There are two contradictory hypotheses considering how affective states modulate attention to upcoming emotional stimuli: Affective priming vs. counter-regulation. Mental time travel enables adopting a distanced perspective on negative emotional experiences as a cognitive emotion regulation strategy. We applied a symmetry judgment task with a concurrent but task-irrelevant emotional distractor to investigate whether a short mental time-traveling intervention modulates attention towards emotional information. Participants were instructed to judge the symmetry or asymmetry of three-letter strings. Each trial presented a task-irrelevant smiley or frowny (positive vs. negative emotional content) above the judgment task. After induction of anger by autobiographical recall, we instructed participants either to immerse themselves in the event or imagine it from a distant future (mental time traveling). Mental time-traveling but not adopting a self-immersed perspective reduced state anger (d = -1.37 vs. d = -0.05). In the mental time-traveling condition, reaction times in the judgment task were longer with a frowny distractor compared to a smiley and vice versa for the self-immersed perspective (F_(1/23) = 8.92; p = .007, partial eta² = .279). Results are consistent with a counter-regulation interpretation. Further studies are needed to replicate the effect and to investigate whether it is a consequence of the reduced anger or directly stems from the intervention.