Chatter Quotes

“The reason rituals are so effective at helping us manage our inner voices is that they’re a chatter-reducing cocktail that influences us through several avenues. For one, they direct our attention away from what’s bothering us; the demands they place on working memory to carry out the tasks of the ritual leave little room for anxiety and negative manifestations of the inner voice. This might explain why pregame rituals abound in sports, providing a distraction at the most anxiety-filled moment.
Many rituals also provide us with a sense of order, because we perform behaviors we can control. For example, we can’t control what will happen to our children throughout their lives, and we can protect them only to a limited degree, which is a source of chatter for many parents. But when they are born, we can baptize them or perform any other of a variety of birth rituals that provide us with an illusion of control.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“If we scan the situation and conclude that we don’t have the wherewithal needed to handle things, that leads us to appraise the stress as a threat. If, on the other hand, we appraise the situation and determine that we have what it takes to respond adequately, then we think of it as a challenge.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Studies show that when people are going through a difficult experience, asking them to imagine how they’ll feel about it ten years from now, rather than tomorrow, can be another remarkably effective way of putting their experience in perspective. Doing so leads people to understand that their experiences are temporary, which provides them with hope.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“the voices of culture influence our parents’ inner voices, which in turn influence our own, and so on through the many cultures and generations that combine to tune our minds. We are like Russian nesting dolls of mental conversations.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“When supporting others, we need to offer the comfort of Kirk and the intellect of Spock.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“When we’re upset and feel vulnerable or hurt or overwhelmed, we want to vent our emotions and feel consoled, validated, and understood. This provides an immediate sense of security and connection and feeds the basic need we have to belong. As a result, the first thing we usually seek out in others when our inner voice gets swamped in negativity is a fulfillment of our emotional needs.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“The mind is flexible, if we know how to bend it. If you have a fever, you can take something to bring it down. Likewise, our mind has a psychological immune system: We can use our thoughts to change our thoughts—by adding distance.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“The desire to have control over oneself is a strong human drive. Believing that we have the ability to control our fate influences whether we try to achieve goals, how much effort we exert to do so, and how long we persist when we encounter challenges. Given all this, it is not surprising that increasing people’s sense of control has been linked to benefits that span the gamut from improved physical health and emotional well-being, to heightened performance at school and work, to more satisfying interpersonal relationships. Conversely, feeling out of control often causes our chatter to spike and propels us to try to regain it. Which is where turning to our physical environments becomes relevant.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Use distanced self-talk. One way to create distance when you’re experiencing chatter involves language. When you’re trying to work through a difficult experience, use your name and the second-person “you” to refer to yourself.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“The same brain circuitry that becomes active when we are attracted to someone or consume desirable substances (everything from cocaine to chocolate) also activates when we share information about ourselves with others.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Engage in mental time travel. Another way to gain distance and broaden your perspective is to think about how you’ll feel a month, a year, or even longer from now. Remind yourself that you’ll look back on whatever is upsetting you in the future and it’ll seem much less upsetting.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“people we love, as well as how often we can tolerate this venting while not feeling listened to ourselves. Relationships thrive on reciprocity. That’s one of the reasons why therapists charge us for their time and friends don’t.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“But stress stops being adaptive when it becomes chronic—when the fight-or-flight alarm fails to stop signaling. And sure enough, a main culprit in keeping stress active is our negative verbal stream.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“We think about that screwup at work or misunderstanding with a loved one and end up flooded by how bad we feel. Then we think about it again. And again. We introspect hoping to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Although we generally associate wisdom with advanced age, because the longer you live the more uncertainty you will have experienced and learned from, research indicates that you can teach people how to think wisely regardless of their age—through gaining distance.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Emerging evidence suggests that dreams are often functional and highly attuned to our practical needs. You can think of them as a slightly zany flight simulator. They aid us in preparing for the future by simulating events that are still to come, pointing our attention to potentially real scenarios and even threats to be wary of. Although we still have much to learn about how dreams affect us, at the end of the day—or night, rather—they are simply stories in the mind.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“However it manifests itself, when the inner voice runs amok and chatter takes the mental microphone, our mind not only torments but paralyzes us. It can also lead us to do things that sabotage us.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“It turns out that our waking verbal mind converses with our sleeping one. Fortunately, this doesn’t produce Oedipal wish fulfillments.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“To put it another way that only slightly exaggerates, green spaces seem to function like a great therapist, anti-aging elixir, and immune-system booster all in one.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“We can also go outside for a walk, attend a concert, or simply tidy up our living space, and each of these seemingly small actions can have surprising effects on our chatter.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Offering advice without considering the person’s needs can undermine a person’s sense of self-efficacy—the crucial belief that we are capable of managing challenges. In other words, when we are aware that others are helping us but we haven’t invited their assistance, we interpret this to mean that we must be helpless or ineffective in some way—a feeling that our inner voice may latch on to.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Indeed, research indicates that people who diversify their sources of support—turning to different relationships for different needs—benefit the most. The most important point here is to think critically after a chatter-provoking event occurs and reflect on who helped you—or didn’t. This is how you build your chatter board of advisers, and in the internet age we can find unprecedented new resources online.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“When our chatter is buzzing, it drains us of the neural resources we need to focus, get distance, and regain control of our inner voice. Yet distanced self-talk sidesteps this conundrum. It is high on results and low on effort.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Other experiments have shown that distanced self-talk allows people to make better first impressions, improves performance on stressful problem-solving tasks, and facilitates wise reasoning, just as fly-on-the-wall distancing strategies do. It also promotes rational thinking.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“The study revealed that helping without the recipient being aware of it, a phenomenon called “invisible support,” was the formula for supporting others while not making them feel bad about lacking the resources to cope on their own. As a result of receiving indirect assistance, the participants felt less depressed. In practice, this could be any form of surreptitious practical support, like taking care of housework without being asked or creating more quiet space for the person to work. Or it can involve skillfully providing people with perspective-broadening advice without their realizing that it is explicitly directed to them.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“But social media doesn’t just provide us with a platform to (over)share the thoughts and feelings streaming through our head, and the ways it derails our internal dialogues don’t exclusively relate to empathy and time. Social media also allows us to shape what we want other people to believe is happening in our lives, and our choices about what to post can fuel other people’s chatter. The human need to self-present is powerful. We craft our appearances to influence how people perceive us all the time.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Moreover, it turns out that having imaginary friends may spur internal speech in children. In fact, emerging research suggests that imaginary play promotes self-control, among many other desirable qualities such as creative thinking, confidence, and good communication.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“our inner voice can be both a liability and an asset. The words streaming through our heads can unravel us, but they can also drive us toward meaningful accomplishments…if we know how to control them.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“We experience pain for a reason. It warns us of danger, signaling to take action. This process provides us with tremendous survival advantage.”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

“Human has a natural tendency to conceptualize memory in the romantic, long term, and nostalgic sense. We think of it as the land of the past, teeming with moments, images, and sensations that will stay with us forever and constitute our life's narratives”
― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It