Have you ever tried to do a task or read a book after you’ve had a fight with someone? It’s incredibly hard as your mind plays back the fight. This is chatter, the repetitive anxious thought, the internal voice that we use to talk to ourselves. Nearly 1/2 to 1/3 waking hours are engrossed in talking to ourselves. Making sense of our life, situations or working through the myriad of issues that we face. There was evolutionary advantage in sifting through memories to create lessons or simulating future scenarios to evade dangers and ultimately survival but in the modern world, chatter can cause serious harm.
[Ethan Kross’s book Chatter](https://www.amazon.com/Chatter-Voice-Head-Matters-Harness/dp/0525575235/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=chatter&qid=1631858486&sr=8-1) is one of the most illuminating books I have come across. It can dramatically change the way you talk to yourself and how you react to your thoughts. Just a week after reading it for the first time, I was able to control my emotions, anxiety and apprehensions better. I am posting my key learnings below but I highly recommend reading this book in full.
##### Paralysis by analysis
This regular self talk or chatter that seeks to go over details can be very dangerous. The author calls it the ***self doubt monster***. Elite athletes go through their movements after years of practice as a single routine. Chatter can bring the spotlight or attention to specific aspects of those movements which ideally only work as a whole. This undue attention on minute aspects can derail their performance.
I recently undertook a long road trip with my dog who is a very nervous traveler. I dreaded the trip for almost a month. Planning and worrying about every little detail was just the opposite of what I needed to do. Taking this lesson to heart, I tried to look at the whole trip in totality and internalised that minor incidents can be handled if and when they arose. In reality, far less experienced drivers have done road trips like this. With sufficient practice, I was able to stop myself from going into excruciating details and just focus on and prepare for the major aspects of the trip. This was truly a game changer.
We can also reframe our problems as challenges. This helps us think about ways of overcoming them and imagine a scenario of how we went about acing the situation. This is another powerful technique that hacks our cognitive abilities and downplays the role of the emotional parts of our brain in dealing with a situation.
##### Oversharing
People feel compelled to talk about their negative emotions. The stronger the emotions, the more people want to talk. All of this gets amplified thanks to social media where it is easy to broadcast our thoughts. This easy access to speaking our minds, doesn’t allow us the freedom to let time heal our wounds. Immediately sharing our thoughts and feelings (fueled by trauma or fallouts) make us feel worse and exacerbate chatter. When our minds are full of chatter, we prioritise our emotional needs over cognitive ones so instead of feeling like we have a problem to solve, we seek connection and emotional support that provide some solace but do little or nothing to alleviate the real issue.
For the listeners, this means they feel they have to satisfy our emotional needs rather than help us solve a problem. People wanting to help may ask questions pushing us to relive the whole scenario. This is called co-rumination and it creates a cycle that keeps reinforcing our chatter. The right way to deal with trauma related chatter is to talk about our problems in moderation, preferably not in open forums like social media and seek help in finding solutions to the problems.
##### Need to zoom out
Getting some psychological distance is important in gaining perspective required to solve our problems. Trying to gain a fly on the wall view rather than a first person view helps us get some psychological distance and create a more balanced narrative. It also makes us more open minded and reduces the chance to trigger a cardiovascular fight or flight response. This distance is also similar to inside vs outside view [referred to in thinking fast and slow](https://infermuse.com/lessons-from-thinking-fast-slow-part-1/#:~:text=OUTSIDE%20VS%20INSIDE%20VIEW). Instead of immersing in our problem and blaming our misfortune or brooding over the details and taking things personally, try to distance. This is obviously easier said than done.
One of the ways you can do this is to talk to yourself in second or third person. Simple things like saying your name ‘Ujjwal, get a hold of yourself. Things aren’t that bad Ujjwal’ can trigger those parts of our brains that give us the necessary distance to think less emotionally. Another simple technique is to imagine what advice you would offer to a friend who is facing the same situation you’re dealing with.
##### Leveraging time travel
There is a lot of practical wisdom in the aphorism ‘time heals all wounds’. We’ve all felt that nagging feeling where we feel we should have taken the time to internalise things rather than reacting instantly. This is the healing power of time. Going back in time about your history or imagining a future helps you gain perspective on the severity of problems. This is called temporal distancing.
Journaling is a common suggestion by psychologists. Writing about our experiences from the perspective of a narrator helps us gain the necessary distance from our problem and also helps draw lessons by building newer ways to look at a memory.
##### Impact of nature on attention and chatter
Kross talks about two different kinds of attentions that humans possess. They are involuntary and voluntary attention. When we are unknowingly drawn to an experience like a musician playing a song, or a tree with beautiful leaves or the sight of a dog drying himself, that’s involuntary attention ( also known as soft fascination). Voluntary attention is when we consciously choose to move the spotlight to a specific task or object. In general, nature seems to draw involuntary attention while voluntary attention has to be created consciously with effort. Voluntary attention is expensive and takes a toll on us and needs recharging from time to time. Several studies discussed in the book show the role of nature in refueling our involuntary attention.
Awe inspiring experiences like water rafting, watching an opera or a concert reduce chatter and blur the line between self and the environment. Adventure activities in nature are also known to have a long lasting effects on muting chatter. In the presence of vast natural expanse, we gain a perspective that is similar to what we do by the use of other distancing techniques discussed above.
##### Leveraging beliefs and expectations
Several studies have underscored the importance of placebos. Despite knowing that something is a placebo, it can make us feel better. The only condition is that we must believe that it can help us. Our expectations guide our experiences. Rituals are similar to placebos. Despite knowing that they are just a quirk and not rationally linked to performance, they sportspeople swear by them. The reason rituals work is that they take up working memory, leaving no room for chatter in an anxiety prone situation. Michael Phelps’ [put in the videotape story](http://www.behaviouraldesign.com/2013/10/07/how-michael-phelps-coach-trained-him/) is perhaps the best example illustrating the power of rituals.
Us lesser mortals can also create our own rituals right after or before a stressful situation. This will eventually take shape and become a placebic ritual that helps silence chatter. I have been a poor public speaker for as long as I can remember. A speaking engagement generally makes me super anxious. One ritual that I recently took up before I log on to a zoom meeting or a call is taking a 10 minute walk, stretching, followed by making a cup of coffee and placing it on table on a coaster. This simple, time consuming ritual is helping me a lot with chatter as I now can find myself diving into talks with a lot less anxiety. I am not much better but I do dread it a lot less.
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I run a startup called [Harmonize](http://www.harmonizehq.com/). We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, [I tweet ](https://twitter.com/dillisingh)about startup life and practical wisdom in books.