Seeing things as they are There's a lot of emphasis within the insight tradition on "seeing things as they are" , "turning towards difficult emotions" etc etc.   But in my experience it's not always the best advise. For example if I'm feeling sad,lonely, depressed etc,  I find  it's not helpful to sit there and look at it at all. I end up feeling worse. Going for a walk or swim and getting into my body seems to be far more helpful. I end up feeling happier.  Why is there so much focus on this kind of passive acceptance? Sure I can accept that right now I feel sad but ifs it's within my power to change that then why wouldn't I?
What you are saying, about seeing things as they are, is not very accurate. You're not supposed to passively accept your negative mind states, neuroses, pathological emotions, traditionally known as "evil, unskillful qualities of the mind". Otherwise, why would it be called the path of liberation, if it did not lead to abandonment of the above bad qualities and cessation of suffering that they bring?

From Tri-Yana perspective, the method varies depending on the practitioner's style:

If you are a Hinayana-style student, you're supposed to confront and overcome your negative emotions - through either direct willful effort, or as you say, through deliberate self-distraction.

If you are a Mahayana-style student, you're supposed to look inside until you see which egoistic attachment has given rise to the emotion, and by letting go of attachment, dismiss the emotion.

If you are a Vajrayana-style student, you're supposed to get in direct contact with the psychosomatic energy of the emotion and by going through the emotion transmute it into pure energy.

What you're referring to as "seeing things as they are" reminds me of one of the methods that Buddha taught back in the Pali Canon, that kinda spans all the three styles above:

In this method you look at your emotion analytically, objectively - so instead of replaying the thoughts/events that feed the emotion (which is bad), you philosophically/phenomenologically/scientifically analyze the emotion: see it's source in the attachment, see it's psychosomatic projection in the body - and this analysis itself (this will sound like a joke but it's not!) actually serves as a distraction that switches your mind away from the emotion to the skillful mind quality known as "analysis of dharmas". Makes sense?

So you don't just passively accept your negative mind states, you work with them, but this work does not always have to be as crude as suppression or distraction - there are more subtle methods, and this is one of them.