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