of self-distanced versus self-immersed stressor reflections with competitive swimmers.

High performance sport consists of stressor events which can disrupt an athletes' functioning and negatively influence performance. The way in which one reflects upon stressor events and develops insights regarding how they coped is essential to overcoming similar experiences in the future. We conducted a pilot randomised controlled trial with a qualitative analysis to explore the coping insights among 48 highly trained/national level swimmers in the lead up to major swimming competitions, who reflected on stressor events from self-distanced or self-immersed perspectives over a 3-week period. Using the self-reflection and coping insight framework as a guideline, we captured divers coping insights across both groups. Irrespective of the group to which they were assigned, athletes showed positive signs towards re-interpreting their stressor experience and embracing the stressor event, whereas consideration of individual values and adoption of a future-focus viewpoint were areas lacking. The emotionality described by athletes in their written reflections varied across both groups and influenced the development of coping insights. Our findings indicate a necessity to examine the emotionality associated with unique stressor events and consider integrating reflection strategies, while also enhancing the operational definitions within conceptual models of stress reflection protocols.

The effectiveness of self-distanced versus self-immersed reflections among adults: Systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental studies.

Stressor events can be highly emotional and disruptive to our functioning, yet they also present opportunities for learning and growth via self-reflections. Self-distanced reflections in which one reasons about target events in ways that maximise their removal of the current self from the experiential reality are said to facilitate this reflective process. We tested the expectation that self-distanced reflections offer an advantage over self-immersed vistas via a pre-registered systematic review of seven electronic databases (Scopus, Medline, Web of Science, PsycInfo, CINAHL Plus, Embase, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global) to identify experimental tests with adults aged 18-65 years where the focus of the reflection was a stressor or adverse event that participants had already experienced. A three-level, random effects meta-analysis of 25 experiments (N = 2,397, 68 effects) revealed a small-to-moderate advantage of self-distanced reflections (g = 0.19, SE = 0.07, 95% CI [0.05, 0.33]) and were most effective when they targeted a stressor experience that emphasised one's emotional state or lifetime. Nevertheless, our assessment of the overall quality of evidence including risk of bias suggested uncertainty regarding the benefit of this pragmatic self-regulatory tactic and therefore the need for future high-powered, high-quality experiments.

Stressor reflections, sleep, and psychological well-being: A pre-registered experimental test of self-distanced versus self-immersed reflections.

Evidence supports the effectiveness of cuing people to analyse negative autobiographical experiences from self-distanced rather than self-immersed perspectives. However, the evidence on which this expectation resides is limited largely to static snapshots of mean levels of cognitive and emotional factors. Via a pre-registered, randomised controlled trial (N = 257), we examined the differential effectiveness of self-distanced relative to self-immersed reflections on mean levels and within-person variability of sleep duration and quality as well as psychological well-being over a 5-day working week. Except for sleep quality, we found that reflecting from a psychologically distanced perspective, overall, was no more effective for mean levels and within-person variability of sleep duration, well-being, and stress-related factors than when the current self is fully immersed in the experiential reality of the event. We consider several substantive and methodological considerations (e.g., dosage, salience of stressor event) that require interrogation in future research via experimental and longitudinal observational methods.