Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #173 The Voice In Our Head and How to Harness It, with Dr Ethan Kross

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

CAUTION ADVISED: Themes of an adult nature. Do you have a voice inside your head? For most of us, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. And we often turn to this voice for guidance, ideas and wisdom. But sometimes this voice can lead us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk and endless rumination. So, is it possible to take back control and harness the power of this so called ‘inner chatter’? This is the question the award-winning psychologist and guest on today’s podcast, Dr Ethan Kross set out to answer 20 years ago, when he began to study the conversations that we have with ourselves. In his brand-new book, Chatter: The Voice In Our Head and How to Harness It, Ethan combines groundbreaking research with real life examples to illustrate how our inner voice controls our life. The language we use about ourselves, he says can be incredibly powerful. Yes, there is negative self-talk. But that same voice can also help us innovate, problem, solve, fantasize, rationalize, and in many ways, help us to shape our identity. It's our inner voice that makes us unique as humans, so rather than silencing the chatter, we need to learn how to harness it. If this all sounds intriguing, but too good to be true, rest assured, this conversation is packed with super-practical advice. You’ll find out: ·      Why it's not always good to talk ·      That sometimes ‘in the moment’ is not the best place to be ·      What distance self-talk is and how it can help us ·      How to harness the placebo effect ·      How to support others through their chatter ·      When social media is helpful, and when it's not ·      How rituals and awe create control and perspective ·      Why you might want to consider putting together your own ‘board of advisors’ This episode really is full of actionable tips that will help you redirect your inner chatter away from rumination and self-criticism towards reflection and self-improvement. I think this is a powerful conversation and I hope you enjoy listening.  Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/173 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

The inner voice is a tool. It's a tool of the mind. And when we use it the right way, it can bring us much happiness, it can help us be successful and productive. But when used the wrong way, it can be enormously destructive for our health, for our relationships, for our ability to perform. So it's about figuring out how to use that tool. How do you harness it so you don't slip down the rabbit hole? Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. So before we start today, I've got a question for you. Do you have a voice inside your head? Well, for most of us, the answer is a resounding yes. And we often turn to this voice for guidance, for ideas, for wisdom, but sometimes this voice can lead us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk

and endless rumination. So is it possible to take back control and harness the power of this so-called inner chatter? Well, this is the question the award-winning psychologist and my guest on this week's podcast, Ethan Cross, set out to answer 20 years ago when he began to study the conversations that we have with ourselves. Now in his brand new book, Chatter, Ethan combines groundbreaking research with real life examples to illustrate how our inner voice controls our life. The language we use about ourselves, he says, can be incredibly powerful. Yes, there is negative self-talk,

but that same voice can also help us innovate, problem solve, fantasize, rationalize, and in many ways, helps to shape our identity. You see, it's our inner voice that makes us unique as humans. So rather than silencing the chatter, we need to learn how to harness it. Now if this all sounds intriguing but too good to be true, rest assured this conversation is packed with super practical advice from the very start. You're going to find out why it's not always good to talk, that sometimes in the moment is not the best place to be, what distant self-talk is and how it can help us, how to harness the placebo effect, how to support others through their chatter,

when social media is helpful and when it's not, how rituals and all create control and perspective, and why you might want to consider putting together your own board of advisors. This episode really is full of actionable tips that will help you redirect your inner chatter away from rumination and self-criticism towards reflection and self-improvement. I think this is a powerful conversation and I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with Dr. Ethan Cross. The book is about the inner voice and the inner voice can have a positive manifestation. And what I mean by that is our ability to use language to

reflect on our lives. This is a superpower. It helps us innovate, problem solve, create. It helps us author the story of who we are, helps shape our identity. So these are amazing qualities that you want to be able to use and harness throughout your life. But then of course, there's the negative side, which is the chatter, the worry, the rumination, the catastrophization. Yeah. If we don't harness that power, it can take us down the wrong track. You know, Ethan, as a doctor, I'm really interested as to how the voice inside our heads can affect our physical health. So I guess what I'm looking to understand is, can chatter make us ill? Well, and I think the answer to that question is yes. And it's interesting because I think

many people can easily relate to having the experience of stress. But for throughout time, stress has been this, it's kind of abstract thing that happens in your head and things that happen in your head have lacked the same kind of concreteness. We can't feel it the same way that we can, you know, we can feel a wound swell in our body or see like our arteries get filled with, with plaque and other things that, you know, create, lead to heart attacks and things like of that sort. So, so I think actually the brain imaging that has evolved over the past 20 years has helped a lot with that in the, in terms of helping people see how stress can manifest in

the brain and how that can in turn have downstream implications for health. But the way this works, the snapshot that exists, so how does stress actually make us physically ill? One of the leading theories is the idea that as human beings, we are designed to experience stress, right? that as human beings, we are designed to experience stress, right? Experiencing stress is a really useful adaptive response to a threat in our environment. It's a good system to have. I wouldn't want my worst enemy to not be able to experience stress because they wouldn't survive all in the world. Experiencing a stress response isn't harmful per se. What makes it harmful is when our stress response is triggered and then remains chronically elevated over time. That exerts a wear and tear on the body that we are not designed for. And what helps keep our stress responses active over time?

It's me getting an email last night that I wasn't so happy about and replaying that email in my head, hearing the words spoken over and over and over again, and replaying that email today and tomorrow, thinking how I'm going to respond. This may or may not be a hypothetical event, by the way. But our minds are capable of maintaining our stress responses. And when you get people who are ruminating or worrying for long stretches of time, that's what the mind is doing. It's keeping us in that stress state. And that has been shown to predict a host of physical maladies that range from cardiovascular disease to problems of inflammation to various forms of cancer and so um the the link to our physical health is there it's strong and i think it's one

of the you know one of the three big reasons to really be concerned about chatter the inner voice is something that many of us struggle with, some to greater degrees than others. And it may be that at various times in our life where we're sort of okay with things, and then an event that we're unprepared for comes up and starts to trigger us. And this actually genuinely happened to me about four weeks ago. I'm a pretty calm person these days. I certainly didn't used to be. I've done a lot of work on this, a lot of meditation, journaling, all kinds of things, a lot of work on my own inner voice. But there was an incident in my family life to do with my son's schooling that for a whole five days, I realized that my inner voice had just gone up to

not even 10 to 11. And my wife said to me one morning, you are making yourself sick with this. And I was aware that I was making myself sick, but in the moment, it was actually really hard to do anything about it. So for people who resonate with that, either now and again, or, you know, day to day, you know, what is the aim here? Is the aim to turn it off completely? Or is it to sort of manipulate it and shape it so that it can work in our favor, rather than working against us? Well, before I answer that question, I wanna thank you for divulging that personal story because I think one of the things that can be really powerful is sharing with folks

that really ultra successful people, we all struggle with this at times. I think this is part of the human condition, this ability to slip in to chatter. So thank you for doing that. The question of what the goal is, the goal in my mind is not to turn the inner voice off. The goal is to harness it. So I actually tell the story in the book of a neuroanatomist who desperately wanted her inner voice shut off. And she got her wish, so to speak, tragically. I'm laughing, but it's a tragic event. She had a

stroke. And it temporarily took out her language ability, her ability to use language, not just language as we use when we communicate with one another, but when we communicate with ourselves. Initially, she described the experience of not being able to talk to herself as liberating. Gone were the whispers and worries that made life unpleasant. But what also left her was the positive side of the inner voice, the ability to use language to simulate and plan for the future. I don't know what happened with your son, but I'm guessing it was some kind of problem. And I'm guessing you started thinking about it in an attempt to try to solve that problem in some way, to figure out why

was this happening? What can I do? That's your beautiful brain trying to weigh in on this situation, to muster the resources you have to get to the bottom of it, but not working in your situation. We'll talk about why that often backfires later. So she lost that capacity to use language, to control ourselves, to make sense of her experiences, to plan for the future. And that was really unproductive. So the challenge I think we all face is not to turn the inner voice off. It's to prevent, it's to when we find ourselves slipping into chatter, to nip that response in the bud as quickly as we can to free up our inner voice, to do the wonderful things that evolved to do, to help us plan, to help us simulate, to help us fantasize and so forth and so on.

Yeah, really powerful example. And as you were describing that, Ethan, I thought back to early on in my career as a GP. And I remember some patients who would come to see me, they had been put on antidepressants. And one thing they would commonly say, of course, not everyone, but a lot of people would come back and say, Dr. Chastity, you know, I'm not feeling as low as I used to, but I'm not getting the same highs as I used to either. I'm just sort of existing somewhere in the middle the entire time. And I don't really like it. I'd rather actually come off and actually feel the lows, but also feel the highs. And it's not quite

the same thing, but I guess the underlying principle is quite similar to what this colleague or this neuroanatomist you're writing about. It's the goal isn't to go to one extreme or the other, you know, because it's part of life, isn't it? That the kind of inner voice, we don't want it muted completely. We want to use it. Yeah. I mean, here's a simple metaphor here. So let's say I'm in construction, right? A hammer is a tool I have. A hammer is an invaluable tool. I used to build houses. I used to take things apart carefully. I wouldn't be a successful builder without a hammer. Now, a hammer, though, in the wrong hands, i.e. in my hands in real life, can be a massive

source of destruction, right? So it's about how you use that tool. I would argue that the inner voice is a tool. It's a tool of the mind. And when we use it the right way, it can bring us much happiness. It can help us be successful and productive. But when used the wrong way, which is the manifestation of that is chatter, it can be enormously destructive for our health, for our relationships, for our ability to perform. So it's about

figuring out how to use that tool. That's what I've spent the past 20 years studying. And that's what this book is really about. How do you harness it so you don't slip down the rabbit hole? We're definitely going to get into a lot of the practical solutions that you offer in the book. And Ethan, I just want to say it is such a beautifully written book. It is so practical. There's so much research in it, but I really struggle to think of any person who it wouldn't help no matter who you are in your life. So I really think you've done a wonderful job there. I really want to say thank you and acknowledge you for that. Before we get into some of those practical tools, it's interesting for me that you've been studying this for about 20 years. So what led you to study this? Because then you share in the book also this

personal experience you had when you'd already been studying this for many years, yet in a sort of similar way, the chatter came to you. Even though you were an expert in chatter, you still were afflicted by chatter in a negative way, weren't you? So yeah, I've been studying this for 20 years. I've been thinking about it for 37. I had a dad who was somewhat unconventional. He wasn't a college grad or he didn't spend his life teaching about philosophy, but he spent his time reading about it, in particular, Eastern philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, I mean, the whole nine yards. And he talked to me as a three-year-old, starting as a three-year-old about it. And one of the things he impressed upon me at a three-year-old, starting as a three-year-old about it. And one

of the things he impressed upon me at a young age was when problems happened, I should go inside, introspect, find a solution, and then move on with my life. And that was a lesson that I internalized and it really served me well throughout my childhood and adolescence. Things happened. I wasn't happy. I introspected, found a solution. I moved on. Then I got to college and I took my first psychology class. And I learned that, hey, a lot of people, it's not just my dad who taught people to do that. A lot of folks somehow learned to do this as well. But they're not always successful. Oftentimes, But they're not always successful. Oftentimes, introspecting, turning our attention inward to reflect on our lives and our hurt? And I went to graduate school to try to work on that problem. And I've spent my

career doing it ever since. And so then rewind about 10 years into my career, we published a paper that got a lot of attention. It was really exciting. I went on TV. My parents were like watching with popcorn, great event, you know? And, and then a couple of days later, I got a really hostile threatening letter in the mail, the kind of letter that, you know, you, no one wants to receive slurs, threats, drawings, had to file a, go to the police station. They didn't make me file a report, but spoke to a police officer about it. And for the next couple of nights, you know, I spent, I spent those nights pacing the house with a baseball bat. I just, my wife and I had our

first child. I'm thinking to myself, what have I done? Yeah, I had to go on TV. I got everyone in a mess and, you know, can I leave? And it was really deeply disturbing. And there is a bit of an irony there because yes, I was studying chatter at that time for quite a while, but incapable of pulling myself out of it in the moment. Now, one of the things we know about people in general is something called Solomon's paradox, named after the Bible's King Solomon. We are much better at advising other people than taking our own advice. And I was living that experience of Solomon's paradox in that moment. Fortunately, I did stumble on something that helped me. It's actually a tool that I went on to study and is described in the book. I was able to get some distance, some mental

space from the experience and realize I wasn't being objective. And I did it through what at the time seemed like a strange quirk of language. I actually talked to myself in my head, like I was talking to a friend or someone else and actually used my name. And I said, Ethan, what are you doing at three in the morning with a baseball bat? Go to sleep. And actually that talking to myself like I was someone else and using language to do it really helped me break myself out of that chatter funk. And maybe we'll get into that later on why that tool works. But it was a really powerful firsthand experience of chatter, one that I hadn't really had before. In general, I've been someone who's good at managing chatter. So it certainly gave me a new perspective on the topic

that I had spent my career studying and I continue to study now. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. What I love about the book, Ethan, and your whole approach is that the tools within the book really help us understand ourselves better. We understand the inner voice. We understand some of our behaviors. We understand some of our adaptationsours. We understand some of our adaptations to the world around us. And that's why I'm such a big fan because I feel awareness is actually such a key part of long-term transformation. You know, we can follow people's advice. Sure. I can give a

patient advice. Great. They can follow it for a few weeks, a few months. But at some point, they've got to really start understanding, oh, I get it. In this situation, this works really well for me. In that situation, that works well for me. They start to take ownership of it. And I really feel that the tools you outline help the reader find out what works for them because you offer a whole range of different tools and as I look at the book I see three broad categories. I see tools that we can utilize ourselves, tools that we can utilize with others and then tools that actually help us with the physical environment around us. You know, that's how I'm seeing it, these three large categories. And I thought a way to progress this conversation might be to go through those

systematically, start with the tools that we can use by ourself. And you obviously have just touched on one of those that you used when your own chatter was causing problems in your own life. Yeah, you've summarized it beautifully. And one point I might add is that I don't think there are any single tools that are magic pills. We've evolved these different tools to help us with our chatter, because I think different combinations of tools work for different people in different situations. So as you very eloquently described, I think the challenge we all face is to figure out what are the blends of tools? What are these different tools that we could bring together to rein it in? I think that's a big challenge. So when we experience chatter,

we often zoom in on our problems so narrowly. We have tunnel vision. We're focusing on that issue that's bugging us to the exclusion of really everything else that's going on in our lives. And so one of the things we've learned is that what can be really helpful in that situation is to broaden our perspective, to step back or zoom out, if you will, to focus on the bigger picture, which often brings alternative ways of making sense of what we're experiencing that can be quite useful. So the technique, since I mentioned it already, giving yourself advice like you would someone else and actually using language to help you do that, we call that distanced self-talk. It's a kind of distancing tool. And this ability to get some distance or space from our experience can often be quite helpful. We call it a distancing tool because if you think about the context in which you use names and second person pronouns, words like you, most of the time we use those parts of speech, we use them when we think about and refer to other people. So the idea here is that when you're using your own name and the word

you to refer to yourself, it's a kind of automatic perspective switch. It's leveraging the power of language to help you relate to yourself like you were relating to another person. And interestingly enough, we see people falling back on this tool during times of stress throughout history. Everyone from Julius Caesar to Henry Adams to the actress Jennifer Lawrence to my favorite, you know, LeBron James. During times of stress, people seem to do this odd thing. They start talking to themselves using their own name. All right, LeBron, here's what you got to do. Jennifer, get your act together. This is just an interview. And what we find with laboratory studies experiments is that when you ask the people who are in the midst of chatter to try to coach themselves through a problem using their own name,

it really helps them do that. Rather than thinking about the situation they're facing as a threat, something that they can't handle. When they're talking to themselves like they're advising someone else, they end up giving themselves pep talks. They start reframing the experience as a challenge, something they can manage. Ethan, you've given a hundred talks before. Why are you so worried about this one? You've never had someone ask you a question that has led you to cry on stage. It's going to be fine and so forth and so on. So it's this small shift that really breaks you out of this threat mode. I can't do it. Oh my God, what's in front of me? And really gives you this sense of self-efficacy that you can manage this situation, which, by the way, that's something that I think most people are trying for when they're in the

midst of chatter. When a person's struggling with anxious thoughts or depressive cognition, many of those people want to feel better. They want to think differently about the situation. They just don't, they can't do it. And the idea is like stepping back a little can help them follow through with their goal to actually think different, to actually feel better. So that's one tool. I love tools like that because certainly in health and wellness, my mission is to try and make it as accessible as possible to as many different people. And that's a tool that we can all use. Now, I wonder how much culture plays a role here. And the reason I ask this is because

in the UK, my feeling is that if we see someone being interviewed on television, let's say LeBron James, for example, as you brought him up. And if LeBron doesn't say, you know, I was feeling nervous, I was feeling stressed, but I got it together. If he says, so in that game, LeBron was feeling nervous and LeBron actually knew what he had to do. I think the British sentiment is to be a bit mocking of that and go, oh man, he really sort of has tabs on himself or thinks a lot of himself to talk to himself in that way. I don't know if it's the same in America or not, but the book and then the research shows actually,

no, no, no, he knows exactly what he's doing. That is really, really powerful at providing that psychological distance. So how would you unpick that a little bit for me? unpick that a little bit for me. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system,

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and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. I'm glad you asked. So first of all, you know, we're related distantly, US, UK, and our responses are the same. So actually, LeBron James did this during a live special on ESPN, our sports station. He was basically trying to decide, does he stay with his hometown team, the first team

he played for in the NBA, or leave for a different team the first time he became a free agent? And so he's done this primetime special to announce his decision. And then on live television, he says, I didn't want to make an emotional decision. LeBron James, now do what is best for LeBron James. The internet went crazy bananas about this, right? He's a narcissist, blah, blah, blah. And so yes, the response is the same. A couple of things to say about it. So first of all, in all of the

research that we've done, we study how these shifts, we call them linguistic shifts, work when people do them silently in their own head, not out loud. And I would encourage anyone who wants to try using these techniques to try doing this in their head or in the privacy of their own home where people aren't around if they want to actually audibly do it. I just did it silently. You just think to yourself using your own name, try to coach yourself through the problem. The reason for that is when you talk to yourself out loud and use your own name, that powerfully violates social norms. And that's not just a UK thing, that's social norms in most places. And so there could be social ramifications of that, that we don't want to have happen, even if there's some benefit the person themselves derives from

talking out loud. So if you're going to use the technique, do it silently. That's the first point. to use the technique, do it silently. That's the first point. The second point is what's really fascinating to me about this phenomenon is how many people do it without even realizing they're doing it. It seems as though we've stumbled on this tool. We've somehow figured out that, hey, when I'm stressed out, using my own name to coach myself through the situation helps me. Let me give you another example. Malala Yousafzai, youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize. I think she lives in the UK now. Yeah, she does.

Okay. So most listeners are going to be familiar with her story in case they're not. are going to be familiar with her story in case they're not. Just a simultaneously chilling and inspiring story captures her narrative. So when she's a young child, she starts to become an advocate for young girls' rights to receive an education. And the Taliban target her, and they basically plot to assassinate her. And she finds out about this plot. They do try to assassinate her. They shoot her in the face. She recovers.

She wins a Nobel Peace Prize. It's a wonderful story at the end. But at the beginning, it's about the most horrific kind of experience anyone can possibly imagine. Here, this well-organized group is coming to get me. Around the time that she won the Nobel, she went on the Jon Stewart show in the United States, a daily show, to talk about her experience. And he asked her about it. And she basically narrated what went through her head. And she said something to the following effect. I used to think about what I would do if the

Thale would come to get me. And then I would say to myself, Malala, if they come to get you, you should just take a shoe and hit them. But then you would be no different from the Thale, so you also have to be respectful. And she just goes on and on. And then Jon Stewart asks to adopt her because he loves her so much. But what is striking to me is we see this happening again here. She starts off, she's contemplating the most stressful experience anyone can imagine, someone coming to assassinate me. She starts off in the first person. What should I do if they come to get me? And then the moment in her mind, the moment they arise, she switches to coaching herself. Malala, take a shoe and hit him. So did Malala's dad, did LeBron James's dad,

did Julius Caesar's father or mother teach them to do this? I don't think so. I think we stumbled on the tool. And I think where the value of the science comes into play with this tool, many of the others that I talk about in the book, is that it shines a spotlight on these tools, which allows us to be much more deliberate about how we use them, how we incorporate them in our lives. There's an analogy here to medicine, where many medicines come from plants in the forest, right? We then, through science, identify active ingredients, and we put them in a pill form, and we make it very easy to go right for the medicine when we need it. And the hope is that this book can help people do that as well when it comes to the inner voice. Yeah, I mean, that's a really nice analogy. And

you know, what I love about many things, including this technique is that humans have been doing a lot of helpful stuff for thousands of years. And I've said before that I feel that, I don't know if every current generation of humans feels this way or not, but I kind of feel there's a bit of arrogance with us in the world where we think, oh yeah, we've got this stuff figured out. Like with all our technology and our science, we've kind of figured stuff out that nobody before ever knew how to do. But whether it's in the circadian body clock that, you know, ancient doctors have been talking about for years, and now Sachin Panda and the

Salk Institute is showing, yeah, different organs are active at different times. Or whether it's the fact that this self-talk, using our own name, now can be very useful at providing that psychological distance. It's great to have the science to back it up. And I find that very humbling, actually. The more different experts I speak to, it is incredible how many of the tools that we're getting scientific data behind now actually are tools that people have used for a long period of time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of these are ancient tools. And the reason that the science is so helpful, because I think our intuitions are often great, right? But sometimes our intuitions

are not great. So, you know, and I'll give you a few examples here. And the science, of course, is the arbiter. The science is what we can use to test our intuitions or our hypotheses about whether something is helpful or not or benign. A lot of people, so when I give talks on chatter and self-talk, most people, when I describe what chatter is and I say, have you ever experienced this? You know, a sea of hands goes up. When I talk to people about, when I ask people, hey, do you think it's helpful to use your name to work through a problem? There's a lot more variability. Some people say to me, oh, thank God. I thought I was insane, but now I understand that this is a useful tool. I didn't understand why I ever did that before. Other people have a different response. Why would that help? Would it help? I think there,

the science can be very helpful for folks who don't have the same intuitions. Then there are other things that we often think are really helpful. As I talk about in the book, there can be value in just believing that something is going to help you, even if it has no active ingredient. And, you know, in the medical world, we call that the placebo. And placebos are, in my mind, to use a technical term, a mind blower. They are remarkable, their potential to heal. But we can also go beyond placebos as well and make tools and medications even more powerful. In fact, placebos are often what we compare different tools against. And so sometimes some of the things we do may not work or may not work for the reasons we think they work. Talking to other people being

one prime example. Yeah. I want to just go back to what you said about placebos. This is one of my favorite sections in the book, actually, that I've got a lot of underlines in because placebo has very much been, I think, undervalued by medicine. It's almost been a little bit looked down upon, but there's a lot of science. And you also share this in the book, just how powerful the placebo effect is. And actually, I've often wondered about different clinicians have different methods with their patients. You know, they can study the same science, they can read the same journals and see the same protocols, but we can often get quite different results with our patients. And I've always wondered,

why is that? Why do some patients do what their physician asks them to do? Why are some unable to do it? And it was hard for me to shake the conclusion that it's not just the quality of the information you give that's important, it's the way in which you deliver it. And I really feel very strongly that as a medical doctor, but for any healthcare professional, the way we connect with a patient in front of us and therefore how they receive that information, if they have confidence in me, I feel that they're going to, and I say with confidence, I think this is going to really help you. I think that's going to have more impact than the same intervention that potentially someone who they don't like their

doctor and they kind of feel that they don't listen to them and they're a bit, you know, a bit frustrated. Do you know what I mean? I think there's something in that, isn't there? Oh, totally. And you know, it's interesting. You asked me at the start of this conversation where I am. So I'm with my in-laws and my father-in-law is a retired physician and he trained with a physician by the name of Bernard Lowne, who is a really interesting guy. He was a Harvard trained cardiologist who not only invented the defibrillator, but if that weren't enough, won a Nobel prize for doctors for peace or something like that. So quite an illustrious CV. And, you know, we're talking about the defibrillator, right? This is a technical

innovation that when it came on the scene was, I mean, it changed, I would argue, medical history, right? I mean, is that going too far? I'm not a medical doctor, but I would imagine. So fact checking in case I'm getting anything wrong. But he wrote a book that I read several years ago. You'd think this guy who was so brilliant and so technologically competent would be, would be promoting technology. And he was by no way, by no means averse to it, but his message was compassion and the importance of, of, of, of the relationship between the physician and the patient. It's not enough to do the tests. In fact, we probably do too much testing. Make sure, put the stethoscope on the chest and leave it there, maybe five seconds longer.

Put your hand on the shoulder and tell the patient it's going to be okay. I think what you're describing is very much was his philosophy, just passed away very recently, this idea that other people can serve in a certain sense as a kind of placebo agent, a way of helping other people believe that they're going to feel better. And that's not going to necessarily make stage four cancer go away. It's not. No necessarilies are relevant there. But it can exert a lot of benefit in helping supercharge the effects of interventions and techniques. So I think it is a vital message. I think it's relevant to medical doctors. I think it's relevant for humanity more generally too. When I speak to my students, when I talk to my kids, I want to give them these beliefs to help them harness the power of their mind to do what it can and is capable of doing, which is often we're not harnessing it to that full capacity. Let's move on now to what we can do with other people.

How can we, when we are experiencing negative chatter that we just can't stop. We often want to share that with a friend or our network as a way of giving us support. And there's a couple of phases to that, of course, which you beautifully illustrate in the book, which I don't think we consciously think about. We think that, oh, I'm not feeling this so good. Let me call up my buddy and talk about it with them. But you're sort of demonstrating how that's not always enough. Yeah. This is one of my favorite topics in the book. Before I go into the people, I want to just say, with respect to the tools that you can use on your own, we talked about one, but I just, I mean, I realized there are countless other tools that I talk about on your own. We talked about one, but I just, I mean, I realized there

are countless other tools that I talk about in the book and that exist. And so distance self-talk is just one example of the many things you could do on your own. So you want to be able to move back and forth between tools. Now that I've given you that caveat there, how we talk to other people about our chatter, I think is a really interesting topic because we know from lots of research that when people experience strong negative emotions, they're intensely motivated to share them with other people, to talk about them. There are very few exceptions to this rule. We tend not to talk about things that we experience shame about or trauma, but all other kinds of negative experiences, when they're triggered, we often want to share them. And our culture and our characters, they often give us a message which says, hey, when something bad is happening, vent it, get it out.

It's not good to hold it in. And I think that's the temptation that a lot of us have too. We want to find someone to just unload. What the research in this area suggests is it's not as simple as just venting our feelings. And in fact, venting our feelings often backfires and makes us feel worse. So here's how this works. Let's say I'm really struggling with a problem. And I find, you know, I call you, we're buddies now. And I tell you about the rejection I just had from my 11 year old daughter. It's a frequent experience for me. And, and I'm ruminating about it. And I start telling you about what happened and what I felt and you, oh man, that sounds awful. Tell me what you, that was so nice of what you tried to do.

And she said that, that's terrible. And so you keep on kind of getting more out of me and you're really empathizing with me. What that conversation does is it makes you and I feel really close and connected. So when you empathically connect with me, that validates my experience. It makes me know that there's someone else in this world who's willing to listen.

That feels good in the moment. It strengthens our friendship bonds. But if that's all we do, just talk about what happened and what I felt, it doesn't do anything to help me work through the problem. It doesn't do anything to help me reframe the way I'm thinking about this experience that will ultimately lead me to feel better. So the best kinds of conversations when someone approaches you for help with their chatter are conversations that actually do two things.

First, you do learn about the other person's experience. You need to find out what they went through, what they're feeling. And it's important for them to be able to share that with you to a certain degree. But then at a certain point in the conversation, when the person who's talking about what happened to them is ready for it, you want to start trying to nudge them to go broader. Hey, so that sounds awful, but you've gotten in lots of little tiffs with your son before. How have you dealt with them in the past and how have they resolved? Or that happens to me all the time. Here's what I do in that situation. So there are different ways in which I'm trying to now break you out of that tunnel vision where you're just harping on the negativity over and

over and over again, like throwing logs on a burning flame, right? That just keeps it burning. So I'm trying to connect with you, but then also help you go broader. And it's doing both of those things that we find in research is useful for not only getting people to connect well, but also helping them work through their experiences in ways that nip their chatter in the bud. Yeah. This is also a section that I really loved reading about because you give all these sort of practical solutions on how we connect with others. There's sort of a couple of things there really. So from one perspective, it's like, okay, I'm struggling with my chatter. I can phone up one of my buddies and talk to them and we then connect. Okay, that's stage one. That's great. I feel there's a supportive tribe

around me. I'm not alone in the world. You know, for social animals like humans, that's a really rewarding feeling to have that we're not alone, that there's people around us to help us and keep us safe. But sometimes we're missing that second part, which is the solution. How can we help that person think about this differently? And you said, oh, you know, this has happened to you lots of times before. How did you deal with it then? That's just one strategy, isn't it? Because you can ask them a question, you can maybe provide a solution, although you've got to be very careful when you provide a solution yeah i don't know this is a male thing or not a lot of my male buddies say the same thing it's certainly something i'm still learning in my marriage that if my wife wants to share something

with me then you know my job is as she has um very eloquently told me on many occasions, is not to provide a solution. It's to listen and be there, her support and hear her. And it's something I'm a lot better at now, actually. But I realized in the earlier days of my marriage, I perhaps was quite quick to, hey, I know the solution here. Hey, this is what you've got to do,

which, you know, and so I guess from that, it's like we've all got these different stages, right? Different people may require different stages of that connection first. But then also when you do get to that sort of solution phase, what I really enjoyed also was that you give people options. And one of the options was what you just did in your example. But another option, which I circled this morning was, you can help silently. Talk me through some of those ideas. So let me break it down. And you've got it just right. So first of all, there's an art to this. There's an art to being a good chatter advisor to others. And as a scientist, you know, we're not used to talking about art, even though a lot

of us scientists love art. But what I mean by art is different people may need to be in what you described as stage one longer than others, right? So some of my friends come to me with a problem and it's really raw, it just happened. I'm going to spend a lot more time just learning about what they're feeling and what they're going through before I start to nudge them into thinking about the big picture. And I might even ask them, hey, can I me to, can I offer a suggestion? Or do you want to just keep talking? I mean, there's nothing wrong with asking that question to someone else, because they'll often tell you, no, I want to keep going. Or yeah, please, God help me. Like, I mean, I've had people say that

to me, like, please tell me what to do, you do. So different people will vary in terms of when they're ready to get from stage one to stage two. And we want to be sensitive to that. But everything that we've just talked about with first validating an experience, learning, and then advising, that has to do with a situation where a friend is coming to you for help with the problem. And they're being explicit about it, which I think is often the case. I'll call up someone and say, hey, I need your input on this. Let me tell you what happened, and then we go into it. There are going to be lots of situations in people's lives when they see someone who's struggling, but that person has not asked for

help explicitly. They're suffering alone, and for whatever reason, they haven't approached you. That's a situation where this other kind of support that you hinted at, which I call invisible support, becomes really relevant. things we've learned is that when we volunteer support for other people when it's not asked for, it can often backfire spectacularly. This happens to me with my kids all the time. I tell a few anecdotes about, provide anecdotes about this in the book. I teach for a living. I do math and science. And I see my, let's say my oldest daughter, Maya, struggling with her homework. Hey, sweetie, let me show you how to do this. Not that way. You do it this way. And it's like Mount Edna erupts. Did I ask you for help? You think I can't do it? Mom. And it always ends with mom, actually. And then I'm in deep trouble. I just go back to my office at home and go back to writing books. So what's happened there is I've threatened the other person, in this case, my daughter, her sense of self-efficacy, this idea that, hey, I can manage

this thing on my own. That's a really powerful set of cognitions. The sense of self-efficacy, we know it predicts lots of things, performance, well-being in life, feeling that we have control over this situation and we can do it. When we inject ourselves into the equation, we can often threaten that. In those situations, what can often be really useful is helping without the other person knowing you're helping. And you gave a perfect example. So when my wife is really, she's a dietician, when she's overwhelmed with work and clients and COVID, I'll figure out a way of taking care of dinner and getting the dry cleaning,

right? That eases the burden. If that falls on her plate, that's one thing less she has to worry about. That's easing her stress load. Or there are other ways you can help invisibly too. Let's say there's a student in my lab who's really struggling with their writing. Maybe they can't put it all together in a way that's compelling. And so maybe there's a workshop on campus, a guest speaker

is coming to talk about a topic. I'll write an announcement to the lab. Hey, this sounds like a great talk for all of us. Why don't we go together? So that's a way of getting information to that student who's struggling, but without me shining a spotlight and say, hey, you need to attend this because your writing stinks. So there are lots of ways that we can try to help outside of awareness invisibly. And I think that's a powerful awareness to have when it comes to our relationships. And again, the big picture here is we're talking about really breaking down how to get good support from others. And on the other end of the spectrum, how to provide good support. We're breaking down how to get good support from others. And on the other end of the spectrum,

how to provide good support. We're breaking down it into bite-sized steps so as to allow people to be much, much more deliberate about how they go about seeking and providing support in their lives. When I'm struggling, there are like three people I call for help in my personal life and four in my professional life. And some of those people I call are not the people who I love most and who love me most because they just get me to vent in ways that is harmful. So I'm really careful about it. And that's the invitation to others. Yeah. In the book, you call it build a board of advisors, which I thought was brilliant. And different people can provide you that support for different things in your life. And, and again, Ethan, you know, the theme that comes to me throughout the entire book is,

is just this, I guess, this intentional relationship with life. It's like life is no longer happening to you. You understand, you understand, even just in terms of what you just said, the ability to interact with people, whether it's your wife or your colleagues or your children, you know, relationships, frankly, are the fabric of life. The 75-year-old Harvard study shows that it's the number one factor, the quality of your relationships determines how happy you are throughout your life. And a lot of these tools actually help us have better relationships, less conflicts. We're providing more support. And it reminds me of, you know, I spent a lot of time teaching doctors. With a colleague of mine, we created a course called Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine. And it's, you know, we sort of got it accredited by the Royal

College of GPs in London. And we probably taught maybe 2000 plus doctors by now. And, you know we we sort of got it accredited by the Royal College of GPs in London and we probably taught maybe 2,000 plus doctors by now and you know I love doing it and often in the Q&A at the end this is when it was in person pre-Covid was that they'd often say you know Dr Chashi you've been working for nearly 20 years now you know what is one of the key things you've learned I'd always say the number one thing I've learned in 20 years of seeing patients is this, connect first, educate second. Because I've strongly felt, I've just seen this over and over again, that if I spend time to connect with that individual, instead of trying to rush to the solution, if I spend time, if they feel heard, if they feel validated, if they feel seen by me, that then all is often when I've got some advice for them. But if I don't take the time to connect, I feel that the advice goes, it's just not received in the same way. I feel the same

thing on my podcast. I always take time to connect. I don't feel it's, I've said on someone else's podcast recently, I I said I feel that this podcast is about connection if I can connect any information you get is a side effect of me connecting with my guests rather than it being a pure information delivery service and sorry to go off on a tangent but it's just I really feel what you're what you're teaching people you're giving the kind of the formula in many ways in terms of how to have these connections, how to be there for others, but also get the right support from others when we need it. Yeah, it's far from a tangent. And what I love about what you've said

is it's a perfect complement to what I talk about in the book and what we've learned about what you see as being so vitally useful for interacting with your patients, connect and then educate. That's the same principle that governs how to give good support to other people, right? Connect and then educate, validate and then advise. It's the same basic idea. And I think it speaks to the power of that idea. So I think it's wonderful. And I couldn't agree more. And yeah, the way that I think about what we're trying to do in the science and the space is provide people with a blueprint, right, for how to manage this inner life that we all have that often transforms from a wonderful life

into inner noise. And when that happens, what's the blueprint that you can use to bring those conversations back on track? I think science has a lot to say about how to do that with pinpoint precision. To be clear, many of us have tools that we already use that work for us. The latest statistics on coping with COVID and the stresses it has brought, look, this has been devastated for the world. And rates of anxiety and depression are triple what they normally are. But about 70%, at least in the states of people, are not reaching clinical levels of anxiety and depression are triple what they normally are. But about 70%, at least in the states of people, are not reaching clinical levels of anxiety and depression. They actually are managing the stressor reasonably well. It's not to say it's not aversive, but they're doing it. And what that tells me is that they are bringing tools to bear to manage the situation.

So it's not like we don't have tools, but the idea is that with science, we can get a lot better at filling out that toolbox and teaching us how to use those tools much more effectively. Yeah. And I think that's what the book and the science does so well. And the technique you shared about psychological distance, people may already be doing that, but now that they know that there is science behind it there's two things first of all they're more likely to use it i think in the future and secondly there's more intention behind using it rather than it just happening and not realizing the impact you can almost add a bit of placebo in there as well because it's like oh i know

that's gonna help me so just sprinkle a bit on top as well to sort of supercharge what happens. When we're talking about the mind, and we said right at the start, what a powerful tool it is, if we harness its power in the right way. I kind of feel the social media is, we can make a similar argument about social media. Instead of saying it's all good or all bad, we go, well, hold on a minute. There's many, many benefits, but we've got to be careful with how we're utilising it. And so on this subject of sharing, we're going through some chatter and we want to share that with others. Now we can do that with our friends in privacy where, you know, we've got some boundaries, we've got some experience. Many people these days are choosing to do that online. And I actually see that there's quite a few prominent influencers here in the UK who you can actually see them doing their emotional

processing through their posting. And it's, you know, I actually look at them with compassion to go, hey, man, you know, I understand what you're doing, but I don't know if that's helping you or not. I hope it is. But my worry is, is that you're just feeding that negative voice because you post something agitated and then you'll get all the kind of negative comments, all the positive ones. And you just cause this cauldron of toxicity. Whereas I sometimes feel maybe taking a bit of your advice and actually having a board of advisors and going to them first before you share it with the world might be more beneficial. So what role does this play into the way that we deal with chatter? Because I know you've also done some research on this as well, haven't you?

you? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health. And together, we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour and I can't wait to see you there.

This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal.

In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen

to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. Yeah, I've been studying social media for, at this point, about 12 or 13 years, really from when it first started to take over, and my views on it have evolved. Initially, we published some work suggesting that it de facto undermines well-being across the board. Based on the science that has now accumulated and work that we've done as well, I think it is not right to say that social media is harmful or helpful, period. It really depends on how you use it. Let's back up a second, though. Why is social media so relevant to chatter? There's work which shows that when we experience strong emotions, I mentioned this before, we often want to talk about them with other people. Well, what social media and the advent

of technology does, i.e. smartphones in our pocket, it gives us a ginormous megaphone for our inner voice, right? We want to share it with others, no worries. Like, you know, Facebook, Instagram, you can do it in the exact moment that a negative emotion is triggered. You open your phone and you write in what's going through your head. In fact, Facebook, the prompt is what's on your mind, right? Just share it with others. That has some implications for what happens next, right? In the offline world, in the physical world, when we experience a negative emotion that we want to talk about with others, oftentimes we first have to find someone to talk to, right? And so finding someone that could mean in pre-pandemic days, like walking

down the hallway, finding a colleague, making sure they're not meeting with someone else or calling someone and they may not be available. But something often happens when we're searching for someone else to talk to, which is time passes. And time tends to take the edge off our emotional responses, right? As time passes, we begin to feel better, think differently. With social media, we're often tweeting and posting at the very peak of our emotional responses before time has had a chance to exert its healing effects, right? So we're often projecting really raw stuff. And the other thing about social media is it strips away many of the empathy cues that exist in offline interactions that

serve as a kind of constraint that governs how we talk. So I'm looking at your face right now. I can see how you're reacting to me. In your voice, I hear the response to what I'm saying. If I say something that's hurtful or insulting, there's going to be feedback that I register instantly that's going to constrain how I subsequently respond. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I offend you in some way? Those empathy cues help keep society in check. They help make sure that we're interacting with one another in civilized ways that promote social harmony. We don't have those empathy cues when we're tweeting and posting, right? We're just doing it into a little text field. And so that has the effect of de-individuating us, to use a technical term, and then it can make it much easier for us to say things to other people

or share things with other people that we would never say or share to their face. And that's how you get things like trolling and cyberbullying, which can be really, really bad, right? They can be really quite harmful for society. Other dark side of social media when it comes to chatter, we know that social media allows us to curate the way we present ourselves. So on our Instagram feeds, we're talking mostly about our highlights, not the low points in our lives. And when you get other people who are scrolling through those feeds, wow, this person's really – they've done a lot. Their life looks pretty awesome. I didn't know you could travel to all corners of the world during COVID and still have a great time. wow, this person's really, they've done a lot. Their life looks pretty awesome.

I didn't know you could travel to all corners of the world during COVID and still have a great time. I'm suffering at home. That can elicit feelings of envy, which drive our chatter response further. We're ruminating about how, ah, we're not doing as good or feeling as good as these other people. Social media, and the last thing I'll say about the negative side, it can also

create a kind of collective co-rumination, right? And I think we saw this with, at least in the States, with our last election. I suspect with Brexit, times were tumultuous in the UK as well. But we're putting out our negative thoughts and the negative news bites to our networks that are often like-minded. And other people are jumping on, oh, that's terrible. They're awful. Oh my God, did you see this? And it's a kind of collective end session that can also drive people's negative responses and keep their chatter alive on a massive scale. Just to jump in there, does that keep you locked in as I, you know, that stage one, you know, you're sort of, you're not able to move to solution. You're sort of,

you're just stuck in that co-rumination cycle. Yeah. And I think this is where the media, we have a, we did a massive study on coping with COVID in the States. This isn't published yet. We're working on it now. So everything I say, take this as unpublished data, but hopefully it will be soon. And we asked about how much have you read the news each day for two weeks? And it was a longitudinal study. We track people's anxiety over time.

two weeks. And it was a longitudinal study. We track people's anxiety over time. And wouldn't you know, one of the most potent predictors of anxiety was simply reading the news. I think the reason for that is we're just tapping into this, what's current and the negativity, and that's keeping us in stage one, as you're describing. It's keeping the negative feelings active. Oh my God, the rates are even higher. The people are dying. Or this person is saying this, this candidate, and it's even worse. And so just keeping this chatter, it's keeping us away from moving into the solution oriented mode. So that's all the bad stuff. Now there is a positive side though, of social media too, which is it can provide us with a platform for getting good chatter support from other people, from a massive network of other people, and also for providing it to others as well. And so,

um, you know, there, there, there are cases in which if your network is properly constructed with folks who are supportive and who are trying to provide you with aid, this provides you with a way of doing that. So I see someone who's really struggling. Hey, I can just help them really quickly in ways that I'd never do in the offline world because they'd probably never even ask me. And there are lots of examples of this, social movements that bring people together and into groups that are very supportive and helpful. And so the take home with social media is we need to know how to navigate this space to make it work for us rather than against us when it comes to chatter and our inner voice. If we think about the offline world, the physical world, from a very young age, our culture socializes us into how to

navigate the offline world profitably, right? I learned at a young age, hey, these are the neighborhoods you go to, and these are the neighborhoods you don't go to. This is the way to talk to other people to avoid getting punched in the face. This is the way to do this and that. My parents taught me that. My schools taught me that. My buddies taught me that. We haven't had those kinds of lessons being transmitted for social media, in part because it's so new. 10 years ago, we had no knowledge base from which to pull. We now have an accumulating scientific knowledge base that can tell us, here are the things you could do on social media that may get you into trouble, like just passively scrolling or doom scrolling. Not good. Not good if you don't want to experience

chatter. But here are the ways you can navigate social media to your benefit. And I think we'd all be better off if we start taking that science, listening to it and sharing it with others so we could start socializing the next generation and ourselves into how to using it more productively. I love it. And again, it comes down to intentionality. Don't just passively consume, you know, curate your feed the way you want it, the way that's going to feed what you need it to feed in your life. And what you said about the news, you know, I really hope that gets published because I have seen this. I've experienced this myself. You know,

I went through phases and still do. I, you know, it's almost something that is socially awkward to even admit. I rarely watch the news. I won't do it. You know why? I'm happier. I'm more present with my kids, more present with my wife. I'm like, you know what? If there's something big happening, I'll probably see it when I go onto Twitter, but I'm not going to actively consume it at a set time, particularly in the evenings. And it's funny, like when I used to travel, you know, we're still in a full UK lockdown as we have this conversation, Ethan. But I remember sometimes, you know, you're away from home, you're in a hotel room at a conference, you know, in the morning, you know, I'm going to put on the

breakfast news, which is like a novelty because I don't normally watch it. And you start to see, oh, I'm starting the day with this kind of bit of negativity in my brain, which I don't normally get at home because I'm seeing it as a novel thing to do because I'm away in a hotel room, but actually becoming more acutely aware of the impact it's having on me. And this sort of, I guess, leads to this third big bucket, which is how much the world around us, our environment, influences our chatter. So this final bucket for me was the most fun to research for the book. I find it fascinating that the way we've evolved, tools exist all around us for managing what's happening inside us. And Rafael Nadal is the perfect way to kick this off. So as many listeners will know, Nadal is one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

And during an interview several years ago, he told a group that the thing he struggles most with on the tennis court are the voices in his head. That to me is astounding, right? So he is competing against the best athletes in the world. Their backhand, not a big deal. My ability to hang with them for a full match on Wimbledon, easy peasy. No, what he struggles hardest with is managing that chatter in his head. And so what does he do? What's his go-to tool for managing that chatter? It's to engage in these rituals. So if you watch Nadal, you'll see every time he walks onto the tennis court, he walks on in a very particular way, carrying one racket in his hand, his bag of rackets over his shoulder and the other. He then sets down his racket in a particular way,

makes sure to turn to the audience, bouncing back and forth on his feet, always unzipping his jacket, aligning his water bottles on a diagonal between his bench and the court. He's very, very sequenced, tightly controlled in how he arranges things. And of course, once he starts playing, tightly controlled in how he arranges things. Of course, once he starts playing, the ritualistic behavior doesn't end. He picks his wedgie out of his shorts before every serve and then curls his hair, may not be the most hygienic to do it in that order. He's arranging his shirt. It's highly structured. What he says is, I order the world around me to provide me with the order that I seek in my head. He's on to something.

Because what we've learned, and there are lots of experiments that support this, is what he's doing is something called, he's exercising compensatory control. He's trying to compensate for the lack of order he feels in his head. When we're experiencing chatter, it often feels like we don't have control. He's trying to compensate for the lack of order he feels in his head. When we're experiencing chatter, it often feels like we don't have control. When you were struggling with a chatter blip with your son, I'm imagining that the thoughts were in charge, like you're not in charge because you couldn't stop thinking about this thing that was bugging you. The idea is that when we're in that state, which we all are at times,

by ordering our world around us, by tidying up, by organizing, or by engaging in a ritual, a very structured sequence of behaviors that provides us with a sense of order that helps us feel better. We know from research that when people are stressed, they tend to reflexively start organizing and engaging in ritualistic behavior. I actually experienced this when I was working on my book. I did something very unusual for me. I say unusual because in a moment you'll see. In general, I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky, easy, go-with-the-flow kind of guy. There are stacks of papers and books.

There might be an occasional pair of jeans and a shirt on the floor in my bedroom or the office. Like, no, no big deal. When I was writing the book, my house was never as organized as it was then. So I'd go in the kitchen and I'd clean all the dishes and put the pots and pans away. So I'd go in the kitchen and I'd clean all the dishes and put the pots and pans away. I joke that at some point I was beginning to think that my wife wanted me to experience chatter because the consequence was that the house was looking so spick and span. Maybe she thought you were giving her invisible support.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the much healthier way. That's a much better way. And if she ever listens to this, she'll like that. She'll like that one better. But so that was me just, can use to manage our chatter. I think it is instructive that throughout time, our culture has given us rituals to deal with chatter-provoking events. If you think about particularly stressful moments in life, like when we lose loved ones to death, or other stressful moments at the other end of the spectrum, the birth of a child, we think of

the birth of a child as a joyous moment. It is, it often is, but it can often be quite stressful too. That's when they're most vulnerable historically. And I think that's probably true to this day. Cultures give us rituals to engage in, right? Grieving rituals, birthing rituals. And so we've, again, stumbled on this tool without knowing how they work. So to be super concrete here for listeners, when you're stressed out, one thing you can do is organize your space. That can be useful for managing our chatter. Or you can engage in a ritual, which I think of as a kind of chatter fighting cocktail in the sense that rituals help us in a few different ways.

First off, they do provide us with a sense of order and control because rituals by definition involve doing the same thing the same way each time. They're very ordered, but rituals can also do other things for us. They take our mind off the problem. You see athletes often do rituals mind off the problem. So you see athletes often do rituals before, you know, high stakes moments in their games. And so, so that's providing them with a sense of control, you know, but it's also taking their mind off what's stressing them out. So if you're, if you're, if you've got the shot on goal to win the game, right. Rather than, Oh, Oh boy, don't, I shouldn't screw it up. Don't screw it up. If you've got a focus on your ritual of scratching your head three times, pulling your earlobe twice, and then arranging your shorts, that does take a little bit of your attention. It draws it away from what's bothering you. And then the third element is we often do rituals with others. So there's a sense of community and bond and support

that can be really uplifting. And like when you pray, for example, with other people, that's a kind of ritual that there's a sense of togetherness, which can also be chatter fighting in a certain sense. Yeah, I mean, the story with Nadal is super interesting because, you know, I'm fascinated with sports and I read a lot of things about different athletes. And I've read something similar with Michael Phelps. I don't think during the meet, I mean, obviously swimming races are a lot shorter. I think the ones that Phelps competes in, but

I've heard that since the age of 16, he is always prepared for a race in the same way. Again, I'm not an expert on Michael Phelps, but it's something like an hour beforehand, he will go and do something like 24 lengths, you know, four of them will be this way, four of them will be that way. There's no variety. There's no, oh, what should I do today? No, it's the same way every time. And then he finishes, apparently walks to the changing room. And I've read also that he'll sit down on the seat. He'll find a seat on his left and his right that's empty. On one of them, he'll put maybe his swimming tools like a float, a buoy, whatever he's using. On the other one, he'll put his stuff and then he'll put his headphones in and listen to the same song. Then when it's time for race time, he walks out and does the race. It's interesting. he walks out and does the race. And it's interesting, Phelps, one of the, probably the most successful swimmer of all time, I believe. Tiger Woods in golf, I've also read has got,

he will rock up at the range exactly at the same time before tee off time, maybe two hours before, and he'll hit, he knows how many drivers he's going to hit, how many putts. These things are not left to chance. And hearing them or thinking about them in the context of what you've just shared about how we can manipulate our external environment to give us a sense of control, it's hard to feel that those guys aren't doing the same thing. I guess it's a great example here, Ethan. Since last August, all my podcasts have taken place in my podcast studio, even the remote ones or the in-person ones. And that's being redone at the moment. And so yesterday it wasn't quite ready. We're like, oh man, I've got these podcasts scheduled. We're now in my living room and I'm going to start the different setup with a different

mic. And it took me 10 minutes at the start just to really get into it because it's not quite right. It's not quite what I'm used to doing. So I think the external environment, it's massive, isn't it, in terms of our inner emotions? Yeah, it's massive. I think, you know, one way of describing the athlete's behavior is, oh, this is just superstitious. And, but, but what we know from the science is that they're actually, they're onto something. Again, this is an example of stumbling on a tool. Maybe we haven't even stumbled. Our cultures are often giving us these tools, but, but we're not quite sure why these things work, but we think they do. But we're not quite sure why these things work, but we think they do. And so now, again, we have the opportunity to be much more deliberate about this in our lives. And I think that is really empowering. So, you know, I do rituals, too.

Before I give a talk to hundreds of people, I say the same thing to myself. I could hear like my wrestling coach from high school giving me, you know, saying, come on, you could do it. It's time to do this and do that. I repeat that kind of mantra. I take a few deep breaths and then I do it and I do it each time and it helps. And we all have our own idiosyncratic rituals. And I think that's an important point to make. You don't just have to do a ritual. It doesn't just have to be a culturally prescribed ritual, although those exist and can be helpful. The research shows that you can often just create your own rituals and benefit from them as well. So this is just one example of how we could tune our voices from the outside in. But let's go through some of the other ones too, because again, I find this to be just fascinating.

So we talked about rituals and order, which are related. Let's talk about awe. So the experience of awe, awe is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something vast that we have trouble explaining. My last experience with awe was a few weeks ago when we landed the Mars rover on Mars. When I watched that, my circuits are fried. I don't understand how we managed to

take an SUV to blast it off this planet and safely land it on another planet. Just using the term like interplanetary travel, that used to be like Star Trek, you know, like it's a reality. And I have trouble understanding how we actually figured out how to do that. It fills me with awe. One of the things we know, again, through science, through experiments, rigorous research, is that this is the, it's the ultimate way of getting distance, if you will, the ultimate perspective broadener, right? Because when you're contemplating something as vast as interplanetary travel, right? Like, oh my God, how your own concerns and worries, they feel a whole lot smaller by comparison. So experiencing awe leads to something called a shrinking of the self. We feel smaller when we're contemplating these incredible things.

A lot of people feel awe when they're in nature. And that's one of the way that nature can heal and help us with our chatter. When you go through a walk in a green space, provided it's a safe green space where you're not worried about, you know, getting mugged. You know, here are trees that have been here for hundreds of years. They've weathered all sorts of storms and yet they're still standing. Like, how does that work? Right? That fills people often with a sense of art or looking at a great piece of art. How did a painter, how did the Mona Lisa get painted this beautifully? These are all ways of when we're trying to contemplate that, something

monumental of that sort, we don't feel like our concerns are as important or as big as they previously were. And then that can help us rein in our chatter. So that's another way that we can combat chatter from the outside in. Yeah. I mean, what you say about awe is, it's incredible. I mean, even the language we use, it's awe inspiring, you know, it all sort of is feeding that, that same idea. I love, I love that idea of shrinking the self, but we're often so busy and, and I guess we're often so caught up in the noise inside our head that we can't stop to take in that. So I guess on that then, if we are too busy or the voice inside our head is just so loud that we can't stop to take in the awe,

you know, what would you say to someone who says, no, I want to, but I can't? What would you say to someone who says, no, I want to, but I can't? Well, if you want to, but you can't, a great way to frame it. Let's go back to formula. I love formula. So when it comes to managing ourselves, I think there are two critical pieces. There's the want and the ability, the motivation and the actual capacity. So motivation is you want to feel a particular way. The capacity is do you have the tools to actually fulfill that motivation, right? I can want to feel better to no end. 10 point on a five point scale. I want,

want, want. If I don't know how to actually feel better, I don't know what tools to bring to bear to make that happen, I'm not going to feel better. That's one example. Let's say you have another person who has, they know all the tools that exist for managing their mind. But if they're not motivated to use those tools, if they, you know what? No, I just want to sit and watch TV or I just want to, I don't want to change the way I'm feeling and they're not going to use those tools if that, you know what? No, I just want to sit and watch TV or I just want to, I don't want to change the way I'm feeling and they're not going to use them. So what you need

are both pieces, the motivation and the ability. I think a lot of people when they're experiencing chatter have the motivation to feel better because chatter is an aversive state. It feels awful. We don't like this experience of being consumed by our thoughts, our inner noise. What I think we often lack is the ability, knowing exactly what tools we could then use in a very precise way to manage that chatter. And that's what the book hopefully helps people do by illuminating the science. I guess what you were sort of sharing there about awe and nature, it's a great way of reframing a break from work or even a walk, right? So typically we talk about them as, you know, you go walking, a brisk walk, 30 minutes a day. You know, your heart will pump more blood around the body.

It's good for your physical health. blood around the body. It's good for your physical health. But we can actually start to reframe that for people and say, hey, look, if you're really experiencing chatter and you can't stop, yeah, there are some tools you can try by yourself that you share lots of them in the book, including that psychological distancing. But actually, sometimes maybe just go for a 20-minute, 30-minute walk in nature if you got it nearby. And maybe that will just calm things down enough for you then to engage in those tools that maybe you were struggling with. Do you know what I mean? It's part of the armory. And just as reframing anything in life is a very powerful thing to do to help our mental health and reduce chatter, even reframing exercise in nature, I think, could be really, really powerful.

Yeah. And so the way that nature works, I completely agree. And you've actually described the benefits of nature perfectly. When we're consumed with chatter, consumed is a great word, right? We have a limited ability to focus at any given time, period. And when all of those attentional resources are devoted towards our chatter, it can be incredibly depleting. It's not only depleting, it can also have a really negative side effect, which is we can't focus on anything else that matters in our life, like our work or our families. So we're consumed, we're depleting

our attention when we're stuck in these states. People get tired. People often feel really tired when they're stressed and worried about things. What nature does is it provides a natural recharge to those, you know, the attention that is consumed. And the way that works is when you're walking through a safe space, a safe natural space, I always feel like I have to say safe because I grew up in the city in New York and the parks in New York when I grew up at the time, this is where you got mugged. So you've got to find a nice natural setting where you don't have to worry about those kinds of things or it defeats the purpose. But when you find that park, the greenery naturally captures your attention in a very gentle

way. You start taking in the flowers and the hedges and the trees and you're engaged with them, but you're not focusing really hard on it like you would if you're trying to solve a problem. And what that does is when you have that kind of what we call soft fascination with the world around you, it allows your attention to replenish. And that attention can be really helpful to have it, to implement these other tools that I talk about in the book and that people will have at their disposal. So nature can heal in a variety of ways. It's free, as are all of the tools in this book, right? These don't require years and years of therapy

or pills, which can be effective in some cases, but also have side effects. The idea here is that we could start using these different tools to very immediately help provide us with some relief. Yeah, just a couple of things I'd love to finally touch on, Ethan, if we can. One of them was the idea that I never really heard articulated in this way before, was that a lot of the tools help us create a bit of distance between us and the negative thoughts. But you sort of contrast that by saying that when you have joyful thoughts or blissful moments, you don't want distance, you want to fully immerse yourself in that experience. And I thought that was really,

really interesting. Yeah. So chatter is described by being totally immersed in that negative state, right? In a very tunnel vision-like way, which makes it very difficult to think objectively about the situation. We're just consumed. We're all emotion. So when that happens, you want to get some space, step back in order to then approach the problem from a more objective standpoint, which can be helpful. Distant self-talk is one thing you can do, lots of others. When we're experiencing positivity,

at least for me, and this is somewhat up to the individual, but when I'm really having a great time with my kids, the last thing I want to do is switch into objectivity mode, right? I want to embrace that experience. I want to bathe in the joy. And so I want to immerse myself in it. I don't want to get distance. And so this is the idea here that you want to be careful. Distance is not always good. It depends on when you distance. You want to distance at the appropriate times. good. It depends on when you distance. You want to distance at the appropriate times. Distance is really helpful when you don't have perspective. But when I'm tickling my kids and having fun and we're wrestling and having a good time, I don't need perspective. It's just joy. And so I think being aware of that can be useful too.

It's a brilliant way of thinking about it. Yeah, you're wrestling with your kids, you're laughing. You don't want to reframe that. And that sort of segues nicely into the final topic I wanted to talk to you about, which was kids. You have two young kids, as do I. I talk to them a lot about my work, or they always ask me, who are you talking to on the podcast this week, Danny? I say, well, you know what? I'm talking to this guy called Ethan, you know, I've been reading his book and this is what I've learned. What do you think? But what you're describing in the book, I think will help every single adult who reads it and starts to apply it. But then the natural extension for that is, is why do we need to wait until adulthood to learn some of these incredibly

powerful techniques? So can we utilize some of them with our children? Do you utilize some of these incredibly powerful techniques. So can we utilize some of them with our children? Do you utilize some of them with your own children? And how might we start thinking about that? So I think we definitely don't need to wait to adulthood to implement these tools. It sounds like you and I have very similar parenting styles. I, I, it sounds like you and I have very similar parenting styles. Um, and you know, I talk to my kids about this stuff all the time. Um, I, I I've taught them about the placebo effects. I, I, you know, there's a way of teaching them about distant self-talk. We've done studies with kids on distant self-talk. Um, it's given rise to something called the Batman effect where we've, we've seen that when kids are struggling with something,

asking them to imagine that they're a superhero like Batman or Wonder Woman, and then telling themselves to actually coach themselves through a problem using their superhero name. All right, Batman, here's what you're going to do. Or Wonder Woman, Dora the Explorer, choose your favorite superhero. Research shows that that can help kids persevere under difficult situations. And so a lot of these tools, I think, do generalize to childhood. And I think we can help our children by teaching them about these tools and getting them to try them out and so forth and so on. The bigger question here, though, is given that a science now exists in this space, right, really in the space is how to manage the mind. Why aren't we teaching kids about this stuff much earlier in schools?

This is an issue that I never thought about until I was teaching a class at the university here, University of Michigan. And I taught a senior level seminar on this topic. It was great. We had fun. And on the last day of class, one of the students asked me this question. She was really irritated. She said, why has no one taught us about this stuff until we're 21 years old and now leaving for the world? It could have helped us back then. It's over now. And I said to her, number one, if you're concerned about not having any more opportunities to experience chatter because

you're 21, fear not. You will have ample opportunity moving forward. But I didn't have a good answer to her question. And it actually had an effect on my research because I started thinking about all the things we teach our kids about in schools, in primary, middle, high school. I remember learning about, I love biology. I do neuroscience. I remember learning about the digestive system. Peristalsis really stuck with me. I love that concept. If you ask me how often that information about peristalsis really stuck with me, right? I love that concept. If you ask me how often that information about peristalsis comes in handy in my life right now, it's very infrequent. Like the last time I used that, knowledge was when my younger daughter wanted to know how she can

swallow things upside down. I had the answer. I didn't have to Google it, right? But that's it. upside down. I had the answer. I didn't have to Google it. But that's it. But think about the mind. How often do we have a need to rein in our anger or anxiety or amplify our emotions? I think most of us have these needs on a daily basis. So why aren't we teaching our kids about how the mind and the brain work? Why isn't that in the curriculum? And so we're doing work now to actually do that. We've designed a curriculum for middle and high school kids to teach them about the science. And we're evaluating what effect learning about it

actually has on their lives. So does it help them perform better, have healthier lives, have better relationships? I think it's a huge huge challenge to to to try to address this issue well i'm delighted you're moving your research into that area it's something i'm super passionate about it's so hard to believe that it wouldn't have not only an effect but a profound effect but let's see what the research actually shows and uh you know if when this is over if you ever are in the uk i'd'd love to invite you back into the real studio for a face-to-face conversation to dive into that.

But, you know, Ethan, I really enjoyed my conversation with you today. As I've said, I think it's a fantastic book that would benefit anyone. I always like to finish off my conversations with actionable tips that people can think about. Now, I know you've mentioned many during this conversation so far, but I wonder just to finish off, just to leave a few final thoughts in people's heads that they can go out into the world and they can start to make these often quite small changes that I think will have a huge impact on the way that they feel. So, first of all, thank you for the wonderful interview. It was a real joy. And thank you for the very kind words about the book. As you know, as a fellow author, you work on a book for so long,

you work on a book for so long and it's really just you and the keyboard. And so it's really wonderful to have a chance to talk to other people about it and see what kind of effect it has. So thank you. In terms of actionable steps, my advice is to check out the tools that exist, read the science behind them, and then start thinking deliberately about what are the combinations of tools that work for you, right? Because the specific combinations that work for you may be different for someone else. And do a little bit of self-experimentation. I'll tell you that when it comes to COVID chatter, and look, I experience it like anyone else. There are a couple of things I do. I'll try to coach myself through the situation using my own name. What would I tell a friend? I tell myself that. I do something we

haven't talked about, but it's really simple to describe, temporal distancing. I'll imagine how I'm going to feel about this situation six months from now when we're all hopefully back to life somewhat as normal. That can be really helpful for giving us perspective. life somewhat as normal, right? That can be really helpful for giving us perspective. I'll check in with my chatter board of advisors, right? There are like three people I'll call to talk about this. I'll get their perspective. I go for walks regularly in the arboretum near my home. And I may have begun to clean the kitchen more frequently yet again. So those five things work really well for me. My wife does other things that work for her. And again, I think the challenge here is not to find the single magic bullet, right? I've been doing research in this space for a really long time.

I don't think any single magic bullets exist, but there do exist combinations of tools that can really be helpful. And I think the challenge is to find what those tools are for you. That's a wonderfully empowering message to finish our conversation on. Experiment and find what works for you. Not for your friends. They can experiment. They can figure it out. You figure out what works for you. Ethan, it's been a joy talking to you. I hope we get the chance to meet in person one day. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, please do have a think about one thing you can take away from today's episode and apply in your own life. And don't forget to check out Ethan's book, Chatter, The Voice in Our Heads and How to Harness

It. If you want to support the show, please do share this episode with your friends and family. Consider leaving a review on whichever podcast platform you listen on. And of course, please do support the sponsors. You can see a full list with all the special offers at drchatterjee.com forward slash sponsors. But before we finish, I just want to let you know about Friday Five. It's my weekly newsletter that contains five short doses of positivity. It could be a practical tip for your health, a book, article or video that I found inspiring, a recipe that I'm making, or it could even be a quote that's caused me to stop and reflect. Basically, anything that I feel would be helpful and uplifting. I'm so glad I started Friday Five just a few months ago. I get so many messages from you.

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