Distancing mentally stepping back from myself

Abstract

In this drawing, <Distancing> I visualise a psychological coping strategy from the field of mental health. A solitary figure stands with their back to the viewer, facing a mirror that opens onto a calm blue sea, and another version of me; a headless torso with an exposed brain connected to the spine. In the water, fragmented versions of my thoughts float: a dark silhouette, a colourful sphere half-submerged, a purple crouching figure, and a mask-like face. Each fragment represents a different aspect of my inner difficulties—depression, anxiety, the clash of joy and sadness, and the social masks I wear. Instead of being inside these emotions, the figure observes them from a slight distance, the way psychological distancing asks us to look at our own thoughts and feelings as an outside witness. Visually, the piece is an homage to René Magritte’s <Not to Be Reproduced>: the back-view figure confronting a mirror recalls Magritte’s painting, but instead of a literal repetition, the mirror reveals a distanced, symbolic space in which my emotions and symptoms appear as separate objects that can be calmly observed.

I tried to reflect the idea of 'distancing' in the objects on the desk. In 'reality', there is an empty medicine bottle and a dull green book. In the mirror, however, the bottle is filled with pills and the same book appears in a vivid red. Creating distance from my problems changes how they look: what seemed like an empty, hopeless situation now reveals possible remedies and new energy. I also used complementary colours to reinforce this transformation. Green and red, as well as purple and yellow(-green), sit opposite each other on the traditional RYB colour wheel; when they are placed together, they create strong contrast and visual tension. In my drawing, the lifeless green book becomes its complementary red in the reflection, suggesting that when I step back and observe myself, a situation that felt stagnant can gain vitality and direction. Likewise, the purple face in the lower right is fused with a yellow-green mask-another complementary pair-hinting that painful emotions (purple) and the social mask (yellow-green) are inseparable parts of the same self that I am trying to understand from afar.

There is also a contrast between the muted, low-variation colours of the real world, browns, greys, and blacks, and the rich, diverse palette inside the mirror. Everyday life often feels flat and dark when I am immersed in my symptoms. But in the distanced, reflected world, the colours become more saturated and varied. This suggests that when I deliberately take one step back from my experience, instead of being swallowed by it, multiple perspectives and solutions appear. In other words, the mirror–sea is not an escape from reality but a psychological space where I can safely examine my broken pieces and imagine new ways to heal them.

Psychologically, this drawing is inspired by research on self-distancing and decentering, Self-distancing refers to taking a step back from one’s own experience, imagining it as if you were a fly on the wall, or talking to yourself in the third person, so that you can reflect on painful events more objectively. Studies have shown that when people analyze a negative memory from a distanced, observer perspective(for example, asking “Why did she feel that way in that situation?” instead of “Why did I feel that way?”), they experience less immediate emotional distress, lower physiological reactivity such as blood-pressure spikes, and less anger, compared with people who relive the event from a first-person, “immersed” point of view. They also ruminate less about the event over time and are more able to make constructive meaning out of it, rather than getting stuck in repetitive, self-critical loops. A broader body of work on decentering, learning to see thoughts and feelings as temporary mental events rather than absolute truths, shows similar benefits. A large narrative review concluded that decentering skills reduce the impact of day-to-day psychological stressors and are a core ingredient in therapies that prevent and treat anxiety and depression in young people; increases in decentering during treatment predict later decreases in symptom severity. My drawing translates these findings into visual form: the viewer’s back-turned figure is practicing self-distancing, calmly observing their fragmented emotions in the mirror-sea. By doing so, they are not denying pain, but creating enough space around it for insight, colour, and possible healing, represented by the newly filled medicine bottle, the complementary colour shifts, and the vivid horizon that opens beyond the water. 

(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VHYVaDmZmb4Zf6eziTbDO4U7nP_IFRHw/view?usp=drive_link)