Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, it's Maya. As you may know, May
Speaker 1: is Mental health Awareness Month, and so I wanted to
Speaker 1: go back into the archives and revisit some of my
Speaker 1: favorite conversations with scientists about how we can live healthier,
Speaker 1: happier lives. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Professor
Speaker 1: Ethan Cross. He studies the science of our inner chatter,
Speaker 1: that relentless voice in our heads that can sometimes drive
Speaker 1: us nuts. This episode was really therapeutic for me, and
Speaker 1: I hope it is for you too.
Speaker 2: Just last night, we were at the dinner table and
Speaker 2: one of my two daughters was telling me about a
Speaker 2: problem that she experienced with another person at school. It
Speaker 2: was really bugging her the way this other student behave
Speaker 2: towards her, and she kept on going over the problem,
Speaker 2: repeating it seventeen thousand different ways, and she wasn't making
Speaker 2: any progress towards actually finding a way to think about
Speaker 2: this thing that would make her feel better, and instead
Speaker 2: it just kept all of those negative feelings alive. That's
Speaker 2: what I call chatter. You keep on trying to think
Speaker 2: and work through the problem, but you don't make any progress.
Speaker 1: Ethan Cross is a professor of psychology at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan, and he wrote the book Chatter, The Voice
Speaker 1: in Our Heads, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.
Speaker 1: Ethan's an expert on the science of introspection, and his
Speaker 1: research focuses on those moments when our inner voice turns negative,
Speaker 1: and he gives us strategies for how to tame it
Speaker 1: when it does.
Speaker 2: One of the things we know about chatter is it
Speaker 2: zooms us in on our problems. We get stuck thinking
Speaker 2: in a very narrow way about only this issue, right
Speaker 2: We're not thinking about the bigger picture or alternative ways
Speaker 2: of making sense of that circumstance. And what we've learned
Speaker 2: over the years is that being able to step back,
Speaker 2: just take a little step back in your mind, get
Speaker 2: some psychological distance from your problems, can be really useful
Speaker 2: for broadening our perspective and helping us work through the
Speaker 2: situation more objectively.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, how to Control our Inner Voice to
Speaker 1: help us live happier, healthier lives, I'm Maya Shunker and
Speaker 1: this is a slight change of plans, a show about
Speaker 1: who we are and who we become in the face
Speaker 1: of a big change. We're all familiar with our inner voice.
Speaker 1: It's that running monologue in our heads that sometimes serves
Speaker 1: us well and at other times, was the case with
Speaker 1: Ethan's daughter, totally drives us nuts, and when it does,
Speaker 1: it can really affect our well being. The good news
Speaker 1: science shows we can change the way we engage with
Speaker 1: our inner voice, and Ethan is here to help. But
Speaker 1: before we dive into all that, I asked Ethan to
Speaker 1: give us an overview of the positive aspects of this
Speaker 1: uniquely human ability.
Speaker 2: I like to think about this inner voice as a
Speaker 2: kind of Swiss army knife of the human mind that
Speaker 2: lets us achieve a number of important things. So, at
Speaker 2: the most basic end of the spectrum, your inner voice
Speaker 2: lets you just keep information active in your heads. This
Speaker 2: may not be the most glamorous feature of it, but
Speaker 2: my oh my, is it an important one. So if
Speaker 2: you go to the grocery store, for example, and you're
Speaker 2: like me, you know, my wife tells me what we need,
Speaker 2: and thirty seconds later I forget what those things are.
Speaker 2: I'm walking down the grocery all that, I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 2: what do I have to order? And I go over
Speaker 2: the list in my head. Cheeze granola fruit I'm using
Speaker 2: words silently to repeat those items. It's part of our
Speaker 2: working memory system, basic system of the human mind that
Speaker 2: is fundamental to our ability to navigate the world. So
Speaker 2: your in a voice lets you do that, but then
Speaker 2: it lets you do lots of other Arguably, I don't know,
Speaker 2: sexier things like like tell stories. Right, So we experienced
Speaker 2: adversity in our lives. Oh my god, my paper was rejected,
Speaker 2: my kid didn't do well on the soccer field. I
Speaker 2: didn't have a great conversation with a colleague yesterday. When
Speaker 2: that happens, we turn our attention inward to make sense
Speaker 2: of what happened to us, and we use our inner
Speaker 2: voice to create those stories. That's a that's a really
Speaker 2: important capacity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love another one you mentioned in your book,
Speaker 1: which is that our inability to escape our minds is
Speaker 1: also a driver of human ingenuity. It's like the fact
Speaker 1: that we can't escape our minds is giving us this
Speaker 1: fertile so for creative ideas to come into existence. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean those the thoughts you have in the shower
Speaker 1: and you're taking a walk and you don't even notice it,
Speaker 1: but your mind is drifting off and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you come up with the new idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean I think this is the source
Speaker 2: of human innovation, which is why I think we actually
Speaker 2: want to give ourselves latitude to let our introspective capacities
Speaker 2: run wild. So, you know, it's interesting. There's some research
Speaker 2: which suggests that we spend between one half and one
Speaker 2: third of our waking hours not focused on the present,
Speaker 2: and sometimes those data are used to suggest that there's
Speaker 2: a huge problem, right, because we should always be in
Speaker 2: the present, but this ability to travel in time in
Speaker 2: our minds so to turn our attention inwhere to think
Speaker 2: about our past and anticipate the future. This lets us
Speaker 2: do a number of remarkable things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's dig in right to this live in
Speaker 1: the present more mantra. Right, that is very much in
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist. I want to hear what your reaction is
Speaker 1: to this, because it strikes me that we are we
Speaker 1: are forgetting the benefits of allowing our minds to wander,
Speaker 1: And my personal view is that we are failing to
Speaker 1: appreciate how remarkable it is that we even have this
Speaker 1: ability in the first place. So just a personal anecdote
Speaker 1: is I remember my good friend from college Dane. He
Speaker 1: got onto the mindfulness meditation present mind in this train,
Speaker 1: and he got really enamored with this particular spiritual guru.
Speaker 1: I remember Dane telling me, oh, yeah, Maya, like you
Speaker 1: got to stay more in the present, and he sends
Speaker 1: me a video of this guru, and the guru is
Speaker 1: going on and on about the importance of staying in
Speaker 1: the present, and then at one point he calls out
Speaker 1: a member of the audience and he kind of gives
Speaker 1: him a stern lecture and he's like, what have you
Speaker 1: found yourself thinking about? And the guy's like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: I was kind of imagining that I was going to
Speaker 1: go to lunch after this, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: imagine what I was going to order at the restaurant
Speaker 1: and what it was going to taste like. And you know,
Speaker 1: he gets the audience member gets scolded by the guru
Speaker 1: for having these thoughts, and I'm thinking to myself, first
Speaker 1: of all, this guru is very boring to me. So
Speaker 1: it's wonderful that this audience member had an escape route
Speaker 1: from the lecture that was happening. But two, it's amazing
Speaker 1: that we have this faculty that allows us at times
Speaker 1: to escape our present environment and think about other things,
Speaker 1: to daydream, to think about the future, to anticipate things
Speaker 1: like that is a rich part of the human experience
Speaker 1: that I don't want to be lost on people, and
Speaker 1: so I think, I think reframing our relationship with our
Speaker 1: inner monologue chatter it can be in the long term
Speaker 1: a productive way of actually solving some of the challenges
Speaker 1: that accompany the inner voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree. You know. I use the title
Speaker 2: Harness our Inner Voice for the title for the book.
Speaker 2: The subtitle I didn't say silence, and that was a
Speaker 2: very strategic decision. A lot of people that I speak
Speaker 2: to when we're talking about, you know, the inner voice
Speaker 2: run a muck, which is essentially chatter when you're getting
Speaker 2: stuck in those thought loops that you can't escape, and
Speaker 2: they are, for lack of a better term, driving you nuts. Right,
Speaker 2: They're so oppressive and stifling and really not fun. So
Speaker 2: many people ask me, Okay, what can I do to
Speaker 2: get rid of it? I just want to shut it up.
Speaker 2: I don't want to have an InterVoice. And there's a
Speaker 2: story I tell in the book. It's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite stories. It's of a woman named Jobol Taylor who
Speaker 2: was a Harvard neuro anatomis working at the very top
Speaker 2: of her game, and like so many of us, she
Speaker 2: experienced chatter from time to time, and she thought this
Speaker 2: same thing to herself. She would ask them, how can
Speaker 2: I silence this inner voice? And she got an answer
Speaker 2: to that question one morning when she was exercising on
Speaker 2: a treadmill, because she suffered a stroke that temporarily, you know,
Speaker 2: wiped out her ability to use language, not only to
Speaker 2: communicate with other people, but also with herselves. And initially
Speaker 2: she described this experience as wait for it, strangely, you fork. Now,
Speaker 2: that's remarkable to me, right, She's just had a massive stroke.
Speaker 2: It's targeted language centers in her brain. She cannot speak
Speaker 2: to other people or to herself. And what's the emotion
Speaker 2: relief because all the chatter is gone, all that chatter
Speaker 2: that was weighing her down. But as the days and
Speaker 2: weeks went on, she began to describe this experience as
Speaker 2: quite debilitating, because although the chatter was gone, so were
Speaker 2: all of the good things that her inner voice allowed
Speaker 2: her to do, like plan for the future and control
Speaker 2: herself and create stories and keep things in mind and.
Speaker 1: So and improve as a person. By the way, like
Speaker 1: the negative chatter is productive, it's very helpful. It's data
Speaker 1: to ourselves about how we can become better people, right
Speaker 1: and take feedback in and work at things.
Speaker 2: That touches on another I think an important reframe for listeners,
Speaker 2: which is we often strive to lead lives free of
Speaker 2: negative emotions, but in fact, all emotions are useful when
Speaker 2: experienced in small doses. When I experienced a small ping
Speaker 2: of anxiety before a big presentation, that's really really a
Speaker 2: useful response, because what it does is it says, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, start preparing and don't just walk in there
Speaker 2: and think you could wing it. There have been a
Speaker 2: few occasions where I haven't experienced any emotion before presentation.
Speaker 2: Those presentations actually didn't turn out as well as the
Speaker 2: ones that I was a little bit on edge for.
Speaker 2: And the same is true for all the negative emotions
Speaker 2: we experience. What makes them useful is that they are painful.
Speaker 2: They do draw our attention in you just don't want
Speaker 2: to bathe in them endlessly. That's when they become counterproductive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so with that in mind, let's get into
Speaker 1: the kind of the darker sides of this ability. As
Speaker 1: we've discussed. So much of our lived experience is the
Speaker 1: thoughts that are happening in our heads, and so it's
Speaker 1: important for us to learn how to better manage those thoughts, right,
Speaker 1: to better manage that monologue. And this is especially true
Speaker 1: because another thing you point out in your book is
Speaker 1: that our inner voice is more predictive of our happiness
Speaker 1: than what we're actually doing. And man, is this going
Speaker 1: to be salient for so many people who are listening,
Speaker 1: Like I'm on the luxury vacation, I'm on the beach,
Speaker 1: I'm apposedly having the time of my life, and yet
Speaker 1: I'm anxious about something that's happening back home, and my
Speaker 1: mind is not even present and fully sabotages what's otherwise
Speaker 1: supposed to be a great experience. When does our inner
Speaker 1: voice become harmful and transform into what you call chatter?
Speaker 2: So it becomes harmful when we experience something in our
Speaker 2: life that that cues to try to use this tool
Speaker 2: that we have to make sense of our feelings, but
Speaker 2: the tool gets jammed up, so something bad happens. We
Speaker 2: turn our attention in we'd to try to make sense
Speaker 2: of the problem, but we get stuck in a negative
Speaker 2: thought loop. That's what I call chatter. You keep on
Speaker 2: trying to think and work through the problem, but you
Speaker 2: don't make any progress. And there are lots of different
Speaker 2: terms that scientists have used to describe this state. If
Speaker 2: it's chatter about the past, we tend to call that ruminating.
Speaker 2: If it's about the future or present, we call that worrying.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we call it perseverating. But the common idea here
Speaker 2: is you're trying to make sense of a problem with language,
Speaker 2: but you're not making any forward progress. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like the visual is one of a hamster on an
Speaker 2: exercise wheel.
Speaker 1: H We fall prey to this illusion when we're actively
Speaker 1: repeating those loops in our mind that we are actually
Speaker 1: making progress because just merely indulging in that topic, right,
Speaker 1: like staying in that space. I think it fools our
Speaker 1: brains into thinking, ah, I am in fact advancing because
Speaker 1: look at how much airtime this topic is getting in
Speaker 1: my mind. And then only maybe hours later, do you realize,
Speaker 1: oh crap, I'm in exactly the same position that I
Speaker 1: was in at the beginning. But I've been seduced by
Speaker 1: that this feeling of oh, you know, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: a real resolve it if I just kind of keep
Speaker 1: it marinating in there, and then without really sophisticated strategies
Speaker 1: like from cognitive behavioral therapy and whatnot, you know, oftentimes
Speaker 1: it's not that productive.
Speaker 2: Well, and think about how much experience you have succeeding
Speaker 2: in the usage of this tool. Like most of the time,
Speaker 2: this tool, this ability to use language to think analytically
Speaker 2: about a problem, it serves you really really will. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is undoubtedly why you have been able to achieve
Speaker 2: the things that you have accomplished in your life, and
Speaker 2: the same is true for so many other people. So
Speaker 2: you've got this tool that often works really really well.
Speaker 2: It should work here it's not working. I'm not a
Speaker 2: I don't give up. I'm gonna keep going. And so
Speaker 2: that's when you really need this ability to step back,
Speaker 2: if you will, and just recognize weight this approach isn't working.
Speaker 2: Let me shift perspective or do any number of other
Speaker 2: things to help reconcile the situation. So, you know, it's
Speaker 2: something that we all fall victim to at times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you say more about how that inner monologue
Speaker 1: can lead us astray in these moments or what the
Speaker 1: negative consequences can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, happy to. So when the inner voice morphs into chatter,
Speaker 2: it sinks us in three domains of life that I
Speaker 2: think are three domains that we care a lot about
Speaker 2: and really make life worth living. And that's why I
Speaker 2: think it's such a huge problem. First, chatter consumes our
Speaker 2: attention to the point where we have very little left
Speaker 2: over to focus on other things. And so the example
Speaker 2: I like to give people is to to think about
Speaker 2: a time when you're work, worried about something you ruminating,
Speaker 2: and you sit down, you try to read a couple
Speaker 2: of pages in a book or a magazine, and you
Speaker 2: read the pages, you are sure, like under oath, you
Speaker 2: would swear that the information has past your gaze, but
Speaker 2: you don't remember anything that you have read. It is
Speaker 2: an incredibly common experience, and the idea is very very simple.
Speaker 2: We only have so much attention. If all of it
Speaker 2: is being consumed by your chatter, that means not much
Speaker 2: is leftover to do your job. Not a good thing.
Speaker 2: We also know that chatter can undo our habits, and
Speaker 2: the way this works is like what is a habit?
Speaker 2: A habit is a complex set of behaviors that are
Speaker 2: strung together through repeated practice. So when I get up
Speaker 2: on stage to give a presentation. I've given hundreds and
Speaker 2: hundreds of talks. I've learned to do things without thinking,
Speaker 2: like to move my hands in particular ways and vary
Speaker 2: my vocal tone and smile and look at different people
Speaker 2: in the audience. If I start to worry about what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, oh my god, am I giving a good presentation?
Speaker 2: What happens is I zoom in on all the individual behaviors.
Speaker 2: Am I smiling enough?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Am I using the stage appropriately? And once you start
Speaker 2: doing that, the whole script explodes, the behavior explodes. You
Speaker 2: don't do well. And we saw this happen on the
Speaker 2: grandest stage in the Olympics when Simone Biles dropped out
Speaker 2: because of what she called the twisties. The twisties are
Speaker 2: another name for chatter. Sometimes they're called the yips. And
Speaker 2: if you think about Simone's situation, I think it really
Speaker 2: highlights just how toxic this can be. Here. You have
Speaker 2: someone who is on the peak. You know, she's at
Speaker 2: the peak of her career on the grandest stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she appropriate best in human history as well.
Speaker 2: Best in human history, and she has to drop out
Speaker 2: appropriately because it was dangerous and so that's what chatter
Speaker 2: can do to us when it comes to our individual performance.
Speaker 2: If we shift to the second domain, we know that
Speaker 2: chatter undermines our relationships. That can create friction, and there
Speaker 2: are a couple of ways that works too. One thing
Speaker 2: that chatter can do is it can push other people
Speaker 2: who care about us away. And here are the ideas.
Speaker 2: You've got a problem and you're motivated to share it
Speaker 2: with other people for a variety of reasons. You want
Speaker 2: to get support. But what happens is you talk to
Speaker 2: the other person about the problem, and then you keep
Speaker 2: talking about it over and over and over again. And
Speaker 2: for most of us, there's only so much we can
Speaker 2: listen to before we ourselves start to get brought down.
Speaker 2: And so that's one of the ways that that chatter
Speaker 2: can alienate us from others, lead us to feel socially
Speaker 2: rejected and alone. These are not healthy states. Boy, I'm
Speaker 2: getting depressed just talking about this maya but let me
Speaker 2: quickly just mention the final domain, which is our physical health,
Speaker 2: that I think is really important to highlight. Many people
Speaker 2: think that experience stress like stress kills This is a
Speaker 2: very popular idea. It turns out that is not exactly correct.
Speaker 2: What we know is that the ability to experience a
Speaker 2: stress response is an amazingly useful biological reaction to a
Speaker 2: confronting threat. It is really useful to know that if
Speaker 2: we see a threat in our world, we have a
Speaker 2: system that is designed to get us to approach or
Speaker 2: avoid it in a split second. What makes stress toxic
Speaker 2: is when the stress response goes up and remains chronically
Speaker 2: elevated over time, over days, over weeks. That's what chatter
Speaker 2: does because we experience a threat in our world, and
Speaker 2: then we keep replaying it in our minds, sometimes even
Speaker 2: making it worse, and that keeps the whole stress machinery
Speaker 2: going in ways that lead stress to predict things like
Speaker 2: cardiovascular disease and certain forms of cancer and other unpleasant
Speaker 2: and physical states to talk about so thinking, performing relationships
Speaker 2: health Chatter wraps its tentacles around all of those domains,
Speaker 2: and it's why I think it's one of the big
Speaker 2: problems we face.
Speaker 1: I promise hope is on the way. Don't worry. When
Speaker 1: we return Ethan will give us some science based strategies
Speaker 1: to help us harness our inner voice. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back with a slight change of plans. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: need some hope, Ethan. You got to help us out here,
Speaker 1: all right, I'd love to do a deep dive in
Speaker 1: some of the strategies we can use for better managing
Speaker 1: our chatter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just to give give everyone a framework for
Speaker 2: thinking about these tools and also being hopeful for managing
Speaker 2: their chatter. I want to be super clear, there are
Speaker 2: lots and lots of tools that exist for managing our chatter,
Speaker 2: and so like when I think about the potential that
Speaker 2: is out there, a lot of it. So where do
Speaker 2: you find these tools? You could think of them as
Speaker 2: falling into three different domains or buckets. Things you could
Speaker 2: do on your own, relationship tools, ways of talking or
Speaker 2: interacting with other people that can be uphull, and then
Speaker 2: what I call environmental or physical tools out there in
Speaker 2: the world. If we start with the first category, things
Speaker 2: you could do on your own, one of the things
Speaker 2: we know about chatter is it zooms us in on
Speaker 2: our problems. We get stuck thinking in a very narrow
Speaker 2: way about only this issue, right, We're not thinking about
Speaker 2: the bigger picture or alternative ways of making sense of
Speaker 2: that circumstance. And what we've learned over the years. Is
Speaker 2: that being able to step back, just take a little
Speaker 2: step back in your mind, get some psychological distance from
Speaker 2: your problems can be really useful for broadening our perspective
Speaker 2: and helping us work through the situation more objectively. One
Speaker 2: of the findings that my colleagues and I and several
Speaker 2: years ago, that I always come back to is this
Speaker 2: we are much much better at giving advice to other
Speaker 2: people than we are following our own advice. I find
Speaker 2: this really remarkable. You know a friend or a loved
Speaker 2: one who is struggling with the same problem that you
Speaker 2: might have experienced at some point when they come to them.
Speaker 1: Sorry, just sorry, sorry interrupting. I just want to clarify,
Speaker 1: because I think, is it about we're better at giving
Speaker 1: advice to other people than following our owner We're better
Speaker 1: at giving advice to others than we are at giving
Speaker 1: advice to ourselves.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say giving advice to others, we're better
Speaker 2: at doing that than following our own advice.
Speaker 1: Okay, because it also seems like we sometimes give ourselves
Speaker 1: bad advice as well when it's the first person thing,
Speaker 1: because emotions cloud our judgments.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I would say it's probably both actually
Speaker 2: so we give better. We give ourselves often poorer advice,
Speaker 2: and we have trouble following the more effective pieces when
Speaker 2: we think about them. And it's a pretty pervasive phenomenon.
Speaker 2: And what we've learned is that there are lots of
Speaker 2: different psychological tools people can use to shift their perspective
Speaker 2: and get them to think about their problems like they
Speaker 2: were weighing in on someone else's problems. And when you
Speaker 2: do that, you often find less chatter, more objective thinking,
Speaker 2: what we might even call wiser reasoning about about issues
Speaker 2: that we're facing. I'll tell you about two of my favorites,
Speaker 2: which also happen to be two tools that I use
Speaker 2: myself if I experienced shadow. They're my first lines of defense.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: The first one is maybe counterintuitive to folks. What it
Speaker 2: involves doing is trying to coach yourself through a problem
Speaker 2: using your own name or the second person pronound you. So,
Speaker 2: if I'm really upset about something and spinning alread ethan,
Speaker 2: here's what you're going to do. Here's how you're going
Speaker 2: to manage the situation. I'm basically talking to myself like
Speaker 2: I would speak to another person, right, the second person
Speaker 2: prone on you. This is a part of speech that
Speaker 2: we almost exclusively use when we think about and refer
Speaker 2: to other people. That shifts your perspective. It puts you
Speaker 2: into this different mode of thinking about your problems. It's
Speaker 2: like you're giving advice to your best friend, and when
Speaker 2: you're in that mode of advice giving, you come up
Speaker 2: with much better solutions to your problems. So that's a
Speaker 2: really simple thing that people can do to switch their perspectives,
Speaker 2: and that's the first thing that I'll do. Another distancing
Speaker 2: tool that is really easy and works for many situations
Speaker 2: is something that we call temporal distancing, or thinking about
Speaker 2: how you're going to feel about something that's causing you
Speaker 2: chatter right now. How are you going to feel about
Speaker 2: this a week from now, or a month from now,
Speaker 2: or a year from now. You could stretch out the
Speaker 2: time window as much as you want. What engaging in
Speaker 2: that little mental time travel exercise does for us is
Speaker 2: it often makes clear that whatever we're dealing with, as
Speaker 2: awful as it is, it will eventually fade. Because most
Speaker 2: of the trials and tribulations we experienced do eventually fade
Speaker 2: with time, and that gives us hope, which is really useful.
Speaker 2: For managing chatter. This is actually what I do when
Speaker 2: I wake up on occasion at two am and and
Speaker 2: grip it, Oh my god, why did I send that email?
Speaker 2: And what are they going to think? Did they read?
Speaker 2: So I will just remind myself, Ethan, You're going to
Speaker 2: feel better about this in six hours.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing you say that, and I'm thinking to myself that,
Speaker 1: in my most anxious moments, if you had asked me,
Speaker 1: how are you going to feel about this in six
Speaker 1: months or five years or ten years, I would have said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to feel exactly the same damn way, Ethan.
Speaker 1: And so what's occurring to me in this moment is
Speaker 1: that potentially another healthful thought experiment is to think about
Speaker 1: past experiences where we felt a certain way and we're
Speaker 1: absolutely convinced that that was going to be a immutable
Speaker 1: state of the world, but looking back, we now know
Speaker 1: we no longer feel that same way about it today.
Speaker 2: Well, you got me before I could do mental time
Speaker 2: travel the Marty mcflyway in the past completely agree. Right.
Speaker 2: So that's the second piece of it, which is so
Speaker 2: if you think about COVID as a great example of this, right,
Speaker 2: So COVID things are on the whole, I think, getting better.
Speaker 2: But you know, we don't know when the end is
Speaker 2: going to happen, so going into the future is somewhat murky.
Speaker 2: So what we can also do, exactly as you're describing,
Speaker 2: is we can go into the past. And this is
Speaker 2: what I do. This is how I use mental time
Speaker 2: travel for dealing with COVID. I'll think about the Spanish
Speaker 2: flu pandemic of nineteen I think it was nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 2: That was really bad, and we got through it. Sometimes though,
Speaker 2: that doesn't even take the edge off. So then I'll
Speaker 2: go back further in time. I'll think about the bubonic
Speaker 2: plague that decimated Europe right like, that was much much
Speaker 2: worse than this, went on for a really long perio,
Speaker 2: but we got through it. We are still standing. So
Speaker 2: that shows you the flexibility through which you can use
Speaker 2: mental time travel to help yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just remembering how there was this thing that
Speaker 1: I was worrying about in my early twenties, and I
Speaker 1: was imposing a lot of negativity of my brother who
Speaker 1: was on the receiving end of all this anxiety to
Speaker 1: your earlier point, and I remember him saying, I promise
Speaker 1: you this is not going to be a topic you're
Speaker 1: worried about in ten years. And I was absolutely resolute
Speaker 1: in my convictions that it was going to be something
Speaker 1: that I continue to worry about. And you know, older brother,
Speaker 1: wiser than me, he's right. I no longer am worried
Speaker 1: about this issue. And I keep that in my mind
Speaker 1: often as a personal anecdote of how I engaged in
Speaker 1: bad cognitive forecasting. I was wrong about myself and my
Speaker 1: own ability to be able to move on from certain
Speaker 1: challenges or anxieties. And I think it's helpful, potentially helpful
Speaker 1: for listeners to identify, you know, there's the Spanish flu,
Speaker 1: which is like the global thing, but you know, we
Speaker 1: all have some element of narcissism in us that leads
Speaker 1: us to want to know that actually narcissm is the
Speaker 1: wrong word here. I think we can feel sometimes like
Speaker 1: society might be able to deal with this, but I
Speaker 1: maya won't be able to because I'm not as cognitively
Speaker 1: strong as other people. And so I think it can
Speaker 1: be helpful to just find even one instance, one case
Speaker 1: study from your own life where you did actually exit
Speaker 1: a state of mental chatter successfully and think differently about
Speaker 1: it so that you can hold on to because it
Speaker 1: helps me in present day moments where I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm still gonna be worried about this thing now in
Speaker 1: ten years and I'm like, eh, you're wrong about this.
Speaker 1: At least once.
Speaker 2: You've actually touched on something that is. I think another
Speaker 2: message of hope for listeners, which is there's a lot
Speaker 2: of research which shows that as we get older, we
Speaker 2: actually get happier barring negative health conditions. And one of
Speaker 2: the explanations for why that happens is we're learning how
Speaker 2: to regulate ourselves better. And part of how that works
Speaker 2: is we're learning from our experiences. And I think this
Speaker 2: is exactly what you've just when you're younger, you don't
Speaker 2: have the same quantity of experiences. You don't know that
Speaker 2: you're not going to be worried about this ten years
Speaker 2: later because you may not have been around for that long.
Speaker 2: And so I think we accrue that wisdom with age.
Speaker 2: And what's exciting about some of these tools is they
Speaker 2: have the potential to give us that insight without having
Speaker 2: to wait to be forty sixty, seventy years old, right,
Speaker 2: so we can have the insight that, oh wait, it
Speaker 2: will get better with time without having to, you know,
Speaker 2: just wait the whole stretch of time for that to happen.
Speaker 2: So it's a really valuable exercise for folks to think about.
Speaker 1: I love this concept of what you call the universal you.
Speaker 1: This is related to the idea of you know, referring
Speaker 1: to ourselves in the third person, but it's slightly different
Speaker 1: in terms of how it's implemented. So can you just
Speaker 1: share more about the universal you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love this research. What we noticed is that sometimes
Speaker 2: when people are trying to make sense of really difficult,
Speaker 2: chatter provoking situations in their life, they do something that
Speaker 2: is very odd linguistically if you actually stop and think
Speaker 2: about it. They talk about their own experiences using the
Speaker 2: word you, but not to refer to another person, but
Speaker 2: to refer to the world in general. So let me
Speaker 2: give you a concrete example. Cheryl Sandberg, as as many
Speaker 2: listeners know, tragically lost her husband while they were on
Speaker 2: vacation several years ago, and she went in mourning. And
Speaker 2: when she came out of mourning several weeks later after
Speaker 2: the loss, she wrote a really emotional post on her
Speaker 2: Facebook page, and when she described what she was going through,
Speaker 2: and she said something to the effect of when you
Speaker 2: lose someone you love, you just don't know what to do.
Speaker 2: Your heart jumps out from your skin. The idea was
Speaker 2: she was talking about her own deeply personal experience using
Speaker 2: a word you that is the verbal equivalent of talking
Speaker 2: about the world in general. She's essentially saying, when anyone
Speaker 2: loses their husband, anyone would be devastated, right. And what
Speaker 2: that does for us is that it gives us a
Speaker 2: little bit of distance from our problems, right because it's
Speaker 2: saying it's not just me, this is anyone who's dealing
Speaker 2: with it. And what we've learned through lots of science
Speaker 2: is that this can be an effective tool for helping
Speaker 2: people make meaning out of negative experiences. It helps them
Speaker 2: normalize what they're going through, get some space from their experience.
Speaker 2: And it also does something that I just find so cool.
Speaker 2: It draws other people into our world. Because if I'm
Speaker 2: saying anyone and everyone would experience, guess what, you, the
Speaker 2: person I'm speaking to, you are part of anyone and everyone.
Speaker 2: So it enhances the resonance that people have, people who
Speaker 2: are listening with our ideas and is really a useful
Speaker 2: tool in all of those ways.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. Yeah, I love how inclusive the
Speaker 1: language is. You're participating with the person who's in distress,
Speaker 1: let's say, because you can empathize with them, and you're
Speaker 1: also like, hey, I probably have a few lessons I
Speaker 1: can learn from this, because it might just be a
Speaker 1: matter of time before a similar situation hits my life
Speaker 1: or strikes me totally. So I think that leads to
Speaker 1: your next kind of pillar right of strategies, and that
Speaker 1: is around relationships and how we can engage with others
Speaker 1: when we're in the middle of the angst of mental chatter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So other people are an incredible potential tool that
Speaker 2: we have at our disposal for helping us manage our chatter,
Speaker 2: but they can also be a huge liability. And this
Speaker 2: is why I really like talking about the science that
Speaker 2: governs how all this works, because what we know about
Speaker 2: chatter is that, with a few exceptions, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're experiencing chatter about shame or certain forms of trauma,
Speaker 2: you're not going to be that motivated usually to talk
Speaker 2: about it with other people. But for all the other
Speaker 2: kinds of chatter that we experience, chatter about anger and
Speaker 2: anxiety and depression, we're often highly motivated to talk to
Speaker 2: other people about it. But many people think that the
Speaker 2: route to getting good support from other people is to
Speaker 2: just find someone to vent our emotions, to just let
Speaker 2: it out, express on load. And there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of research on venting over the years, and what we
Speaker 2: know is that, on the one hand, venting can be
Speaker 2: useful for strengthening the friendship bonds between two individuals. It
Speaker 2: feels good to know that there's someone out there who
Speaker 2: who is willing to take the time to listen to
Speaker 2: us and spend time learning about our lives. But if
Speaker 2: all you do is vent about a problem, it just
Speaker 2: keeps the fire burning inside because you're just rehearsing all
Speaker 2: of the things that are driving you nuts. The key
Speaker 2: to getting good support for a chatter involves doing two things.
Speaker 2: A person who will take the time to hear you out,
Speaker 2: to learn about your situation, to empathize, but at a
Speaker 2: certain point in the conversation they start trying to help
Speaker 2: you broaden your perspective. Right to do what we just
Speaker 2: talked about. We're capable of doing it on our own,
Speaker 2: broadening our perspective, but other people are often in a
Speaker 2: prime position to help us see that bigger picture because
Speaker 2: the problem's not happening to them. That's the formula for
Speaker 2: getting good chatter support. Someone who listens, connects, but then
Speaker 2: helps broaden. Now, there is one critically important caveat to
Speaker 2: this whole equation, which is there is an art to
Speaker 2: doing this well. And the reason I say there's an
Speaker 2: art to doing this well is depending on the person
Speaker 2: and the situation, it's not always clear when to transition
Speaker 2: from just listening to to start providing advice. And so
Speaker 2: sometimes sometimes my wife will come to me with a
Speaker 2: problem and you know, she'll start unloading and I'm there,
Speaker 2: I'm receptive, I'm empathic, and then a certain point this
Speaker 2: sounds off. I totally get it. Can I have a
Speaker 2: piece of advice? Can I offer you? And sometimes she'll
Speaker 2: just you know, pause and say no, I'm not done,
Speaker 2: Ye just listen, and then she keeps going and going
Speaker 2: and it's okay. At other times she'll be like, yes,
Speaker 2: please tell me, tell me what to do. That's why
Speaker 2: I'm talking. So you want to be gentle as you
Speaker 2: as you feel that out. That is the art involved
Speaker 2: in all of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I relish this part of your book because
Speaker 1: I think we are living in a time where everyone
Speaker 1: is being encouraged to vocalize all of the things that
Speaker 1: are happening in their minds. Right, it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: that's the definition of vulnerability. You know, that's the but
Speaker 1: but pointing out that it can be counterproductive and pointing
Speaker 1: out that when you come to someone and you're venting
Speaker 1: to them, and you know, you presume in the situation
Speaker 1: the person cares about you, they will be more focused
Speaker 1: on satisfying your emotional needs first and your cognitive needs second. Right,
Speaker 1: the practical solutions side of things that will actually lead
Speaker 1: to long term growth and mental progress. You know, you
Speaker 1: and I are familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy and some
Speaker 1: of the techniques. But I want to give some color
Speaker 1: to what it means to go from emotional We all
Speaker 1: know what emotional mode feels like. That is very intuitive.
Speaker 1: What does cognitive mode feel like.
Speaker 2: Cognitive mode is broadening your perspective. Let's put this in context.
Speaker 2: Let's think about the bigger picture. Cognitive mode is sharing
Speaker 2: information that can be useful for helping the person deal
Speaker 2: with the problem. I had like instrumental information, So hey,
Speaker 2: I was in this situation exactly, this situation and here's
Speaker 2: how I dealt with it. Cognitive mode is pointing out
Speaker 2: sometimes the blind spot that may exist that are governing
Speaker 2: people's emotion reactions. But it is important you want to
Speaker 2: strike the balance right If you just so, what are
Speaker 2: the hazards? What if we just skipped emotion mode altogether,
Speaker 2: that often comes across as patronizing and uncaring, and so
Speaker 2: you want to strike that appropriate, that appropriate balance. So
Speaker 2: what I love about this science is there's like a
Speaker 2: double whammy benefit it provides people. On the one hand,
Speaker 2: knowing about how this works, it allows people to be
Speaker 2: much more deliberate about who they call when they're struggling
Speaker 2: with chatter. So there are many people who I'm really
Speaker 2: really close to, I'm related to some of them, I
Speaker 2: don't call them about my chatter. There's no ill intention
Speaker 2: on their part, but they're just not skilled at helping
Speaker 2: me shift from emotion to cognitive mode. There are a
Speaker 2: couple of people I know who are good at this.
Speaker 2: And you know what I've experienced happening in my own
Speaker 2: life with this little board that I've put together is
Speaker 2: people know when they're on that board and they actually
Speaker 2: value it like they feel privileged, not because it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you can put you on the way. It's actually what
Speaker 2: it's communicating is that I really value you as a
Speaker 2: friend and life advisor. That's who I rely on and
Speaker 2: it's really effective. So that's one benefit. The other benefit
Speaker 2: is when someone comes to me with their chatter, I've
Speaker 2: got a playbook. I know what to do to help
Speaker 2: effectively coach them through that situation. And so it's useful
Speaker 2: on both sides of the equation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's striking me in this moment is that we
Speaker 1: can do a service to the people that we choose
Speaker 1: to vent to by giving, by almost engaging in a
Speaker 1: pre commitment of sorts, which is at the outset of
Speaker 1: the conversation, say I'm really upset about this situation, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you all about it, but I
Speaker 1: want you to know I really do want some reframing
Speaker 1: strategies so I can think differently about the situation. And
Speaker 1: this serves two benefits, right. One, it's signaling to the
Speaker 1: person that you're engaging with, maybe who you're training to
Speaker 1: enter that board of advisors, to know that is appropriate
Speaker 1: at some point to make that pivot, and before you
Speaker 1: get too into the heat of the moment as you're
Speaker 1: replaying the negative episode, you're mentally committing to the fact
Speaker 1: that you do want to leave the conversation with some
Speaker 1: degree of enlightenment about your situation in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: bigger picture, broad contexts, maybe things that you misinterpreted totally.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's let's move into the environment and
Speaker 1: these these seemingly subtle aspects of our environment that can
Speaker 1: actually have a profound impact on the mental chatter.
Speaker 2: Sure. So one of the things we've learned over the
Speaker 2: years is that nature or exposing ourselves to green spaces,
Speaker 2: can provide us with a tool to manage our chatter.
Speaker 2: And I love this work and it's actually it's changed
Speaker 2: the way I live my life. And this does not
Speaker 2: mean I've like, you know, become one with nature.
Speaker 1: For those who can't see him, Ethan's actually taking this
Speaker 1: interview from the jungle, but it's excellent audio quality, right,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: So the way this research has changed my life is
Speaker 2: I actually go to work a different way each day.
Speaker 2: I take a slightly longer walk to work, which is
Speaker 2: a walk down a tree lined path rather than a
Speaker 2: walk down the streets of ann Arbor. And the reason
Speaker 2: I do This is what we know about nature is
Speaker 2: this nature provides an opportunity to restore that precious attention
Speaker 2: we have that our chatter depletes. And the way this
Speaker 2: works is when you're going for a walk in a
Speaker 2: natural setting, there are all these interesting things around us
Speaker 2: that we become fascinated by, so our attention gently drifts
Speaker 2: on those surroundings. And when it's gently drifts and is
Speaker 2: captured by our surroundings, that allows our attentional resources to restore,
Speaker 2: and they often can be really useful for managing our chatter.
Speaker 2: So that's one way it helps the The other thing
Speaker 2: that nature does is something that I find just beautiful,
Speaker 2: which is nature gives us the opportunity to experience the
Speaker 2: emotion of awe. And awe is an emotion we experience
Speaker 2: when we're in the presence of something vast and indescribable,
Speaker 2: like a beautiful sunset, or you know, I go for
Speaker 2: the walk in the arboretum right by my house and
Speaker 2: I see these trees that have been here for literally
Speaker 2: hundreds of years, and I think, how do I even contemplate,
Speaker 2: Like I'm just struggling to get through my forties, you know,
Speaker 2: pandemic and back aches, and hundreds of years these trees
Speaker 2: have survived. That fills me with awe. When you are
Speaker 2: contemplating something vast and indescribable, you feel smaller by comparison,
Speaker 2: and when you feel smaller, so do your worries and rumination.
Speaker 2: So AWE is this powerful experience that really is In
Speaker 2: some ways, it's like the ultimate perspective broadener, the way
Speaker 2: of putting ourselves in where a speck in this much broader,
Speaker 2: beautiful universe that is out there. There's so many different
Speaker 2: ways that you can get a healthy amount of distance
Speaker 2: from your problems, and drawing on that set of skills
Speaker 2: I think can be helpful for allowing people to skillfully
Speaker 2: manage her chatter.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 1: Tyler Green our senior producer, Emily Rosstek, our producer and
Speaker 1: fact checker, Jen Guera, our senior editor, Ben Holliday, our
Speaker 1: sound engineer, and Neil LaBelle our executive producer. Louis Scara
Speaker 1: wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin
Speaker 1: Industries so big thanks to everyone there, including Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Heather Faint, and Carly mcgliori, and
Speaker 1: of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You
Speaker 1: can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at
Speaker 1: doctor Maiah Schunker.
Speaker 2: I could have a person come to me and say, Hey,
Speaker 2: I experienced chatter here. What should I do? Tell me
Speaker 2: exactly which tools to use and to what degree I
Speaker 2: should be using them. I cannot give that prescription. You know,
Speaker 2: the six tools that I use to manage my chatter
Speaker 2: may be very different from the seventeen that you use.
Speaker 1: Or or the flat Okay, I see how you feel.
Speaker 1: Even my chatter can run laps around your chatter, okay,
Speaker 1: And I'm proud of that