Speaker 1: Pushkin. Earlier this year, I taught a class at Yale
Speaker 1: on the science of well being and how we can
Speaker 1: apply research back strategies to live happier lives. What we're
Speaker 1: continuing our discussion on today are the kinds of right
Speaker 1: sorts of thoughts that seemed to make us happy. It
Speaker 1: was the same course that I had offered for the
Speaker 1: first time back in twenty eighteen. It's the one that
Speaker 1: got a lot of media attention and led to the
Speaker 1: creation of this podcast. But this time around I added
Speaker 1: a new happiness time worry negative thought pattern's rumination. These
Speaker 1: are not good, they're not effective strategies, but we are
Speaker 1: some effective strategies for controlling our thoughts. Are their thought
Speaker 1: patterns we can use that aren't just neutral but actively
Speaker 1: help us. My new lecture was all about strategies we
Speaker 1: can use to change our inner monologue and fight our
Speaker 1: inner critic. When my students reviewed the class at the
Speaker 1: end of the semester, they said this new lecture was
Speaker 1: the most useful part of the entire class. Pretty Much
Speaker 1: all of the strategies my students found so helpful came
Speaker 1: from one particular book, The Fantastic Book by Ethan Cross
Speaker 1: called Chatter. It's all about useful strategies and ways you
Speaker 1: can talk to yourself in your head to improve well
Speaker 1: being and also improve productivity. So when I invited listeners
Speaker 1: of this podcast to write in with questions about how
Speaker 1: to be happier, I wasn't all that surprised when we
Speaker 1: got a ton of questions on the same theme, how
Speaker 1: can we shut up that inner voice in our heads
Speaker 1: so that we can feel happier? And I knew exactly
Speaker 1: who to call to get some answers. My name's Ethan Cross.
Speaker 1: I'm a professor of psychology and management at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan and the author of the book called Chatter,
Speaker 1: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters, and How
Speaker 1: to Harness It. Today, we'll be diving into ways we
Speaker 1: can change the way we talk to ourselves so our
Speaker 1: inner critics can become our inner champions. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab Listener Questions Special Edition with me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos, So Ethan, the question I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: you about today was from a listener called Buttery bran Again,
Speaker 1: who I learned actually isn't a person named Buttery bran Again,
Speaker 1: but is the Twitter account of a YA author duo
Speaker 1: Beth Buttery and Patricia Brand again. But we're just going
Speaker 1: to call them Buttery Brand again for now. Buttery Bran
Speaker 1: again asks, Hey, Happiness Lab, help me. I want to
Speaker 1: stop all this negative self talk and finally learn how
Speaker 1: to love myself. Please help. The reason I loved this
Speaker 1: question so much is I think Buttery could mean two
Speaker 1: kinds of things by how to stop all this negative
Speaker 1: self talk. Right. One is all the negative self talk
Speaker 1: in your head, right like rumination and worry and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But then a second thing she could mean
Speaker 1: is the negative self talk, right like the bad things
Speaker 1: we say about yourself. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: was so excited to talk to you is that you're
Speaker 1: a guy who has studied both of these, so you
Speaker 1: can help us. Let's start with this idea of the
Speaker 1: negative parts of our self talk, right like, Buttery is
Speaker 1: not unique here. A lot of us have stuff going
Speaker 1: on in our heads that doesn't feel so great, kind
Speaker 1: of feels pretty sad or fearful or just generally pretty negative. Right, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I hear this question a lot, so Buttery branagan,
Speaker 1: am I getting the name right? Brand? Again, you are
Speaker 1: not alone. Actually, just knowing that, hopefully is a teency
Speaker 1: bit empowering. I think it's really important for us to
Speaker 1: normalize the experience of negative emotions in general, and negative
Speaker 1: self talk as well. One thing that I know you
Speaker 1: believe in Lori and have talked about before is that
Speaker 1: negative emotions in and of themselves aren't a bad thing.
Speaker 1: What we do want to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: is keep those negative emotions in check, because like buttery
Speaker 1: brand again, Buttery Yeah, we'll squalid buttery yeah, butterbrand. I
Speaker 1: kind of want to master the buttery brand again, Duo,
Speaker 1: I love it, Like I'm guessing they they have experienced
Speaker 1: many times which motivated this question, Like those negative emotions
Speaker 1: can often morph into rumination and worry, and that's when
Speaker 1: they can get really dysfunctional. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: why we have such negative chatter, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's just you know, going over the same problem
Speaker 1: again and again and again. I think we have the
Speaker 1: sense that it works, right if we could just think
Speaker 1: about it and think about something that's going on in
Speaker 1: our lives, that we'd feel better. But you and others
Speaker 1: have found it evidence suggests that that's not the case no.
Speaker 1: A question I get a lot from people I talk
Speaker 1: to is how can I just stop talking to myself?
Speaker 1: I just don't want any more negative self talk. I don't.
Speaker 1: I just want to be in the moment all the time.
Speaker 1: That's it. And I like to remind folks that you
Speaker 1: know your inner voice, which is the basis of all
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here, our ability to silently use
Speaker 1: language to work through problems. This is a fantastic tool.
Speaker 1: In fact, people who lose the capacity to activate their
Speaker 1: inner voice through experiences like strokes, they suffer enormously. And
Speaker 1: so the trick is, how do you figure out how
Speaker 1: to wield this tool more effectively. People also found that
Speaker 1: when we don't wield it effectively, especially when we get
Speaker 1: stuck in these really awful rumination and worry loops, there
Speaker 1: can be these really bad consequences to this. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the bad consequences to the negative chatter.
Speaker 1: I genuinely think, based on what I know of the science,
Speaker 1: that chatter is one of the great challenges that we
Speaker 1: face as a species because of the negative consequences that
Speaker 1: it has for us across domains of life. First, it
Speaker 1: makes it really hard for us to focus. Well, that's
Speaker 1: going to make it really hard for you to do
Speaker 1: a range of things. It's going to make it hard
Speaker 1: for you to read, for fun, to focus on that report,
Speaker 1: or even to pay attention to that person across the
Speaker 1: table who is talking to you. I am willing to
Speaker 1: admit and this is a shameful moment in my life.
Speaker 1: But there have been episodes when I'm sitting at the
Speaker 1: table with my family and I've got young daughter, youngish daughters.
Speaker 1: They want nothing more than to tell me about their day.
Speaker 1: I should feel really lucky that they want to talk
Speaker 1: to me. I'm told that will end at some point
Speaker 1: in the near future. And sometimes they tell me stuff
Speaker 1: and they talk for like two or three minutes, and
Speaker 1: then when they're done, I asked them a question about
Speaker 1: what happened, you say, and they just told me and
Speaker 1: they're like, Dad, we just That's an example of chatter
Speaker 1: consuming our attention. The other way that chatter can undermine
Speaker 1: us is by leading us to choke under the spotlight.
Speaker 1: There's a great phrase I love that captures this. It's
Speaker 1: paralysis by analysis, right, and so here the idea is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the things we do in our
Speaker 1: lives are these complicated behaviors that we've learned to execute automatically.
Speaker 1: So take a gymnast like Simone Biles who is on
Speaker 1: her floor routine doing triple flips and handsprings and smiling
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other complicate stuff that is hard
Speaker 1: for me to wrap my head around. Simone, through practice,
Speaker 1: has learned to do those behaviors automatically without thinking. If
Speaker 1: she starts to experience the negative self talk, if she
Speaker 1: starts to focus on her behavior, him, am I doing
Speaker 1: a good job? Did I do that? Well? What that
Speaker 1: does is that zooms her in on the individual pieces
Speaker 1: of that behavior. So she starts hyper focusing on whether
Speaker 1: she's running fast enough as she tries to execute the summersault,
Speaker 1: or smiling enough. And once you start zooming in really
Speaker 1: narrowly on the specific parts of something complex, the whole
Speaker 1: thing unravels. And this actually happened to her last summer
Speaker 1: in the Olympics. She actually dropped out on the grand estage,
Speaker 1: which is quite quite remarkable, and it's particularly bad because
Speaker 1: it really deeply affects our physical health in ways that
Speaker 1: I think we often don't think right, Like I forget
Speaker 1: that I'm just worrying about some thing about my job
Speaker 1: or what this person thinks about me. But that's something
Speaker 1: real consequences from my body. So here's what we have learned. First,
Speaker 1: I'll do a tiny bit of mythbusting here. Lots of
Speaker 1: us have heard that stress kills. I like to point
Speaker 1: out that that is not actually correct. Just like other
Speaker 1: kinds of negative responses or experiences, stress and small doses
Speaker 1: really really useful. You want to be able to experience
Speaker 1: a stress response. It helps us deal with threat. What
Speaker 1: makes stress toxic, though, is what makes some of the
Speaker 1: other negative emotions we experienced toxic, which is when it
Speaker 1: becomes prolonged and extended over time. That's when stress starts
Speaker 1: to exert a wear and tear on your body that
Speaker 1: has been linked with physical maladies like cardiovascure disease, problems
Speaker 1: of inflammation, and even certain forms of cancer. One of
Speaker 1: the key culprits in perpetuating those stress responses is our chatter,
Speaker 1: because what happens is we experience something truly stressful and
Speaker 1: aversive in our lives. Like let's say you and I
Speaker 1: get into a heated altercation. That's going to be stressful
Speaker 1: for both of us. Right, maybe you leave the recording
Speaker 1: studio and you leave it all behind because you've done
Speaker 1: this a bunch of times, and you know you've dealt
Speaker 1: with the uncomfortable exchange. I'm hopefully not trying to prime
Speaker 1: us to experience anything here greatly self fulfilling prophecy. Here.
Speaker 1: You also have no idea about what my rumination cycles
Speaker 1: are like, because a teeny tiny thing that could possibly
Speaker 1: go wrong on this podcast. Weeks later, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: be walking down the street be like, remember I said
Speaker 1: that dumb thing to Ethan like, aren't. Well, we'll make
Speaker 1: sure we get to what I call the two am
Speaker 1: chatter and my two am chatter strategy. Yeah. The problem
Speaker 1: wasn't what happened to my cardiovascular system while we were chatting.
Speaker 1: It was. The problem is you keep thinking about it.
Speaker 1: And what we've learned is the act of thinking about
Speaker 1: that stressful experience that keeps our physiological stress response activated.
Speaker 1: That is not a good formula for health and launchevity.
Speaker 1: And so all these negative consequences make me at first
Speaker 1: think that Buttery's right, we should find a way to
Speaker 1: stop these things. But you choose to say that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't stop the negative chatter we should in fact harness it,
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting for two reasons. One is
Speaker 1: that we want some negative chatter, which is important, but
Speaker 1: the second is that like we can control it. And
Speaker 1: I feel like this for me was one of the
Speaker 1: deepest insights about the human mind that has really changed
Speaker 1: my life, which is that we are not our thoughts
Speaker 1: as they are right now. We can move them around,
Speaker 1: which is in some ways kind of incredible and an
Speaker 1: insight that not all people ultimately get to. I think
Speaker 1: it's really useful to distinguish between what we have control
Speaker 1: over and what we don't. So if you ask me,
Speaker 1: do we have control over the thoughts that pop into
Speaker 1: our heads at different moments in our life, I would
Speaker 1: say I know of no evidence that suggests that we
Speaker 1: can precisely control that experience. The flip side to that is,
Speaker 1: once the thought is activated, then we have enormous control.
Speaker 1: We can open up our toolbox at that point in time,
Speaker 1: and we can push that thought around in all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways to amplify it, as we sometimes do when
Speaker 1: we go down the rabbit hole of chatter, to minimize it,
Speaker 1: to transform it, to replace it with other thoughts. We'll
Speaker 1: find out just how to climb out of the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of negative thoughts when the happiness lab returns in
Speaker 1: a moment. You know, it's particularly frustrating about negative self
Speaker 1: talk when we're like beating ourselves up. Is that even
Speaker 1: people that you would think have absolutely no reason to
Speaker 1: beat themselves up wind up beating themselves up. I just
Speaker 1: had this amazing conversation with Malala, you know, Nobel Peace
Speaker 1: Prize winning global women's race activist, who I thought should
Speaker 1: be brushing her shoulders off of feeling like she's done
Speaker 1: amazing work and could kind of chill out with the
Speaker 1: negative self talk. But what's amazing is she talks to
Speaker 1: herself in a guilty way too. She thinks, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing enough, or I should be doing more, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing the right stuff. And that was humbling for
Speaker 1: me because it made me realize even people who have
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason to be beating themselves up are kind
Speaker 1: of beating themselves up with their chatter. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: that example. I think number one, it speaks to this
Speaker 1: idea of normalizing this experience. When people tell me they
Speaker 1: experienced chatter, one of the first things I tell them is,
Speaker 1: welcome to the human condition. Congratulations. Malala is a great
Speaker 1: example to bring up, though, because although she may experienced
Speaker 1: a lot of negative self talking and I didn't know
Speaker 1: that about her, she also appears to be pready adept
Speaker 1: at using psychological tools to manage it. Maybe she's reading
Speaker 1: some of our research. I don't know, but but actually,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite examples that I'll often present to
Speaker 1: audiences comes from Alala. What I'm talking about here as
Speaker 1: a tool called distanced self talk, and it's really simple.
Speaker 1: It involves trying to coach yourself through a problem, think
Speaker 1: it through using your own name and or the second
Speaker 1: person pronoun you. So. Right around the time that she
Speaker 1: won the Nobel Peace Prize, she went on The Daily
Speaker 1: Show with John Stewart to do an interview, and during
Speaker 1: that interview, John Stewart asked her about what she had
Speaker 1: went through. When did you realize the Taliban had made
Speaker 1: you a target? In twenty twelve, I was with my
Speaker 1: father and someone came in And she went on to
Speaker 1: narrate her internal monologue when she discovered that the Taliban
Speaker 1: were plotting to kill her. And if you listen to
Speaker 1: the word she uses to describe her experience, she starts
Speaker 1: off in the first person, and I used to think
Speaker 1: that the tale would come and he would kill me.
Speaker 1: She is contemplating the most stressful, frightening experience any human
Speaker 1: being could possibly imagine. She's all first person, filled with emotion,
Speaker 1: and then when she gets to the potential climax if
Speaker 1: he comes, what would you do, Malala? She automatically switches
Speaker 1: to using her name to coach herself through that situation,
Speaker 1: like she would give advice to someone else, Malana, just
Speaker 1: take a shoe and hit him. One of the things
Speaker 1: we've learned through lots of research is that we're much
Speaker 1: better at giving advice to other people than we are
Speaker 1: giving ourselves advice, and so we've evolved the ability to
Speaker 1: do that for ourselves through these different distancing tools, and
Speaker 1: language is one way of helping us switch perspectives. It's
Speaker 1: just putting us into that mindset of now I'm an
Speaker 1: advisory mode, and that often makes it much easier for
Speaker 1: people to work through their problems. You've also found that
Speaker 1: this tool doesn't just help us hear the advice, but
Speaker 1: we actually follow it right. There's lots of evidence of it.
Speaker 1: When you use this sort of linguistic distancing, you do better,
Speaker 1: you eat healthier, and so as tell me some of
Speaker 1: the benefits that we get out of using this tool. Well,
Speaker 1: so what the tool does is in stressful situations, it
Speaker 1: transforms the way people think about a stressful experience. You
Speaker 1: can appraise the situation as as something that you can't handle,
Speaker 1: like oh my god, I'm never going to be able
Speaker 1: to do this, or you can appraise it as something
Speaker 1: that you can manage, like, yeah, I can do this.
Speaker 1: I've done this before. I mean, Laurie, when people have
Speaker 1: come to you and they are facing objectively stressful circumstances,
Speaker 1: how many times have you told them I don't think
Speaker 1: you can do it? Like, can you just top of
Speaker 1: mind think about a lot of those situations? Is that
Speaker 1: what you tend to tell people. I would have been
Speaker 1: kicked out from my residential college had rule a long
Speaker 1: time ago. I like, oh, I guess this is impossible. Sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're actually the perfect person to ask this question,
Speaker 1: because you're getting ping quite a bit with questions like this.
Speaker 1: Am I making a leap to say that you are
Speaker 1: often trying to frame what students are facing as a
Speaker 1: challenge and then realistically marshaling evidence that supports the idea
Speaker 1: that they can manage it is at a fair appraisal totally.
Speaker 1: But what's amazing is when I do it in my
Speaker 1: own head to myself, that is rarely the direction I go.
Speaker 1: It's really like, Oh, what an opportunity that I'm facing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Instead it's like, oh my god, how am I going
Speaker 1: to deal with this? That's because we get zoomed in.
Speaker 1: So when we experience trust, we zoom in so narrowly
Speaker 1: on the emotional elements of the experience that often drive
Speaker 1: our insecurities and fears and worries. But when we zoom
Speaker 1: out and we think about ourselves from that more objective standpoint,
Speaker 1: like we were thinking about someone else, we can often
Speaker 1: find solutions to our problems and ways of making sense
Speaker 1: of them that are often much better than the alternative,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, I'm going to give the talk,
Speaker 1: it's going to go terrible, I'm going to lose my job,
Speaker 1: followed by prison and soon after death. Like that's the
Speaker 1: that's the chain, right, and it's not hard to dispute
Speaker 1: that illogical, irrational chain of events when you're looking at
Speaker 1: that big picture from a more objective standpoint. That is
Speaker 1: what distancing helps people do and the linguistic shifts I
Speaker 1: describe before. That's one way of doing it. Another easy
Speaker 1: tool is something that goes by a few different names
Speaker 1: mental time travel, temporal distancing, or in my mind, Ethan's
Speaker 1: two am chatter strategy. I told you I would refer
Speaker 1: to that for me every four to six weeks. It
Speaker 1: has that regularity. I will wake up at two am,
Speaker 1: eyes wide open. I don't know why it happens, but
Speaker 1: there's chatter, there's a thought that, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: am I going to do? And prior to knowing about
Speaker 1: the research that I'm going to tell you about in
Speaker 1: a second. This actually was quite disruptive because it kept
Speaker 1: me up. It didn't feel good. It created to personal
Speaker 1: problems because I'd start, you know, moving around in the bed,
Speaker 1: jostling with my iPad. My wife would elbow me, why
Speaker 1: are you moving now? I'm awake, like, you know, all
Speaker 1: very reasonable. The next day would be terrible. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: you've experienced this before. Yes, yes, this is like you're
Speaker 1: in my bedroom, which is a little creepy, but you know, okay, well,
Speaker 1: all right, we will go that. But also, like the
Speaker 1: interpersonal stuff, it's a trivial people like their sleep, and
Speaker 1: so I don't fault my wife. So when that happens now,
Speaker 1: I instantly have a go to response that I implement
Speaker 1: without thinking, because I've created a plan. I ask myself,
Speaker 1: use my own name, Ethan, how are you going to
Speaker 1: feel about this tomorrow morning? No matter what the chatter
Speaker 1: is at two am, and sometimes it can feel absolutely suffocating,
Speaker 1: I always feel better about that experience the next morning,
Speaker 1: when I'm fully awake, have access to all my cognitive resources.
Speaker 1: If that doesn't take the edge off sufficiently, I'll go
Speaker 1: further out in time. How are you going to feel
Speaker 1: about this next week or next month or when you're retired.
Speaker 1: I'm doing is I'm traveling in time in my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm zooming out. I'm broadening my perspective through mental time travel.
Speaker 1: And what that does is it makes clear for me that,
Speaker 1: however awful what I'm experiencing in that moment, is it
Speaker 1: will eventually get better. Because most emotional experiences that we've
Speaker 1: had in our lives, they come, sometimes they stick around
Speaker 1: for a while, but they eventually do subside. Like the
Speaker 1: stuff that I really ruminated about when I had like
Speaker 1: you pimples and I was getting rejected in high school
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff. It faded eventually, right as
Speaker 1: of other things coming God. And so by traveling in
Speaker 1: time in your mind, you remind yourself that our chatter experiences,
Speaker 1: as awful as they are, they are unstable, they will
Speaker 1: eventually fade. They're impermanent. And that does something really powerful
Speaker 1: for someone mire to chatter. That gives us hope, and
Speaker 1: that hope is a powerful antidote. So far, Ethan has
Speaker 1: shared his top techniques creating distance between ourselves and our
Speaker 1: negative thoughts. But what about the second part of Buttery
Speaker 1: Brannigan's question, how do I learn to love myself again?
Speaker 1: We'll be back with answers to that. When the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab returns in a moment, you say that it's so soothing.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm listening to you on the radio. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to the second half of Buttery's question,
Speaker 1: how do I finally love myself? And it feels like
Speaker 1: if I introspect on my own self talk sometimes it's
Speaker 1: ruminating about some problem, but there's often some like blame
Speaker 1: when I'm thinking about that problem, like I screwed up,
Speaker 1: I suck, I'm really bad at this, Like there's this
Speaker 1: negative self focus to a lot of the chatter too,
Speaker 1: and this probably isn't unique to me and Buttery. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's lots of evidence that we can be
Speaker 1: kind of downright mean to ourselves in our chatter, right absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say the meanest in very very
Speaker 1: small doses can probably be instructive in the sense that
Speaker 1: it is okay to be a little bit critical of ourselves.
Speaker 1: It is okay to experience a little bit of shame
Speaker 1: or embarrassment or regret. Now, I don't think that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about with Buttery's example, of course, she's talking
Speaker 1: about the more chronic, negative internal monologue that can be
Speaker 1: a real downer. And so when it comes to how
Speaker 1: do you change the tone of your inner monologue, some
Speaker 1: of the same tools that we talked about as being
Speaker 1: useful for zipping us out of rumination are also helpful there.
Speaker 1: For example, to give ourselves advice like we would give
Speaker 1: advice to your friends and use your name to do it,
Speaker 1: that can be really helpful. Turns out, when you transfer
Speaker 1: from thinking about experience as a threat, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't manage just to yeah, this is something that
Speaker 1: you can deal with that's changing the nature of our
Speaker 1: internal conversations that we have with ourselves. Another strategy you've
Speaker 1: talked about in regards to that is not just coaching
Speaker 1: yourself through linguistic use, as though you were a kind
Speaker 1: coach another wise person out there, but literally taking the
Speaker 1: perspective of a different wise person. And this tends to
Speaker 1: be my go to strategy when I'm beating myself up
Speaker 1: like a drill sergeant inside my brain, it's to say,
Speaker 1: what would a kind friend say to me? Or you know,
Speaker 1: what would Beyonce do? Beyonce wouldn't beating herself up. And
Speaker 1: so talk a little bit about this strategy of literally
Speaker 1: simulating a wise other person and why it's so powerful.
Speaker 1: So this this deals with activating like an alter ego
Speaker 1: of sorts, and it's another way of switching perspectives, getting
Speaker 1: some space. And the trick with this strategy is you
Speaker 1: want to activate the right alter ego. So if I'm
Speaker 1: really struggling with a problem, I don't want to who
Speaker 1: would be a really bad person to activate? I got
Speaker 1: to be careful here, many people might be listening. No,
Speaker 1: it's true, really, you know, because because the person we
Speaker 1: sometimes activate is some like horrible drill sergeant. Or the
Speaker 1: canonical example is a parent. It's apparent that is overly
Speaker 1: credit goal and hostile and disparaging, and you're hearing their
Speaker 1: voice in your head, which is bringing you further down
Speaker 1: when the goal is to lift us up and boost
Speaker 1: the esteem. That's not who That's not the voice you
Speaker 1: want to hear in your head. The voice you want
Speaker 1: to hear is that supportive coach. And I remind people
Speaker 1: that when you say supportive coach, it like, my most
Speaker 1: memorable coaches and advisors were not people who only patted
Speaker 1: my back and told me that it would be okay.
Speaker 1: They did do that, but they also gave me really
Speaker 1: good feedback at times and said no, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: do this better and here's how so. So they were
Speaker 1: being in touch with reality, but in a very supportive way.
Speaker 1: Another thing that we find is very effective is normalizing
Speaker 1: our experience, right. I think it is often when we're
Speaker 1: experiencing chatter and we're stuck. Also in those just really
Speaker 1: negative dialogues with ourselves, it's very easy for us to
Speaker 1: feel like we're all alone and no one else is
Speaker 1: experiencing this kind of negative vity, and is this hard
Speaker 1: on themselves. What we find is when you get a
Speaker 1: person to recognize that what they're experiencing is common to
Speaker 1: many many others, that can have really useful properties. I
Speaker 1: think a beautiful thing about this show and the work
Speaker 1: you do, Laurie. And this is not because you're in
Speaker 1: front of me, but I've said this to others, is
Speaker 1: what the Happiness Lab helps do. I think for many
Speaker 1: people's it normalizes at some points dark side of our
Speaker 1: emotional lives and tells us how we can manage that
Speaker 1: a little bit better. But in having that discussion, it
Speaker 1: makes it clear that we all suffer from this muck
Speaker 1: at times. It's a part of the human condition, and
Speaker 1: reminding ourselves of that alone can be really powerful, especially
Speaker 1: when you do it in really specific situations. You and
Speaker 1: I are having my first ever podcast conversation in my
Speaker 1: new podcast studio. I'm actually in a closet that I've
Speaker 1: just designed, but that means I've just spent the last
Speaker 1: two weeks moving and it's been filled with a host
Speaker 1: of negative emotions. I've been grouchy, I've been feeling like
Speaker 1: nostalgic and weep, and I keep in my head reminding
Speaker 1: myself that moving is the third biggest life stressor after
Speaker 1: death of a family member, divorce. Everyone feels this way
Speaker 1: when they move. There is not something particularly wrong with you, Laurie,
Speaker 1: this is just what happens when you move, and that's
Speaker 1: been so essential for me, not you know, breaking down
Speaker 1: with you in the middle of podcast, I'll share another
Speaker 1: experience like that. When I was writing my book. No
Speaker 1: one told me this, but writing a book is a
Speaker 1: potentially chatter vulnerable experience. I mean, you're you're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of original work and putting it out there for many,
Speaker 1: many people to consume and evaluate, and there was all
Speaker 1: sorts of chatter that I did not expect and actually,
Speaker 1: just reminding myself that many first time authors go through
Speaker 1: this was tremendously alleviating. And so I shared that experience.
Speaker 1: So that brings us back to this idea that normalizing
Speaker 1: our experiences can be really powerful, which actually, and this
Speaker 1: wasn't planned, but it is a great segue to another
Speaker 1: category of tools. And the category that I'm talking about
Speaker 1: is other people. So other people can be a remarkable
Speaker 1: tool for us when it comes to our chatter, but
Speaker 1: they can also be a tremendous, tremendous tremendous vulnerability. And
Speaker 1: what's really tragic here is the way that many of
Speaker 1: us try to activate the tool of other people isn't
Speaker 1: always optimal. So there is this strong belief in our
Speaker 1: culture that when you're experiencing chatter, what you want to
Speaker 1: do is share your emotions with others, express vent. I
Speaker 1: don't keep it bottled up inside. This notion of venting
Speaker 1: as a tool. It goes way back, Like Aristotle talked
Speaker 1: about it. What we have learned about venting is that
Speaker 1: venting your chatter can be really good for strengthening the
Speaker 1: friendship and relational bonds between two people. The fact that
Speaker 1: you can call me up and complain to me about
Speaker 1: something that happen which is on your mind, and I'm there,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to listen and empathically connect and hear you out.
Speaker 1: That's very good for our relationship. You will be more
Speaker 1: likely to call me again knowing that I'm there for you.
Speaker 1: But if all I do on the phone call is oh, Laurie,
Speaker 1: that sounds terrible. Really, they said that I can't believe
Speaker 1: what did you do? How do you feel? I'm so sorry?
Speaker 1: That's really bad. If that's all we do, you leave
Speaker 1: that conversation, feeling really good about our relationship, but we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about anything that's actually helping you deal with
Speaker 1: the chatter. The key to getting good chatter support is
Speaker 1: to find people to talk to who do two things.
Speaker 1: They do take the time to listen and hear you out.
Speaker 1: Establishing those friendship relational bonds really helpful. But at a
Speaker 1: certain point in the conversation, they help broaden your perspective,
Speaker 1: they help normalize your experience. That's the formula for what
Speaker 1: I call a good chatter advisor. And I think we'd
Speaker 1: all be a lot better off if we thought really
Speaker 1: carefully about who those people are in our lives. Who
Speaker 1: are the three or four people that you can call
Speaker 1: when you're experiencing chatter who do both of those things
Speaker 1: for you? And so this relates to a final question
Speaker 1: I wanted to get in from a different listener, Olga Habri,
Speaker 1: who wanted to talk a little bit about toxic positivity,
Speaker 1: but not in the way I expected. She wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about toxic positivity in the context of giving chatter advice,
Speaker 1: and she notes when someone else is feeling bad, the
Speaker 1: automatic response is usually something to the effect of it'll
Speaker 1: be fine or look on the bright side. It feels
Speaker 1: terrible when someone doesn't want to acknowledge how you feel
Speaker 1: and just wants to paint over your sadness with fake happiness.
Speaker 1: And then she goes on to note that I read
Speaker 1: somewhere that toxic positivity can actually be selfish, that it's
Speaker 1: your discomfort with someone else's discomfort and you kind of
Speaker 1: want to say things to get them to stop being
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable. And I feel like this is another spot
Speaker 1: where we can go wrong. Where somebody comes to us
Speaker 1: with like, please help me with my chatter, we say like, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, just get over it, you know, look on
Speaker 1: the bright side kind of thing, and then that doesn't
Speaker 1: help either. We need more parts to it than that, right,
Speaker 1: we want to be positive and supportive. That is important,
Speaker 1: but we don't want that to gloss over the need
Speaker 1: to actually provide important feedback and support. Sometimes people don't
Speaker 1: want to hear just the positive stuff. I think it's
Speaker 1: really important in these interpersonal contexts to recognize that this
Speaker 1: is a dance between two people. Right. What I mean
Speaker 1: by that is you want to feel out the person
Speaker 1: in the situation, depending on who the person is and
Speaker 1: what the problem is. Sometimes it can be obvious, like
Speaker 1: when I'm talking with someone I know really well. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I can just read the situation. I see my opening
Speaker 1: and I know when to go. Well, I have an idea,
Speaker 1: let me share it with you. But if I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: I will often explicitly ask. So sometimes I will ask
Speaker 1: my wife when she comes to me, Hey, I have
Speaker 1: a thought. Can I can I share with you what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking? And sometimes you'd be like, no, just listening,
Speaker 1: I'm not ready. I need to keep going. At other
Speaker 1: points in time, she's like, yeah, please tell me what
Speaker 1: you think. So you want to feel that out and
Speaker 1: recognize that there is an art to doing this well.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love in chatting with you
Speaker 1: about chatter, Ethan, is that you're not just an expert
Speaker 1: on this stuff. You use it in the trenches all
Speaker 1: the time. Absolutely makes me honestly believe that it works
Speaker 1: so well. You know, I really genuinely believe in this
Speaker 1: stuff because I benefit from it. I hope you're able
Speaker 1: to try out some of the tools that Ethan shared
Speaker 1: in this episode. I've heard some of these strategies before,
Speaker 1: but I know I'm still finding new ways to blend
Speaker 1: them together. The next time I get caught in a
Speaker 1: negative thought spiral at two am fretting over some problem,
Speaker 1: I'm going to use the time travel tool to put
Speaker 1: things in perspective. But this time I think I'll pair
Speaker 1: it up with some distancing, coaching and socializing. I'll tell myself, Laurie,
Speaker 1: how big a deal do you think this problem will
Speaker 1: be by next week or next year? Probably not that big, right,
Speaker 1: Let's think about which friend you can call tomorrow to
Speaker 1: talk things through. I hope that'll be what I need
Speaker 1: to quiet down the chatter enough to get some sleep
Speaker 1: and dream up the topic for the next episode of
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to writer Patricia Brannagan for sending in this week's listener question,
Speaker 1: and special thanks to my expert guest Ethan Cross. If
Speaker 1: you like the suggestions he gave us today, be sure
Speaker 1: to check out his amazing book Chatter, The Voice in
Speaker 1: Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with the final episode in
Speaker 1: this Listener Questions mini season, we'll be exploring challenges we
Speaker 1: all face to life after lockdown. The Happiness Lab is
Speaker 1: co written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Anne Vaughan,
Speaker 1: and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver,
Speaker 1: with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Milabelle Heather Fame, John Starr, Carlie Migliori, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserve,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts,