The Art of Manliness - How to Get a Handle on the Voice in Your Head

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. We all talk

00:00:11.500 to ourselves all the time. This kind of inner dialogue can be a good thing, helps us focus

00:00:15.460 and helps us work through problems, but it can also go off the rails, turning into worry

00:00:19.280 and negative rumination. My guest today calls this negative self-talk chatter, and in his

00:00:23.400 book of the same name, he outlines how to get a handle on it. His name is Ethan Cross.

00:00:26.680 He's a psychologist and the director of emotion self-control laboratory. And we begin our

00:00:30.220 conversation with the way introspection can be both good and bad and the function of the

00:00:34.560 voice in our heads. We discuss why negative emotions makes us want to reach out to other

00:00:37.940 people and start talking and how this impulse can be harnessed in either a positive or detrimental

00:00:41.980 way. We then unpack how managing the way we talk to ourselves really comes down to zooming

00:00:45.840 out and getting distance from the self and how this can be accomplished with a variety

00:00:49.280 of tools from engaging in a kind of time travel to going out in nature. After the show's over,

00:00:53.720 check out our show notes at aom.is slash chatter. Ethan joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:09.080 All right, Ethan Cross, welcome to the show.

00:01:11.800 Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here.

00:01:13.900 So you're a psychologist and you've spent your career researching and writing about something

00:01:18.680 that people, you know, they do all the time, but they don't like to talk about it because

00:01:22.660 they think they might be crazy. But you research how people talk to themselves in their head.

00:01:28.860 How did you fall in that line of research when you were like a young psychology student?

00:01:33.080 Why did you say, I'm going to look into that?

00:01:36.220 Great question. Actually, it started before I was a psych student. So it started way back

00:01:40.880 when I was a little kid, when I was like three or four years old. My dad was always really into

00:01:45.940 Eastern philosophy and things that didn't seem very cool or exciting when I was a kid.

00:01:50.460 And he used to always encourage me to introspect when bad things happen. So if I was having trouble

00:01:55.920 with something, you know, he'd tell me to go inside and try to figure out a solution to the

00:02:00.300 problem so I could move on. And I, by and large, listened to his advice and it served me well

00:02:05.700 throughout my childhood and adolescence. And then I got to college and I took a class on psychology and,

00:02:11.220 and I learned that, yes, introspection can be really, really good for lots of people.

00:02:16.780 A lot of the time, bad things happen, focus inward, try to make sense of what you're feeling. And,

00:02:22.760 you know, language is involved in doing that, our inner voice. It helps us storify life.

00:02:28.260 What I also learned is that this process of going inside, it often backfires in spectacular ways. So

00:02:34.220 people often do exactly what my dad used to tell me to do, but they don't end up feeling better.

00:02:39.560 They end up worrying and ruminating and catastrophizing and engaging what I call

00:02:44.000 chatter, which is, captures that, the, the reverberating negative thoughts that often run

00:02:49.720 through our head that lead us to feel like we're spinning. We're not getting anywhere where we're

00:02:52.780 trying to solve a problem. And so the big puzzle for me was, well, why is introspection sometimes

00:02:58.740 really helpful and other times really harmful? What distinguishes between the healthy versus

00:03:04.740 harmful way of talking to ourselves? And I spent my career trying to figure that out.

00:03:09.100 And we'll, we'll unpack those differences, but before we do, like, what do we know about that

00:03:12.600 internal dialogue that we have with ourselves? Does like, does everyone do it? Like, how old are we

00:03:17.340 when we start doing it, et cetera? Yeah. So when we're talking about the inner voice in technical

00:03:22.760 terms, we're talking about silent verbal processing. So using language silently in your head,

00:03:28.500 and this is an amazing superpower that we all possess. And it's one that serves many different

00:03:35.480 functions. So the inner voice isn't just one thing. It's not just the, you know, the ongoing stream of

00:03:42.240 thoughts that's narrating your life. The inner voice also captures lots of other things. Like, you know,

00:03:48.520 if I, if I were to ask you to repeat a phone number silently in your head, so repeat right now,

00:03:54.100 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.

00:04:01.600 Yeah. So that's tapping into your, your verbal working memory, which your inner voice is involved

00:04:07.740 with, right? Like it's this ability to, to rehearse verbal information. Everyone who has a well-functioning

00:04:14.860 mind can do that. It's part of the basic architecture of the human mind. Language helps us process

00:04:20.880 information, but it could also help us do other things like simulate how we're going to behave

00:04:26.620 in the future. So before I have a high stakes speech, I'll often in my head, rehearse what I'm

00:04:32.580 going to say. I'll then imagine what an unruly audience member is going to ask me to try to trip

00:04:38.940 me up. I'll hear what they're going to ask me, and then I'll hear myself respond. So our inner voice

00:04:43.400 is helping us plan and simulate there. It can also help us control ourselves. Like when you're doing a

00:04:48.700 really difficult problem, all right, put this piece here, then put this piece here and then do

00:04:54.080 this. I'm of course projecting right now, because I'm talking, that was an example of putting together

00:04:58.840 like a kid's toy, which I'm terrible at. So, but, but that's another usage of your inner voice. So it

00:05:05.160 does lots of different things in terms of when it develops. Some of the earliest research studies

00:05:11.780 that speak to this suggest around 18 months. That's not to say it doesn't develop earlier,

00:05:16.620 but that's as early as I've seen a documentation of it in a scientific article.

00:05:22.780 And when you say that everyone does it, every, like you, even this includes deaf people who can't 0.99

00:05:28.000 hear it. I thought this was really interesting. Like what they do is they kind of like an internal

00:05:31.840 sign language dialogue going on with themselves.

00:05:34.920 Yeah. So there's evidence that people who are deaf, they basically talk to themselves, but using 0.99

00:05:39.400 their sign language. So they, it's like inner, it's called inner signing instead of inner speech. So

00:05:44.140 they're using the same modality that they use to communicate with people in the world. They're

00:05:49.820 engaging that modality silently in their head. So, you know, I do want to point out that different

00:05:55.100 people may rely on their inner voice to do different things more or less than others. A couple of years

00:06:00.960 ago, there was a big hoopla on the internet about some people saying they don't have an internal voice

00:06:07.220 or running inner monologue. You know, I think it's possible that those individuals may not

00:06:12.440 constantly narrate their life. They don't have that inner stream constantly flowing, but at the other

00:06:19.920 end of the spectrum, can they use language silently to do things like rehearse a number? Yes. That's a

00:06:26.260 basic feature of the human mind.

00:06:28.980 And also this inner voice is fast. Like it's like you give this example, it's basically spitting out

00:06:33.740 tons of state of the union addresses in a matter of minutes.

00:06:38.360 Yeah. So we can talk to ourselves much faster than we can speak to other people out loud. And the reason

00:06:44.780 for that is there are really two, two factors. First, when we, when we're talking out loud, that's a

00:06:50.760 complicated process. We take it for granted, right? But we're actually, there is a lot of motor movements

00:06:55.720 involved. We're moving our mouth and our muscles, our diaphragm is going up and down. And so, so it's a,

00:07:01.620 it's a complicated behavior and we don't have to engage in the same steps when we're silently speaking

00:07:07.320 to ourselves. The second thing is that although we can talk to ourselves in full sentences, like

00:07:14.080 when I'm practicing what I'm going to say to someone else, I'll say it out loud. I'll say it

00:07:18.940 silently in a full sentence, but we can also talk to ourselves in a more compressed form. So we're not

00:07:25.800 actually talking to ourselves in full sentences. It's more like taking shorthand notes. Inner speech

00:07:31.960 can take that more compressed form. And that gives us a lot of verbal punch in a short period of time.

00:07:39.220 So as you said, we do this for, we had this internal monologue for a variety of reasons.

00:07:42.700 There's helps with our working memory and helps allows us to remember and call back numbers,

00:07:46.600 but also people, there's researchers who've looked and just asked people like,

00:07:50.160 tell us what you're thinking, like stream of conscious. And it's usually the content of internal

00:07:54.120 dialogue. So there's some of the, okay, I got to remember this thing, but then also it's just a

00:07:57.820 lot of like, Hey, I see this thing. And this is what I think about this thing. I know this reminds

00:08:02.160 me of this memory. Well, that's the other thing too, is that how a lot of times with our internal

00:08:06.240 dialogue, there's a lot of like time travel going on time jumping. Yeah. I think this is really

00:08:12.240 fascinating. We hear nowadays a lot about the importance of living in the moment and, and I'm all for

00:08:19.100 being present, present in the appropriate times, but I think it's easy to lose sight of the

00:08:23.920 fact that we spend a lot of time not living in the moment, traveling into the future and past.

00:08:29.680 And this is actually this, that's not a problem. That's a really amazing capacity. It's an amazing

00:08:35.860 capacity that distinguishes us from other animals, right? Like we can go back in time and, and reminisce

00:08:42.740 about things that happen, experience nostalgia. We can, we can try to figure out why we said that stupid 1.00

00:08:48.560 thing that got us in trouble. So we don't say that stupid thing again in the future. We can think 1.00

00:08:53.560 about the future and, and, and try to plan like, or fantasize. Like I'm regularly fantasizing about

00:09:00.720 what I'm going to do when this pandemic ends. Right. And I'm, I'm, I'm on a beach having a

00:09:05.380 pina colada. So this ability to travel in time is something that we are uniquely equipped to do.

00:09:11.740 And we spend a lot of time doing it. And so when you ask people what they're thinking about,

00:09:15.440 they're often not in the moment. They're, they're dipping back and forward in time.

00:09:19.540 Right. And this allows, I mean, it's basically how we're trying to make, it sounds like when we do

00:09:24.080 that, we're trying to make sense of our reality. We're that's, it's all sense-making essentially

00:09:28.820 orienting ourselves. I think that's a big piece of it. We know that, you know, human beings, we like

00:09:36.080 to, in an ideal world, we would just navigate the world on autopilot. And then when I say ideal,

00:09:41.700 I say ideal in the sense of how you could effortlessly live life, right? You're just traveling along.

00:09:47.480 You're not expending any resources to like make sense of what's happening around you. Cause it's,

00:09:53.340 it's, that's hard work. Like making sense of things is not easy. You wouldn't want to be doing

00:09:58.380 it all the time. And so when do we tend to try to make sense of things when we get stuck? And so,

00:10:04.820 you know, the other interesting thing coming out of the studies that you referenced that ask people

00:10:08.800 about what they're thinking, oftentimes the majority of the time that people are having these verbal

00:10:13.940 thoughts, they tend to be negative in, in their tone. So we tend to be talking to ourselves about,

00:10:20.160 about, about problems. And I think one of the reasons why that's the case is because problems

00:10:25.160 are often what we're trying to, to solve or trying to make sense of. And, and that's why they,

00:10:31.400 they occupy so much real estate quote unquote in our minds.

00:10:35.080 So you mentioned there, there could be some people who don't use this internal dialogue or voice as much

00:10:40.660 as other people do, but there's, there's that we've actually know of cases where people lose

00:10:45.540 their ability to talk to themselves. And it was, this happened to a person who's actually,

00:10:50.060 I think she was a neuroscientist, correct? Like she.

00:10:52.840 Yeah. She was a neuroanatomist. I tell the story in chatter and it's fascinating, right? So this woman

00:11:00.000 has a stroke and she, she loses, the stroke is localized in a part of the brain that is involved in

00:11:07.500 language. And so she's not only loses temporarily the ability to talk to other people, but also to

00:11:14.020 talk to herself. And initially she thought that this would, this would be great. And initially she

00:11:20.480 reported being elated. She no longer had the worries, the ruminations, that inner critic chirping

00:11:26.540 her, chirping up, telling her she wasn't good enough and so forth and so on. And that felt really good.

00:11:32.160 But as time went on, what she realized is she also couldn't rely on her, her inner speech to,

00:11:39.280 to help her make sense of who she was, right? We often use our inner speech. These, we have

00:11:47.020 conversations with ourselves to figure out things about who we are as we navigate this world. It

00:11:53.500 helps us, it helps shape our identity. And, and, and she lost that capacity, which ended up being

00:11:59.360 quite problematic for her. So I think an important take home from that lesson is

00:12:04.300 the inner voice, although it can be the source of a lot of pain, like when we're ruminating or

00:12:11.760 worrying, it is not in and of itself a bad thing. To the contrary, it's an amazing tool. Like it helps

00:12:19.120 us do a lot of things. It's just that it can slip into the negative territory when, when we start

00:12:24.340 ruminating or worrying. And so when it slips into the negative territory, I think the challenge is to

00:12:28.560 figure out how you can, how you can reign it in. And the good news is that there are lots of

00:12:33.960 science-based tools to help people do that. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our

00:12:37.940 sponsors. And now back to the show. Well, you start off the book talking about how even you as a

00:12:45.280 psychologist who studies and knows the research behind on what causes our inner voice to go negative

00:12:50.120 and how to reign it in. You had an experience where chatter, what you, what you call this sort of

00:12:55.280 negative voice just went crazy in your life. Can you tell us about that? Because I thought it was,

00:12:59.500 I think it's relatable. I think a lot of people might've experienced something similar to what

00:13:02.780 you've went through. Yeah. Well, you know, before I tell the story, let me preface it by saying that

00:13:07.680 there's a lot of research which shows that we're much better at giving advice to others than we are

00:13:12.860 following that advice ourselves. And I unfortunately experienced this firsthand about 10 years ago when

00:13:19.560 I received a threatening letter in the mail and it really, it sent my, my chatter churning.

00:13:27.240 So, you know, I had never received a threat before and it was scary. And, you know, I had to file a

00:13:32.860 police report and that didn't do much to help allay my concerns. And so I ended up, you know, doing,

00:13:38.740 doing wacky things like pace my house until three in the morning with my baseball bat, making sure no one

00:13:44.040 was coming after my newborn daughter and wife and me. And it was an, it was an experience where

00:13:51.020 my, my self-talk, right? My harmful self-talk, my chatter was really taking over. I didn't have

00:13:58.720 control of it. It had control of me and it, it really negatively affected me for a couple of days.

00:14:04.600 I could not focus at work. It created friction in my relationships because I kept talking about this

00:14:11.180 concern to my wife over and over and over again. And, you know, she was trying to give me help,

00:14:15.780 but I wasn't listening. And there's no question that it momentarily impacted my, my health as well.

00:14:20.880 I wasn't sleeping. I didn't have my appetite. And so it really exerted a negative toll. Fortunately,

00:14:26.320 I was able to break out of that funk after a few days using some science-based tools that,

00:14:32.860 that we now know of, and we know how they work. But when I was caught in the chatter, it was not fun.

00:14:39.080 And, you know, this raises another, another question that I often get is like,

00:14:43.100 how do you know when you're experiencing chatter? People often ask me that. And my response is you

00:14:47.500 typically know, you typically know it when you're experiencing it, because it's really a very

00:14:52.520 unpleasant state, right? It doesn't feel good to be so hyper-focused on this one problem that you

00:14:59.500 can't think about anything else. So yeah, that was my, that was my personal experience with chatter

00:15:04.940 and that I hope to never duplicate. Have you ever had something like that happen to you?

00:15:08.360 Oh no, all the time. I can, yes. I've said this before on the podcast. I'm like Larry David,

00:15:13.720 tend to be a neurotic and I'll like think worst case scenario. And then I'll just, yeah, I'll do

00:15:17.780 that. And I've done what you did at like the low point for you during all this, when you Googled

00:15:22.320 bodyguard for college professors, thinking- Well, let me, let me, let me, let me preface that.

00:15:28.200 I considered Googling. Oh, you considered, okay.

00:15:30.800 Actually, you know, it was when I, when I actually started like typing it out before I actually hit

00:15:37.000 enter, I didn't because that was a moment that broke me out of this. And I thought to myself,

00:15:41.020 Ethan, you are being insane. So, but carry on, you've, you've investigated bodyguards, your podcast

00:15:48.040 hosts. No, yeah. Not bodyguards, but like, you know, whenever you get like a, some weird health

00:15:52.940 symptom, right? You're like, well, I'm going to go to Dr. Google and great. I've got this terminal

00:15:57.380 disease and you're, yeah, you know, you don't want to do that. It always ends with cancer. You

00:16:01.260 just, you don't want to. Exactly. It always is. So I thought that was interesting. So what's

00:16:04.420 interesting about the voice in our head, whenever we experience negative emotions, one of the natural

00:16:10.140 responses is that our internal dialogue actually starts talking more. And not only does our internal

00:16:16.480 dialogue want to talk more, we actually want to talk more to other people when we have negative

00:16:22.280 emotions. What's going on there? What causes that? Do we know?

00:16:24.860 Yeah. Well, so, so negative emotions act like jet fuel that propel us to want to share what we're

00:16:31.440 feeling with other people with, with really two exceptions. That's not true when we're experiencing

00:16:36.680 shame, which we tend to not want to share with other people or trauma, which we often try to avoid,

00:16:42.760 but the other kinds of negative emotions, anger, anxiety, sadness, there's a lot of research which

00:16:47.000 shows that when those emotions activate, we're really motivated to talk to other people about them.

00:16:52.840 So we talk more when we feel bad because A, we're looking for people to connect with empathically.

00:16:59.620 We want support. We want someone to help us. We want to know that there's someone who cares enough

00:17:04.680 about us that they're willing to listen. And so finding someone to talk to can be great for that,

00:17:09.240 right? You're sharing your experience and you're connecting with another person.

00:17:12.640 But what we also are looking for is advice or help broadening our perspective. So when we experience

00:17:19.500 chatter, when our inner monologues take a wrong turn and lead to worry and rumination, we often

00:17:26.340 like hyper-focus on our experience. We zoom in, tunnel vision. All we can think about very narrowly

00:17:32.900 is the awfulness of what we're feeling, what we're experiencing. And so what we've learned is what can be

00:17:39.280 really useful when that happens is to zoom out, to broaden our perspective. And other people are

00:17:46.380 in a great position to help us do that, right? So if you come to me with a problem, you had a really

00:17:52.920 bad argument with your partner, right? You tell me about it. So I hear a little bit about it. Oh,

00:17:59.280 that sounds terrible. Like, so we're empathically connecting, but then I can do things like, you know

00:18:04.260 what, but you know, you probably had arguments before and you got over it, right? So not the end

00:18:09.800 of the world. So I'm broadening your perspective there. Or I could say things like, yeah, you know

00:18:14.880 what? I've gotten into arguments like that with my wife over similar things. And here's how I deal

00:18:19.420 with that situation. Again, like I'm shifting the focus away from you being so zoomed in on what

00:18:25.700 happened to you that you can't think of anything else. And I'm trying to help you look at the bigger

00:18:31.380 picture. And so other people can do both of those things for us. They can give us support

00:18:37.140 and also advice. There's an important point I want to emphasize though, which is this in popular

00:18:44.340 culture. We often hear that when you're feeling bad and experiencing chatter, what you should do is

00:18:49.980 vent about your emotions to others. Just find someone to talk to and unload how you feel. The research

00:18:56.460 does not support that being an effective tool for helping us work through our emotions. And the

00:19:01.360 reason for that is when we vent our feelings, that does make us feel closer and more connected to

00:19:08.080 the people we're talking to. Like, so no, like that's a good thing, but it doesn't do anything

00:19:12.980 to help us help shift our perspective or change the way we think about things. So, so what you end up

00:19:18.480 having happen is you get, you get stuck in what we call a co-rumination session where you and I feel

00:19:24.720 really close to each other because we are, we're harping on how bad that thing was. Can you believe what

00:19:30.520 she said? Oh my God, that stinks. I'm never going to talk to her again. But we're essentially like 0.99

00:19:36.420 keeping the fire ablaze. We're not doing anything to work through the situation. So, so venting alone

00:19:44.000 is, is not an effective tool for managing chatter. And another, other interesting too, about venting

00:19:49.420 to someone else, like it might make you feel close in the short term, but if you, the problem with

00:19:53.240 negative chatter is that the more you do it, it sort of perpetuates itself. And if you keep going to

00:19:58.620 someone with like, you're just, you're negative, just carping, like that actually turns people off

00:20:04.300 and they're going to start pushing you away because they don't want to be around you anymore.

00:20:07.760 Exactly. So, so, you know, that's one of the negative relational effects that chatter can have.

00:20:13.080 It creates friction on our relationships because we just keep talking about it over and over and over

00:20:18.680 and over again. And guess what? It's not fun to be on the other side of that conversation when

00:20:23.640 all you're doing is, is rehashing the same thing at ad nauseum. And so, so, you know, chatter can

00:20:30.260 affect us negatively in a variety of ways. It can undermine our social relationships by creating

00:20:36.960 friction in them in the way that I just described. It could get under the skin to influence our health by,

00:20:43.320 by keeping our negative feelings alive over time. Like that exerts a real wear and tear on the body

00:20:49.460 that can be harmful. And it makes it impossible to focus on the task at hand. And, and for anyone who

00:20:55.980 questions how that might work, you know, I would ask you to think about trying to read a book when

00:21:03.320 you are ruminating or worrying about something, right? The experience most people have when,

00:21:08.140 when that happens is they read five pages, but they don't remember a thing that they've actually read

00:21:13.040 because their mind was focused on something else. And so it can be a really big problem.

00:21:17.940 Well, let's talk about some of the tools we can use to rein in on this negative chatter.

00:21:23.360 And a big part of it is it's what you call, you have to distance yourself from the negative voice.

00:21:29.020 What do you mean by that?

00:21:30.640 Well, so if chatter zooms us in really narrowly on the experiences that are, that are driving these

00:21:37.980 negative, you know, this negative inner voice, then one natural antidote to that is to zoom out,

00:21:43.840 to, you know, quote unquote, take a step back and try to think about your experience more objectively

00:21:48.760 from a broader perspective. And it turns out there are lots of ways to do that. And I'll tell you

00:21:54.420 about just two to make it concrete. So one thing that I do in particular with respect to COVID,

00:22:00.480 which is a chatter provoking event, I think for many of us is I'll do something called mental time

00:22:06.260 travel. So I'll, I'll think about how I'm going to feel 12 months from now when I'm vaccinated.

00:22:10.760 When I do that, what that little mental exercise does that distancing exercise does is it makes

00:22:16.660 it clear that what I'm experiencing right now, as awful as it is, it's temporary, it will eventually

00:22:21.680 pass. And that gives me hope. And we know that hope could be a really powerful tool for soothing

00:22:26.820 chatter. I'll also go back in time. I'll think about the pandemic of 1918. And the fact that as awful as

00:22:34.920 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

00:23:45.000 too.

00:23:45.320 All right. So yeah, you talk to yourself in the second person, like Brett.

00:23:49.520 Second person. Yeah.

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

00:25:50.300 according to their brain activity.

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 0.99

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.

00:35:31.840 We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:35:40.080 Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 podcast. Check out our website at

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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,

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The Art of Manliness - February 24, 2021

How to Get a Handle on the Voice in Your Head

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