Posted on:Mar 11 2021
Chatter by Ethan Kross
Introduction
Chapter One : Why We Talk to Ourselves
Chapter Two : When Talking to Ourselves Backfires
Chapter Three : Zooming Out
Chapter Four : When I Become You
Chapter Five : The Power and Peril of Other People
Chapter Six : Outside In
Chapter Seven : Mind Magic
Conclusion
The Tools
Another truly helpful book. Reading it is like opening a tool box - the author pulls out one tool at a time, chapter by chapter, and explains how to use it, how to be what he calls “mind mechanics.” So practical!
In some shape or form, we all have a voice in our head, we’re all having silent conversations with ourselves, and these conversations powerfully influence how we live our lives. Hopefully our inner voice functions well most of the time. (Regularly scheduled maintenance recommended. 😉 ) What most of us need help with is chatter-mode - when our inner voice ramps up and becomes, in a word, unhelpful.
Not surprisingly, our inner voice often ramps up to chatter-mode precisely when we need it most - “when our stress is up, the stakes are high, and we encounter difficult emotions that call for the utmost poise.”
I think we can agree we’d rather our inner voice more often be a “helpful superpower" than “destructive kryptonite,” our best coach rather than our worst critic.
Paying attention to our self-talk is a game-changer for mental health and all-around well-being. We’ve all been in situations where our inner experience completely dwarfs the outer one. You’re somewhere doing something that should be fun - like dinner out with friends - but you’re miserable and not very there because of frustratingpainfulallconsuming chatter. Ugh.
And, yes, there’s research showing that what we’re thinking is often a more reliable predictor of happiness than what we’re actually doing.
A unique feature of the mind is its ability to time travel. We can reflect back or imagine forward in our attempt to both make sense of our experiences and plan for the future. We use our minds to write the story of our lives, with us as the main character - this helps us mature, figure out our values and desires, and weather changes and adversity by keeping us rooted in a continuous identity. We use our words, this inner dialogue, to smooth and connect, to “storify” our lives into something cohesive.
And we re-storify as we go through life. This is essential because our earliest stories, going all the way back, are ones we internalized, typically starting with our parents. Over the course of our lives, we transition from an outside-in voice to finding our very own inside-out voice. Needless to say, it can be a bumpy ride. And, as life would have it, those of us who become parents find ourselves in the position of being an outside-in before our inside-out has had much time to travel from head to heart ! Ha, enter the perfect little zen master to illuminate this journey...but that’s for another blog...
Anyway, for hopefully-more-better-than-worse, mine is a voice internalized by my two sons. And inspitebecauseof whatever amount of their respective inner-voice chatter is a la moi, I very much want to contribute positively as they continue shaping their inside-out. Which piano key am I going to strike? I especially want to be helpful when they’re experiencing chatter.
So Chapter 5 - “The Power and Peril of Other People” - really got my attention.
My operative question: When either of my sons, now 25 and 22, comes to me to talk about a negative experience, i.e. to reduce chatter, do I offer the right kind of verbal support?
Because study after study has shown that talking to others about our negative experiences doesn’t help us recover in any meaningful way ! On the one hand, sharing our emotions with others makes us feel closer to and more supported by the people we open up to. But the ways most of us commonly talk and listen to each other do little to reduce our chatter !
Tend and befriend is a two-step process. Beingaware of potential backfires is desirable.
When P or R comes to me to reduce chatter, step one is to satisfy their emotional needs. Active listening, showing empathy, and patience are the key here. Done well, this should offer emotional relief.
Step two involves satisfying their cognitive needs. Chatter is like a riddle that demands solving - our inner voice is running amok and we need outside help to work through the problem. Helping them zoom out to see the bigger picture so they can decide the most constructive course of action is essential. Done well, this should offer cognitive relief.
(These two steps are not new news to me. Nor does it feel like my tool box is missing a tool (I think I’d know by now). It’s more about taking my current tools and cultivating next-level awareness as I engage with two post-college, career-launching, young adult males.)
To help reduce their chatter, it’s not just about listening, caring, and supporting - it’s also about this other step that, let’s be honest, we all need help with: distancing, normalizing, and changing the way we’re thinking about the experiences we’re going through. This cools down emotions, pulls us out of dead-end rumination, and helps us redirect our verbal stream.
This is where talking about chatter-inducing experiences can backfire in spite of its enormous potential to help : when our minds are bathed in chatter, we prioritize our emotional needs over our cognitive needs. We’d rather receive step one/empathy than step two/practical solutions. We might, er, resist moving to step two altogether.
Another potential backfire: When P or R seek me out during chatter, I often need to hear the play-by-play to “understand” what occurred. But here’s the thing - only to a point, because rehashing revives the unpleasantness and I must be careful that my good intentions to “understand” don’t make them feel worse! “Understanding” must not drift to egging on, aka co-rumination.
So it’s really important to recognize the pivot point - 1) the right amount of listening, validating, and supporting and in the right way, before 2) shifting towards some big-picture perspective, to helping them generate a plan or creatively reframe the problem at hand.
This second step is “critical for helping people harness their inner voice in ways that lead them to experience less chatter over time.”
P and R are old enough now to think critically after a chatter-provoking event, and to reflect on who helped me? and who didn’t. Who immersed vs. who helped distance and reframe?
They also understand diversifying their sources of support, turning to different relationships for different needs. They seem motivated to learn who is best at helping them engage in cognitive problem solving.
I’m for sure motivated to stay on their chatter-calming board of advisors.
I’ll keep doing my imperfect best to tune my step 1 and 2 skills.
Thank you, truly helpful book.
