Ep 166: How to Harness the Voice in Your Head

Dr. Ethan Kross, author of Chatter, briefs us on his research on internal chatter: what it is, why it matters, and how to help your teen harness it before it gets out of control. If you've enjoyed Talking to Teens, we'd love if you could leave us a five-star rating, and if you have time, a review!  Full show notes There’s a lot to be worried about these days!  Whether you’re feeling anxious about the ongoing pandemic or just concerned that your teen is struggling in school, it’s easy to let distress clutter your mind. When we let that anxiety crawl around in our brain, we often find ourselves distracted from the better moments in life, thinking obsessively about a work meeting when we’re supposed to be spending quality time with our families. 

Interestingly, that voice inside our head–the one that’s always muttering about the past and the future–can be useful, if we know how to harness it. This inner dialogue comes from an evolutionary need to learn from past mistakes to survive the next challenge, and can help us immensely when tackling life’s challenges! If parents can learn to steer this voice in a positive direction, they can help teens do the same. That way, these young adults will know how to handle that tricky inner dialogue before they head off into the real world.

Our guest this week is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind as well as an award-winning professor of psychology and business at the University of Michigan! His name is Ethan Kross, and his new book is called Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. In our interview, Ethan and I are getting into how and why we talk to ourselves, and what we can do to make the most of our inner voice.

In this week’s interview, we’re discussing the idea of being “present”...and why it doesn’t always help us feel better. Plus, we’re diving into tons of other strategies for harnessing your inner voice that might be the perfect solution to that constant worrying!

What is “Chatter?” Before we can learn to make the most of our mental chatter, we’ve got to know where it comes from! Ethan explains how this persistent voice in our heads was built in to help us make predictions about the future and learn from the past. For some people, it’s stronger than others, and it serves a different purpose for each of us, says Ethan. It can help us prepare for important speeches at work or a terrifying first date. It boosts our working memory, allowing us to keep phone numbers or passwords in our head. It even helps us define who we are and build a stronger sense of self!

However, if we don’t learn to use it for good, we might end up worrying about the future or ruminating on the past. When we’re trying to watch a movie with our families, we might find ourselves obsessing over tomorrow's work meeting or paying the electricity bill. Or maybe we’re thinking so much about a mistake we made in a past relationship that we’re too scared to enter a new one. With some help from Ethan, however, we’re giving you some tips this week to help keep that chatter under control when you don’t want it running through your head.

Have you ever been told that you should live in the present? This is a common way people tend to grapple with chatter, as it helps them stop worrying about what came before or what will happen next. However, Ethan says this doesn't work for everyone. Some people need that chatter to plan or reflect and, and won’t find being “present” to be very helpful! In the episode, we’re covering plenty of other tools you or your teen can use–and you might just find that one of them works especially well for you or your family!

How Can We Keep Chatter Under Control?

Say your teen is preparing for a big game and is pretty overwhelmed with the voice inside their head. Or maybe they’re really worried about getting into UCLA, to the point where they’re struggling to pay attention to anything else. You want to help them manage their internal voice...but you’re not sure how! Don’t fear–Ethan is here to help you manage your teen’s chatter by giving us a few tips.

The first solution you might think of is encouraging them to vent their feelings. However, Ethan brings up some fascinating research that might surprise you. Several studies have found that when someone is dealing with intense negative feelings, venting them to someone often actually makes them feel worse! If they just share their misery without adopting a strategy to feel better, they’re perspective on the situation will only become more dismal.

Instead, Ethan emphasizes the importance of venting to someone who will help you reframe the situation in a more positive light, or provide solutions to the conflict at hand. Instead of just reinforcing your stress or sadness, this can actually help you move forward! If you’re talking to a teen, Ethan recommends listening and digesting what they have to say, and then asking patiently if they want to receive some advice. Every teen needs a different amount of time to vent before they receive some constructive assistance, but receiving that guidance can be a lot more helpful than just listening!

There are a few other interesting, even counterintuitive ideas about handling chatter that Ethan shares in this episode.

More Tips for Managing Chatter

Have you ever found yourself worried about an upcoming job interview or a court date and suddenly...you just have to clean out your linen closet? Or maybe it’s the fridge that suddenly needs four hours of organization. Ethan explains how when we feel like we don’t have control internally, we try to control our external environment to compensate. Although it may sound avoidant, Ethan says that it can actually be a really helpful way to lighten our mental load.

Similarly, participating in rituals can help you feel more in control. These rituals could be daily, like doing yoga in the mornings, or weekly, like watching a movie with your kids on Saturday nights. By keeping to the structure, the predictability helps keep chatter in line, says Ethan. These periods of time help your mind reset and help you return to chatter with a clearer and more intentional mindset. In our interview, Ethan and I discuss how these rituals exist across every culture in one form or another, helping people stay calm amongst the chatter.

In the episode, Ethan and I also talk about an interesting technique that helps teens get some distance from the voice in their head. If your teen is struggling to emotionally process something that happened in the past and finds their mind overrun with chatter, it can be useful for them to try and separate themselves from it. One way they can do this is examine what happened, but refer to themselves in the third person. Ethan explains this further in the episode! The technique helps teens find a more objective perspective and see a path to a solution that isn’t guided by all the chatter.

During the interview, we go deeper into distancing, even discussing how giving your kid a cape and asking them to assume a role of a superhero can help! And although distance can make things feel a little clearer, Ethan reminds us that we shouldn’t distance ourselves from joyful events! Those happy times with our kids can be some of life’s brightest moments.

In the Episode...

I loved sitting down with Ethan this week to talk about how we can change our internal voice to be more positive–especially when there’s so much to worry about these...