March 29, 2021

Psychologist Ethan Kross calls it “chatter” — the inner monologue that works tirelessly to drag you down. Kross runs the Emotion and Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan, and he’s particularly interested in the voice in your head that is constantly self-critical, negative, afraid, counterproductive, or just plain annoying. The good news is that Kross, author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, has studied your inner naysayer, and devised simple strategies for managing it. That’s why I invited Kross to join me for a recent episode of “How To!”

A listener, Emilia, wrote in about a relationship she’d started at 19, and that, years later, she couldn’t get out of her head. While visiting Mexico on a break from college, Emilia fell for Ivan, who was handsome, popular, older, and well off. She continued visiting, and after college moved in with Ivan. They adopted a miniature Australian shepherd with blue eyes, and planned to make a life together. But the relationship started to fizzle. There was no blowup, and they were still in love. But Emilia was learning a lot about herself in her early twenties, and that included career ambitions that she couldn’t pursue in the small town in Mexico. With a heavy heart, she left Ivan, and the Australian shepherd, for good.

A decade later, Emilia is newly and happily married, but finds her mind returning to Ivan and that magical time in Mexico. “I call it the resident ghost,” she told me, “because it’s like this thing that doesn’t have any meaning for my life anymore, but it’s still there…I’m kind of embarrassed to say this — it could be on a daily basis. Is that just life?” Yes and no.

We can’t simply prevent unwanted thoughts. In fact, trying too hard can result in what psychologists call “ironic processes.” That is, you get exactly what you didn’t want. The most famous research example was sparked by Dostoevsky, who suggested in “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions” that the reader should try not to think of a white bear, and will soon notice that they are thinking about a white bear every minute. Actually, Dostoevsky underestimated.

In the 1980s, psychologist Daniel Wegner demonstrated that trying not to think of a white bear caused people to think about the white bear even more than once per minute, and — in the long run — even more than people who had been told to think about the white bear. This is a case where concerted effort gets exactly the wrong result. So, if we can’t summarily banish unwanted thoughts, what can we do? Kross had five practical tips for Emilia, and really for any of us:

• When you can’t stop thinking about something, write it down. “Write your deepest thoughts and feelings about what happened to you,” Kross advised. Don’t worry about being eloquent, just keep your pen moving. Kross pointed out that when you do this for 15-20 minutes a day for a few straight days, you’ll inevitably start giving the story a structure, including a conclusion. “When we have a story to make sense of our experiences, we start thinking about them a lot less,” he said. “But if we don’t have a really good story…our mind keeps on trying to get us to that place and it will, as a result, often bring those experiences to mind.”
• Give yourself a break from analyzing your chatter. Kross said your thoughts are like a bus: passengers get on and off, some are well-behaved, others are rude. You can’t control who gets on and off, but you can control how much effort you expend scrutinizing the rude passengers.
• Venting has a place, and often feels good, but it can backfire. Beware of “co-rumination.” In other words, a friend who effusively affirms your feelings is obviously trying to help, but while they’re satisfying your emotional needs (your need to be heard and validated), they’re not helping with your cognitive needs (the need for closure and reframing). That can actually leave you dwelling on your inner chatter even more. So you may not want to approach your most solicitous friend. Instead, go for the one who tends to help your reframe things, or who asks if you might consider other perspectives. Kross said that once when he was really upset about something, a friend he vented to asked if he could just ride it out until he felt better. Kross realized he could, and did. It was simple, but helped shift his focus.
• Use “distanced self talk.” Talk to yourself in the second or third person. Kross once received an anonymous threat, just after he and his wife had welcomed a new baby. He found himself pacing his living room with a bat and peeking through the blinds. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was actually about to start searching for bodyguards for academics, before realizing nobody would ever think that’s a sustainable business plan. “Ethan, what are you doing?” he asked himself. And that was enough to begin the process of settling his mind. (As I’ve mentioned before, distanced self talk has also been shown to improve endurance performance; opt for “You can make it up this hill,” rather than “I can make it up this hill.”)
• If you just can’t stop asking yourself “What if?”, try to replace it with “So what?” and see what happens. As in: “So what if I keep thinking about a white bear? Happens to the best of us.” As Kross put it, “The beauty of ‘So what?’ is it flips the whole internal narrative on its head. It’s neutralizing it.”

I was already using distanced self talk when I run, or write, so after listening to Kross, I’m just going to use it more widely. I’m also going to give “So what?” a try if I start dwelling on unwanted thoughts, and next time a friend vents to me, I’m going to make sure at least to offer some reframing ideas. If you’re interested in the full episode, you can listen here.

LIGHTNING ROUND

• Alcohol doesn’t make people more creative, but bars do. (h/t @emollick) This reminded me of Bill Gore, the engineer who founded the company that created Gore-Tex, and his saying that “communication really happens in the carpool.”
• A study of 15,000 people who followed a once-a-week, 20-minute full body strength training program found impressive gains in exercisers who used the program for up to seven years. The subjects did start to plateau at about a year, but from the standpoint of a very efficient program that could have worthwhile longterm gains, this is encouraging. I was slightly surprised to see such solid gains from such a scant program.
• “Curiosity made the cat more creative.” The takeaway from this study is that wandering the internet is better than traditional brainstorming for creativity, if — and this is an important “if” — your meander starts with a specific question to investigate. I was heartened to read this on a recent day when I was wasting time — er, I mean investigating why the periodic table symbol for tungsten is W. (This actually did lead me to read more about smelting, and then to something I may in fact write about.)

Thanks for reading, until next time….

David

p.s. If a friend sent you this newsletter, please subscribe here!