The ObservatoryHow do you explain a setback?
It isn't the setback that determines how heavy it gets. It's the explanation you give it. Examine yours on three dimensions.
How it works
- The setback and the spontaneous explanationWrite
- Three dimensionsRate
- The rewriteWrite
The setback and the spontaneous explanation
Exercise in 3 steps, about 11 minutes. Doing it is part of Premium, which you try free for 7 days with no card. With Premium your answers are saved so you can pick up where you left off and look back at what you wrote.
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Why does it work?
Explanatory style (Seligman; Abramson et al.) is well established: a pessimistic style (permanent, global, uncontrollable explanations) is linked to low mood in meta-analyses (Sweeney et al. 1986; Hu et al. 2015). The rewriting format follows attributional retraining. The nuance about defensive pessimism comes from Norem, with empirical support of its own.
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