Yes, this does seem like it's closely related to a habit you develop through meditation. However, the "self-distancing" seems worse to me than meditation, since it seems to advocate taking a distance from the "true self" of feelings and thoughts. Meditation encourages the [better]route of recognizing that feelings and thoughts are not parts of your true self at all.

What do think is your true self, if not feelings or thoughts?

According to Buddhism there is no true self.

According to Buddhism, is there truth that a self can hold?

No. The separate self is an illusion and can not truly know anything. Only I am is known.

Do Buddhists hold this to be true?

Meditation is not necessarily Buddhist.

Search this source of emotion and thought. Who is it that experiences it. The answer can not come from the mind since what you perceive can not be you. This is self enquiry and can lead to revelations.

I would go further and say that meditation is the only way to reliably and truly actualize such a state of mind.

I consider self-distancing to be one of the things I'm relatively good at. I've hardly ever successfully meditated, though. Furthermore, the article mentions a couple of other techniques that appear to reliably help with self-distancing.

I'm sure meditation helps, but I wouldn't rule out other options for achieving this particular goal.

Can't that just put things in a circle? Where if you are self distancing then you must be doing whatever meditation is?