How to Get a Handle on the Voice in Your Head
Episode Stats
Summary
We all talk to ourselves all the time. This kind of inner dialogue can be a good thing, helping us focus and help us work through problems. But it can also go off the rails, turning into worry and negative rumination. My guest today calls this negative self-talk chatter, and in his book of the same name, he outlines how to get a handle on it.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. We all talk
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to ourselves all the time. This kind of inner dialogue can be a good thing, helps us focus
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and helps us work through problems, but it can also go off the rails, turning into worry
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and negative rumination. My guest today calls this negative self-talk chatter, and in his
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book of the same name, he outlines how to get a handle on it. His name is Ethan Cross.
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He's a psychologist and the director of emotion self-control laboratory. And we begin our
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conversation with the way introspection can be both good and bad and the function of the
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voice in our heads. We discuss why negative emotions makes us want to reach out to other
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people and start talking and how this impulse can be harnessed in either a positive or detrimental
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way. We then unpack how managing the way we talk to ourselves really comes down to zooming
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out and getting distance from the self and how this can be accomplished with a variety
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of tools from engaging in a kind of time travel to going out in nature. After the show's over,
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check out our show notes at aom.is slash chatter. Ethan joins me now via clearcast.io.
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So you're a psychologist and you've spent your career researching and writing about something
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that people, you know, they do all the time, but they don't like to talk about it because
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they think they might be crazy. But you research how people talk to themselves in their head.
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How did you fall in that line of research when you were like a young psychology student?
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Great question. Actually, it started before I was a psych student. So it started way back
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when I was a little kid, when I was like three or four years old. My dad was always really into
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Eastern philosophy and things that didn't seem very cool or exciting when I was a kid.
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And he used to always encourage me to introspect when bad things happen. So if I was having trouble
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with something, you know, he'd tell me to go inside and try to figure out a solution to the
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problem so I could move on. And I, by and large, listened to his advice and it served me well
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throughout my childhood and adolescence. And then I got to college and I took a class on psychology and,
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and I learned that, yes, introspection can be really, really good for lots of people.
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A lot of the time, bad things happen, focus inward, try to make sense of what you're feeling. And,
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you know, language is involved in doing that, our inner voice. It helps us storify life.
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What I also learned is that this process of going inside, it often backfires in spectacular ways. So
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people often do exactly what my dad used to tell me to do, but they don't end up feeling better.
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They end up worrying and ruminating and catastrophizing and engaging what I call
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chatter, which is, captures that, the, the reverberating negative thoughts that often run
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through our head that lead us to feel like we're spinning. We're not getting anywhere where we're
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trying to solve a problem. And so the big puzzle for me was, well, why is introspection sometimes
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really helpful and other times really harmful? What distinguishes between the healthy versus
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harmful way of talking to ourselves? And I spent my career trying to figure that out.
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And we'll, we'll unpack those differences, but before we do, like, what do we know about that
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internal dialogue that we have with ourselves? Does like, does everyone do it? Like, how old are we
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when we start doing it, et cetera? Yeah. So when we're talking about the inner voice in technical
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terms, we're talking about silent verbal processing. So using language silently in your head,
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and this is an amazing superpower that we all possess. And it's one that serves many different
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functions. So the inner voice isn't just one thing. It's not just the, you know, the ongoing stream of
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thoughts that's narrating your life. The inner voice also captures lots of other things. Like, you know,
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if I, if I were to ask you to repeat a phone number silently in your head, so repeat right now,
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the numbers 2 0 9 0 5 0 1. Take a second to do that. Okay. We able to do it. We able to do it. Yes.
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Yeah. So that's tapping into your, your verbal working memory, which your inner voice is involved
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with, right? Like it's this ability to, to rehearse verbal information. Everyone who has a well-functioning
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mind can do that. It's part of the basic architecture of the human mind. Language helps us process
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information, but it could also help us do other things like simulate how we're going to behave
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in the future. So before I have a high stakes speech, I'll often in my head, rehearse what I'm
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going to say. I'll then imagine what an unruly audience member is going to ask me to try to trip
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me up. I'll hear what they're going to ask me, and then I'll hear myself respond. So our inner voice
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is helping us plan and simulate there. It can also help us control ourselves. Like when you're doing a
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really difficult problem, all right, put this piece here, then put this piece here and then do
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this. I'm of course projecting right now, because I'm talking, that was an example of putting together
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like a kid's toy, which I'm terrible at. So, but, but that's another usage of your inner voice. So it
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does lots of different things in terms of when it develops. Some of the earliest research studies
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that speak to this suggest around 18 months. That's not to say it doesn't develop earlier,
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but that's as early as I've seen a documentation of it in a scientific article.
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And when you say that everyone does it, every, like you, even this includes deaf people who can't
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hear it. I thought this was really interesting. Like what they do is they kind of like an internal
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sign language dialogue going on with themselves.
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Yeah. So there's evidence that people who are deaf, they basically talk to themselves, but using
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their sign language. So they, it's like inner, it's called inner signing instead of inner speech. So
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they're using the same modality that they use to communicate with people in the world. They're
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engaging that modality silently in their head. So, you know, I do want to point out that different
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people may rely on their inner voice to do different things more or less than others. A couple of years
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ago, there was a big hoopla on the internet about some people saying they don't have an internal voice
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or running inner monologue. You know, I think it's possible that those individuals may not
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constantly narrate their life. They don't have that inner stream constantly flowing, but at the other
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end of the spectrum, can they use language silently to do things like rehearse a number? Yes. That's a
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And also this inner voice is fast. Like it's like you give this example, it's basically spitting out
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tons of state of the union addresses in a matter of minutes.
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Yeah. So we can talk to ourselves much faster than we can speak to other people out loud. And the reason
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for that is there are really two, two factors. First, when we, when we're talking out loud, that's a
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complicated process. We take it for granted, right? But we're actually, there is a lot of motor movements
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involved. We're moving our mouth and our muscles, our diaphragm is going up and down. And so, so it's a,
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it's a complicated behavior and we don't have to engage in the same steps when we're silently speaking
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to ourselves. The second thing is that although we can talk to ourselves in full sentences, like
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when I'm practicing what I'm going to say to someone else, I'll say it out loud. I'll say it
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silently in a full sentence, but we can also talk to ourselves in a more compressed form. So we're not
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actually talking to ourselves in full sentences. It's more like taking shorthand notes. Inner speech
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can take that more compressed form. And that gives us a lot of verbal punch in a short period of time.
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So as you said, we do this for, we had this internal monologue for a variety of reasons.
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There's helps with our working memory and helps allows us to remember and call back numbers,
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but also people, there's researchers who've looked and just asked people like,
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tell us what you're thinking, like stream of conscious. And it's usually the content of internal
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dialogue. So there's some of the, okay, I got to remember this thing, but then also it's just a
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lot of like, Hey, I see this thing. And this is what I think about this thing. I know this reminds
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me of this memory. Well, that's the other thing too, is that how a lot of times with our internal
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dialogue, there's a lot of like time travel going on time jumping. Yeah. I think this is really
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fascinating. We hear nowadays a lot about the importance of living in the moment and, and I'm all for
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being present, present in the appropriate times, but I think it's easy to lose sight of the
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fact that we spend a lot of time not living in the moment, traveling into the future and past.
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And this is actually this, that's not a problem. That's a really amazing capacity. It's an amazing
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capacity that distinguishes us from other animals, right? Like we can go back in time and, and reminisce
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about things that happen, experience nostalgia. We can, we can try to figure out why we said that stupid
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thing that got us in trouble. So we don't say that stupid thing again in the future. We can think
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about the future and, and, and try to plan like, or fantasize. Like I'm regularly fantasizing about
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what I'm going to do when this pandemic ends. Right. And I'm, I'm, I'm on a beach having a
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pina colada. So this ability to travel in time is something that we are uniquely equipped to do.
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And we spend a lot of time doing it. And so when you ask people what they're thinking about,
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they're often not in the moment. They're, they're dipping back and forward in time.
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Right. And this allows, I mean, it's basically how we're trying to make, it sounds like when we do
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that, we're trying to make sense of our reality. We're that's, it's all sense-making essentially
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orienting ourselves. I think that's a big piece of it. We know that, you know, human beings, we like
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to, in an ideal world, we would just navigate the world on autopilot. And then when I say ideal,
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I say ideal in the sense of how you could effortlessly live life, right? You're just traveling along.
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You're not expending any resources to like make sense of what's happening around you. Cause it's,
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it's, that's hard work. Like making sense of things is not easy. You wouldn't want to be doing
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it all the time. And so when do we tend to try to make sense of things when we get stuck? And so,
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you know, the other interesting thing coming out of the studies that you referenced that ask people
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about what they're thinking, oftentimes the majority of the time that people are having these verbal
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thoughts, they tend to be negative in, in their tone. So we tend to be talking to ourselves about,
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about, about problems. And I think one of the reasons why that's the case is because problems
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are often what we're trying to, to solve or trying to make sense of. And, and that's why they,
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they occupy so much real estate quote unquote in our minds.
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So you mentioned there, there could be some people who don't use this internal dialogue or voice as much
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as other people do, but there's, there's that we've actually know of cases where people lose
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their ability to talk to themselves. And it was, this happened to a person who's actually,
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I think she was a neuroscientist, correct? Like she.
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Yeah. She was a neuroanatomist. I tell the story in chatter and it's fascinating, right? So this woman
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has a stroke and she, she loses, the stroke is localized in a part of the brain that is involved in
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language. And so she's not only loses temporarily the ability to talk to other people, but also to
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talk to herself. And initially she thought that this would, this would be great. And initially she
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reported being elated. She no longer had the worries, the ruminations, that inner critic chirping
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her, chirping up, telling her she wasn't good enough and so forth and so on. And that felt really good.
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But as time went on, what she realized is she also couldn't rely on her, her inner speech to,
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to help her make sense of who she was, right? We often use our inner speech. These, we have
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conversations with ourselves to figure out things about who we are as we navigate this world. It
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helps us, it helps shape our identity. And, and, and she lost that capacity, which ended up being
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quite problematic for her. So I think an important take home from that lesson is
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the inner voice, although it can be the source of a lot of pain, like when we're ruminating or
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worrying, it is not in and of itself a bad thing. To the contrary, it's an amazing tool. Like it helps
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us do a lot of things. It's just that it can slip into the negative territory when, when we start
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ruminating or worrying. And so when it slips into the negative territory, I think the challenge is to
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figure out how you can, how you can reign it in. And the good news is that there are lots of
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science-based tools to help people do that. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our
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sponsors. And now back to the show. Well, you start off the book talking about how even you as a
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psychologist who studies and knows the research behind on what causes our inner voice to go negative
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and how to reign it in. You had an experience where chatter, what you, what you call this sort of
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negative voice just went crazy in your life. Can you tell us about that? Because I thought it was,
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I think it's relatable. I think a lot of people might've experienced something similar to what
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you've went through. Yeah. Well, you know, before I tell the story, let me preface it by saying that
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there's a lot of research which shows that we're much better at giving advice to others than we are
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following that advice ourselves. And I unfortunately experienced this firsthand about 10 years ago when
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I received a threatening letter in the mail and it really, it sent my, my chatter churning.
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So, you know, I had never received a threat before and it was scary. And, you know, I had to file a
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police report and that didn't do much to help allay my concerns. And so I ended up, you know, doing,
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doing wacky things like pace my house until three in the morning with my baseball bat, making sure no one
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was coming after my newborn daughter and wife and me. And it was an, it was an experience where
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my, my self-talk, right? My harmful self-talk, my chatter was really taking over. I didn't have
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control of it. It had control of me and it, it really negatively affected me for a couple of days.
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I could not focus at work. It created friction in my relationships because I kept talking about this
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concern to my wife over and over and over again. And, you know, she was trying to give me help,
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but I wasn't listening. And there's no question that it momentarily impacted my, my health as well.
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I wasn't sleeping. I didn't have my appetite. And so it really exerted a negative toll. Fortunately,
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I was able to break out of that funk after a few days using some science-based tools that,
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that we now know of, and we know how they work. But when I was caught in the chatter, it was not fun.
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And, you know, this raises another, another question that I often get is like,
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how do you know when you're experiencing chatter? People often ask me that. And my response is you
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typically know, you typically know it when you're experiencing it, because it's really a very
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unpleasant state, right? It doesn't feel good to be so hyper-focused on this one problem that you
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can't think about anything else. So yeah, that was my, that was my personal experience with chatter
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and that I hope to never duplicate. Have you ever had something like that happen to you?
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Oh no, all the time. I can, yes. I've said this before on the podcast. I'm like Larry David,
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tend to be a neurotic and I'll like think worst case scenario. And then I'll just, yeah, I'll do
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that. And I've done what you did at like the low point for you during all this, when you Googled
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bodyguard for college professors, thinking- Well, let me, let me, let me, let me preface that.
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I considered Googling. Oh, you considered, okay.
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Actually, you know, it was when I, when I actually started like typing it out before I actually hit
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enter, I didn't because that was a moment that broke me out of this. And I thought to myself,
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Ethan, you are being insane. So, but carry on, you've, you've investigated bodyguards, your podcast
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hosts. No, yeah. Not bodyguards, but like, you know, whenever you get like a, some weird health
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symptom, right? You're like, well, I'm going to go to Dr. Google and great. I've got this terminal
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disease and you're, yeah, you know, you don't want to do that. It always ends with cancer. You
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just, you don't want to. Exactly. It always is. So I thought that was interesting. So what's
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interesting about the voice in our head, whenever we experience negative emotions, one of the natural
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responses is that our internal dialogue actually starts talking more. And not only does our internal
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dialogue want to talk more, we actually want to talk more to other people when we have negative
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emotions. What's going on there? What causes that? Do we know?
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Yeah. Well, so, so negative emotions act like jet fuel that propel us to want to share what we're
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feeling with other people with, with really two exceptions. That's not true when we're experiencing
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shame, which we tend to not want to share with other people or trauma, which we often try to avoid,
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but the other kinds of negative emotions, anger, anxiety, sadness, there's a lot of research which
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shows that when those emotions activate, we're really motivated to talk to other people about them.
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So we talk more when we feel bad because A, we're looking for people to connect with empathically.
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We want support. We want someone to help us. We want to know that there's someone who cares enough
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about us that they're willing to listen. And so finding someone to talk to can be great for that,
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right? You're sharing your experience and you're connecting with another person.
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But what we also are looking for is advice or help broadening our perspective. So when we experience
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chatter, when our inner monologues take a wrong turn and lead to worry and rumination, we often
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like hyper-focus on our experience. We zoom in, tunnel vision. All we can think about very narrowly
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is the awfulness of what we're feeling, what we're experiencing. And so what we've learned is what can be
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really useful when that happens is to zoom out, to broaden our perspective. And other people are
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in a great position to help us do that, right? So if you come to me with a problem, you had a really
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bad argument with your partner, right? You tell me about it. So I hear a little bit about it. Oh,
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that sounds terrible. Like, so we're empathically connecting, but then I can do things like, you know
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what, but you know, you probably had arguments before and you got over it, right? So not the end
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of the world. So I'm broadening your perspective there. Or I could say things like, yeah, you know
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what? I've gotten into arguments like that with my wife over similar things. And here's how I deal
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with that situation. Again, like I'm shifting the focus away from you being so zoomed in on what
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happened to you that you can't think of anything else. And I'm trying to help you look at the bigger
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picture. And so other people can do both of those things for us. They can give us support
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and also advice. There's an important point I want to emphasize though, which is this in popular
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culture. We often hear that when you're feeling bad and experiencing chatter, what you should do is
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vent about your emotions to others. Just find someone to talk to and unload how you feel. The research
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does not support that being an effective tool for helping us work through our emotions. And the
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reason for that is when we vent our feelings, that does make us feel closer and more connected to
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the people we're talking to. Like, so no, like that's a good thing, but it doesn't do anything
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to help us help shift our perspective or change the way we think about things. So, so what you end up
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having happen is you get, you get stuck in what we call a co-rumination session where you and I feel
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really close to each other because we are, we're harping on how bad that thing was. Can you believe what
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she said? Oh my God, that stinks. I'm never going to talk to her again. But we're essentially like
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keeping the fire ablaze. We're not doing anything to work through the situation. So, so venting alone
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is, is not an effective tool for managing chatter. And another, other interesting too, about venting
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to someone else, like it might make you feel close in the short term, but if you, the problem with
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negative chatter is that the more you do it, it sort of perpetuates itself. And if you keep going to
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someone with like, you're just, you're negative, just carping, like that actually turns people off
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and they're going to start pushing you away because they don't want to be around you anymore.
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Exactly. So, so, you know, that's one of the negative relational effects that chatter can have.
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It creates friction on our relationships because we just keep talking about it over and over and over
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and over again. And guess what? It's not fun to be on the other side of that conversation when
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all you're doing is, is rehashing the same thing at ad nauseum. And so, so, you know, chatter can
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affect us negatively in a variety of ways. It can undermine our social relationships by creating
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friction in them in the way that I just described. It could get under the skin to influence our health by,
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by keeping our negative feelings alive over time. Like that exerts a real wear and tear on the body
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that can be harmful. And it makes it impossible to focus on the task at hand. And, and for anyone who
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questions how that might work, you know, I would ask you to think about trying to read a book when
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you are ruminating or worrying about something, right? The experience most people have when,
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when that happens is they read five pages, but they don't remember a thing that they've actually read
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because their mind was focused on something else. And so it can be a really big problem.
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Well, let's talk about some of the tools we can use to rein in on this negative chatter.
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And a big part of it is it's what you call, you have to distance yourself from the negative voice.
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Well, so if chatter zooms us in really narrowly on the experiences that are, that are driving these
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negative, you know, this negative inner voice, then one natural antidote to that is to zoom out,
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to, you know, quote unquote, take a step back and try to think about your experience more objectively
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from a broader perspective. And it turns out there are lots of ways to do that. And I'll tell you
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about just two to make it concrete. So one thing that I do in particular with respect to COVID,
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which is a chatter provoking event, I think for many of us is I'll do something called mental time
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travel. So I'll, I'll think about how I'm going to feel 12 months from now when I'm vaccinated.
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When I do that, what that little mental exercise does that distancing exercise does is it makes
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it clear that what I'm experiencing right now, as awful as it is, it's temporary, it will eventually
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pass. And that gives me hope. And we know that hope could be a really powerful tool for soothing
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chatter. I'll also go back in time. I'll think about the pandemic of 1918. And the fact that as awful as
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that pandemic was, and it was quite possibly worse than what we're experiencing right now.
00:22:40.860
We made it, you know, you and I are sitting here talking right now as a testament to that. And so,
00:22:46.340
so those are ways of, of helping me step back and see the bigger picture in ways that put my problems
00:22:52.800
in perspective and that reduce the intensity of the chatter and improve the way I feel.
00:22:58.940
Another distancing tool that people can use is to try to coach themselves through a problem,
00:23:03.580
like they were talking to someone else. As I said before, we're much better at advising other
00:23:08.680
people on their problems than we are taking our own advice. And what we've learned is that language
00:23:13.400
can provide us with a tool for forgetting distance and thinking about ourselves like we were someone
00:23:18.720
else. And it's as simple as using your name or the second person put on you. So, you know,
00:23:24.560
when I'm really stressed about something, I'm like, all right, Ethan, here's what you're going to do.
00:23:28.260
And then I'll instruct myself along. That small linguistic shift is, it's like a psychological
00:23:35.360
jujitsu technique. It's shifting my perspective, right? It's, it's no longer, I'm no longer in the
00:23:41.100
first person. It's not like, okay, here's what I would say to someone else. And that can be helpful
00:23:45.320
All right. So yeah, you talk to yourself in the second person, like Brett.
00:23:50.540
Second. Or what is it? How would you, am I, is that right? I'm always.
00:23:53.800
Well, you know, if you're going to get the academic in me, you know, it's actually using
00:23:59.300
your name as the third person. So we actually call it distance self-talk. The ideas were breaking
00:24:04.180
you out of thinking in I, me, my, and you're using words that you typically use when you think about
00:24:10.960
other people, names or, or, or you. And do you need to do this out loud or can you just do it
00:24:16.340
inside your head, like internally? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know,
00:24:19.960
don't do it out loud if other people are around. That's a little disclaimer here. So, you know,
00:24:27.160
in our, in our experiments, in our studies, we always do it silently and ask people to do it
00:24:31.700
silently in their head. If you're alone at home, you know, you could do it out loud if that works for
00:24:37.160
you. I don't see why that would be problematic. If you do it out loud in front of other people,
00:24:42.020
though, that will violate social norms in ways that I think you probably don't want to do
00:24:46.920
because we're not used to people talking to themselves out loud. And so even though it might
00:24:51.460
help you, there might be some social ramifications that you'd probably want to avoid.
00:24:57.060
And like, how quickly does this work? Like as soon as you start having that eternal dialogue with
00:25:01.900
yourself, referring to yourself, that distant self-talk, how quickly does it silence or mute that
00:25:06.460
chatter? Well, what's interesting is that a lot of, a lot of distancing tools take,
00:25:13.400
are effortful. Like you've got to, you got to work at it for a while. And there has been research
00:25:18.900
on this distant self-talk, which shows that you start to see reductions in how negative people are
00:25:25.720
feeling within milliseconds. And so Jason Moser, a neuroscientist at Michigan State University,
00:25:31.440
did a study where he had people look at pictures that were designed to really elicit a very strong
00:25:38.980
negative reaction as he monitored their brain activity while people were using distant self-talk.
00:25:45.360
And within a few hundred milliseconds, he saw a reduction in how negative they were feeling
00:25:52.200
All right. So it's fast. So yeah, like there's other distancing skills,
00:25:54.600
like cognitive behavioral therapy is, that's what, it's basically just distancing yourself.
00:25:58.940
It's teaching you techniques, but that can take a lot of effort, you know, thinking about,
00:26:02.960
is this really the worst case scenario and blah, blah, blah. But it sounds like this,
00:26:07.300
this distant self-talk, it can happen right away. Like how long does the effect last? Is it,
00:26:11.640
is it, if you do it more often, does like, does the voice sort of just tend to quiet down permanently?
00:26:19.200
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. We actually don't have an answer to that
00:26:22.720
question just yet. I don't know research that has looked at how, how durable and enduring those
00:26:28.540
effects are. But, you know, I do want to emphasize that there are no magic pills. You know, I think the,
00:26:34.780
the formula for really being good at managing chatter involves using a number of different tools
00:26:42.480
interchangeably. And I think one of the challenges that both listeners and scientists face is trying
00:26:48.520
to figure out what are the unique combinations of tools that work best for different people in
00:26:53.360
different situations. There are no single magic pills that I'm aware of. So when I experience
00:26:59.620
chatter about something, I'll typically use a few different tools. I'll use distant self-talk. I'll
00:27:05.260
use mental time travel. I'll find someone to talk to who's skilled at not just showing me that they
00:27:11.400
care, but also can help broaden my perspective. And then I'll do other things like go for a walk in a
00:27:16.220
green space. We know that exposure to green spaces can be really rejuvenating in ways that help us
00:27:21.540
with our chatter. So I'll do that. So I'll like take the equivalent of a chatter cocktail to help me
00:27:27.440
manage that state. And I think that's, that's really the key. So not specific strategies, but
00:27:33.080
combinations of them. Yeah. That going out in nature was interesting and how it kind of quieted the
00:27:37.960
mind. And the reason why it does that is because you're basically diminishing the self, right?
00:27:43.140
You're, you're, you're, you're feeling smaller, but in the process, it makes you feel better when
00:27:47.980
that happens. Well, there, so there are a couple of different ways that nature helps, but, but that,
00:27:53.480
what you just described is definitely one of them. And that has to do with nature's ability to promote
00:27:58.440
feelings of awe. So the emotion of awe, that's something we feel when we're in the presence of
00:28:04.360
something vast that we have trouble explaining, like, like looking at a tree in the local park that's
00:28:09.520
been here for hundreds of years to all the blizzards and all the other terrible weather, like
00:28:13.840
this tree has been here. How is that possible? Or when you look up at the sky and think about the
00:28:19.460
billions of stars out there, like I can't even compute how many planets that actually is. And so
00:28:27.600
what, what science shows is that when we have that emotional experience, that when we're in the
00:28:32.580
presence of something vast like that, we ourselves and our concerns, we feel smaller by comparison.
00:28:37.680
And that's a good thing, right? Like we're no longer the center of the world and our concerns
00:28:42.800
are no longer the center of the world. And that can be alleviating in terms of the chatter we're
00:28:47.960
experiencing. And you mentioned that time travel thing. Another thing you mentioned, another tool
00:28:52.680
is genealogy can be a useful thing to soothe the chatter. You just think back, well, my great,
00:28:58.340
great, whatever, you know, came across on a boat and had lice and had to be quarantined for a long
00:29:05.160
time. And now they, they went up and started a business and here I am today. If they could,
00:29:10.680
if he could do it, I could do it too. Yeah, exactly. You know, I had, I had, you know,
00:29:15.320
grandparents who lived in the forest for a year during world war two and they made it. And,
00:29:22.140
you know, boy, does that put the, the last rejection I got from a journal editor in perspective
00:29:27.520
when I compare it to that. So that's, that's another broadening as a perspective broadening
00:29:33.700
tool that we possess. And, you know, these are simple mental shifts that, that can make a
00:29:40.900
difference, right? They, that, that can make a difference in how we feel, but they're, they're
00:29:45.340
mental shifts that I don't think are always apparent to people because when we're so consumed
00:29:51.820
with chatter, it's all consuming. It's hard for us to remember that there are other ways of thinking
00:29:56.980
about this that might make us feel better. And so one of my hopes with the book was trying to
00:30:02.260
really lay out what all these different tools are, like show the science behind them to explain how
00:30:08.640
they work so that, that people could add these to their repertoire so that the next time they
00:30:14.200
experience chatter, they can activate them. Yeah. It's good to have them in, in advance because
00:30:18.400
as you, as everyone might've experienced, once you start experiencing that chatter and you start
00:30:22.120
going down that downward spiral, it's hard to get out. So you have to like, you have to kind of
00:30:26.040
stop it pretty quickly or else it gets harder. And you can, I've seen, you can see when people
00:30:30.400
have gone down that spiral and you say, you offer, start, you start offering suggestions.
00:30:34.100
It's like, no, that's not going to work. No way. Like, you know, if we talked about this before we
00:30:37.460
get on, like you give this advice to your kids, like, Hey, just talk to yourself, do some distance
00:30:42.220
self-talk whenever you see them really frustrated. And they're like, that's so dumb. It's not going to
00:30:45.920
work. This is the worst problem ever. And then they do it and they, they feel better,
00:30:49.700
but it's hard. It's really hard. Yeah. Look, I think this is with, without exaggeration,
00:30:56.840
this is a multi-trillion dollar problem. I mean, if you look, if you look alone at the impairments
00:31:03.020
we have, like in the workforce due to mental health issues that are chatter related, it's a,
00:31:08.300
it's a huge problem that doesn't even take into account the health concerns. This is something that
00:31:13.160
I think our species has struggled with probably since we started talking to ourselves, quite
00:31:18.680
frankly. I mean, you know, these are biblical problems, Adam and Eve and the snake, like
00:31:23.760
people have been worried about stuff for a very long time. And so I think just understanding that
00:31:31.280
is, is important for just normalizing this experience so that if people are listening and
00:31:36.200
you experience chatter at times, like, great, you're a human being, but, but again, you know,
00:31:42.240
the good news is that we evolved not only to have these destructive conversations with ourself or
00:31:48.880
harmful conversations, but we also evolved to possess tools to manage them. And, and I think
00:31:54.420
that's, you know, that's the uplifting side of this story is that there are things we can do to help.
00:31:59.860
So we've talked about managing or sort of reining in that negative internal chatter. Are there instances
00:32:05.520
where chatter, like not chatter, internal dialogue is positive. Like we should encourage it, like encourage
00:32:10.500
the voice in our head to talk more. Oh yeah. Yeah. I would, I would hate to, I would not wish on my
00:32:17.200
worst enemy, a life without an inner voice because our inner voice helps us do wonderful things like
00:32:23.300
problem solve and innovate and create. And so you want to have that tool at your disposal. The problem
00:32:31.820
is that when that inner voice is devoted to chatter, you can't use it to do all of the constructive
00:32:38.260
things that we can do with it. And so, so that's why, you know, I, I subtitled the book,
00:32:44.380
harnessing the voice in your head. It's not about shutting it down. It's not about silencing your
00:32:50.720
inner voice. It's about, it's about figuring out how to wield it. You know, by way of analogy,
00:32:56.060
you can think of like a hammer, a hammer is an amazingly useful tool. I think no one would disagree
00:33:02.960
with that, right? Like you could build houses and other things with it. But if you don't know how
00:33:08.520
to use the hammer, or if you use it improperly, as I often do as someone without a handy bone in my
00:33:14.060
body, it could be a destructive force. And so it's about how to figure out how to use the tool.
00:33:20.400
And that's what the science that I talk about in the book speaks to.
00:33:24.900
Yeah. That one bit of advice is like, if you're going through like a, like a tough,
00:33:28.420
complex problem you're trying to work through, like talking to yourself in your head, it's like,
00:33:33.600
I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to do this. I've done that. And I found that it helps
00:33:37.580
and it's really useful. It's a quick little tool.
00:33:40.740
Well, well, you know, and we actually like the internal dialogue, we didn't have a chance to
00:33:43.740
talk about it, but like it's heavily involved in our ability to control ourselves. In fact,
00:33:49.680
according to many psychologists, self-talk is how we first learn to control ourselves. So our parents,
00:33:55.940
they give us instructions, they explain how to do things like, this is how you brush your teeth.
00:34:01.740
You know, no, you don't say that to someone else. It's rude. And then what little kids do is they
00:34:06.960
then go off in a corner and they repeat those instructions to themselves. So, you know, you said
00:34:13.680
you've got a 10 year old son, right? When he was little, I'm guessing there were probably instances
00:34:19.080
in which you, you saw him just talking out loud to himself. Is it fair to say that?
00:34:24.060
Yes. I still see him talking. You still see him do it. So, so like, this is common. Like many kids
00:34:30.060
will have like full blown conversations with themselves out loud. That's how they are learning
00:34:34.540
self-control. They're repeating what their parents are saying to them. And at first they do it out
00:34:39.140
loud, but over time they start giving themselves instructions silently using their inner voice.
00:34:46.520
And, and we, you know, we hold onto that throughout our lives. So we rely on that inner voice to control
00:34:53.380
ourselves. So we wouldn't want to give it up. Wouldn't want to give it up. Well, Ethan, this has
00:34:57.700
been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:35:01.620
They can go to my website, www.ethancross.com. It's K-R-O-S-S. And you'll be able to find information
00:35:10.080
about me, my lab and the book there. So ethancross.com. Fantastic. Well, Ethan Cross,
00:35:15.360
thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Super fun. Thanks so much for having me.
00:35:19.140
My guest, it was Ethan Cross. He's the author of the book Chatter. It's available on amazon.com
00:35:23.260
and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website,
00:35:26.500
ethancross.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash chatter. We can find links to resources.
00:35:40.080
Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 podcast. Check out our website at
00:35:43.840
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00:35:47.040
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00:36:12.760
Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you not on the list of the A1 podcast,