Chatter The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Great book about the voice that runs around free in our mind

Recommend to all my over-thinkers! Informative and pretty helpful.

interesting information about the internal chatter we all have but gets dull

(3.6)

Even with such a nebulous topic, this was a very straightforward helpful book. The title, "The voice in our head, why it Matters, and how to harness it" is actually a very accurate outline of what the book does. Kross defines an important distinction between the voice generally and Chatter, the negative or counterproductive instances of inner voice. Chatter is what results when the inner voice overwhelms what you're trying to do--he makes the comparison to computer RAM: the issue arises when chatter crowds out necessary processing power and interferes with your ability to concentrate and process negative emotions in a positive way. Offers a fascinating discussion on the ways that social media may amplify chatter and foreclose the healing process around painful experiences. Kross identifies a productive kind of self-talk that ALSO happens naturally, but he argues that by recognizing what kinds of self-talk are productive and encouraging those kinds we can foster more productive thought patterns with ourselves and alleviate the bad kinds of chatter. He advocates the kinds of self talk that encourage appropriate distancing from painful things, in such a way that we can have healthier perspective on them, and can ignore the intrusive kinds of chatter.

The main idea to calm negative chatter is the technique called distancing. The conclusive chapter at the end of the book (summarized below) shows several ways to implement this method. Each technique is explained with practical examples throughout the book. CONCLUSION 1. Use distancing through Journaling, imaging yourself as a fly in the wall, time travel. Help friends to reframe things into a challenge when things cool down 2. Use nature, environment and happy memories PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS 1. use distancing. Talk to yourself in third person and use your own name 2. Imagine what you'd say to a friend and apply to yourself 3. Broaden your perspective. Think about how this event related to other (bigger) events you and others have experienced. Think what someone you admire would say 4. Reframe your experience as a challenge. If we realize we have control, it makes us feel better 5. Remind yourself that your bodily response is a revolutionary response and is there to help you perform better not the other way around 6. Normalize your experience. Use the word you to refer to people in general (you think it's like this, but it's not) 7. Engage in mental time travel. Think of yourself some months or years in the future and how you'd look back on the experience 8. Change the view. Picture yourself as a fly on the wall 9. Journaling. Write as a narrator not as yourself 10. Adopt the view of a neutral 3rd person observer 11. Clutch a lucky charm or embrace a superstition 12. Perform a ritual (fixed sequence of rituals with meaning) HELPING OTHERS 1. support emotional and rational needs (give perspective) 2. Give invisible support. For example cleaning or providing options. If you take over they feel a loss of control. General examples. For example, it's amazing how many of my friends struggle with parenthood 3. Tell kids to pretend they're a superhero. Refer to themselves using their superhero name 4. Touch them. Embrace or a hand in the shoulder. Needs to be welcome 5. Be someone else's placebo RECEIVING SUPPORT 1. Find the right people to talk to. Who help with both emotional and rational needs. Depending on the topic. 2. Seek out physical contact. Can also be a teddy bear 3. Look at a photo of a loved one. Reminds you that you have people to turn to. 4. Perform ritual with others (communal meditation, same toast with friends) 5. Limit passive social media use. Makes you feel less happy. Use to reach out. I'd you use it for support, limit the negative thought sharing bcs it might upset others TOOLS INVOLVE ENVIRONMENT 1. Clean up and create order. Make lists and clean up 2. Increase exposure to green spaces. Go to a park. If not possible look at pics or videos 3. Seek out awe inspiring events

Really helpful info for an anxious soul like me! Fascinating to learn of the science behind my own 'inner voice' and what I can do to stop the negative spiralling that seems to happen so often. I have tried to use some of these techniques over the past week or so and surprised myself when they actually worked! 4.5 stars from me, not because the content was lacking but just my own personal experience with it – this is quite an academic read, which I am not used to, and at times I found it really hard to concentrate. Right when I was thinking 'I hope someone makes a dot point summary of this so I don't forget' I discovered the back section is a fantastic, categorised summary of practical tips for handling my own inner voice, being a support to the people around me coping with 'chatter' and how to adjust my lifestyle to prevent that negative-spiral taking over unnecessarily. I am SO GRATEFUL for intelligent people like Dr Ethan Kross. THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR WISDOM Disclaimer: I was able to read this book early as an advanced reading copy because I work in the publishing industry in Australia.

I'm naturally a bit skeptical of this type of "pop psychology" book, but I really enjoyed Kross' approach to laying out practical, evidence-backed concepts in Chatter. Not all of the ideas are world-shattering or even necessarily novel, but I think Kross does a good job of framing the book as a toolbox - something that still requires personal reflection and modification. Easy recommendation for anyone who wants to think more about thinking. Strengths: - Very actionable in recommendations, without being overly prescriptive. The idea of "distanced self-talk" is probably the best example of this - it's a really simple but interesting way to "test" healthier processing and something that I've noticed myself inadvertently use in the past. - Not too long? Sometimes these books stretch on and on, trying to hammer home basically one or two core ideas. Chatter is rife with interesting footnotes but doesn't overstay its welcome, progressing pretty quickly through Kross' core outline. Weaknesses: - I was hoping the book would get more into the mechanics of cognition and, in particular, the non-verbal modes of internal narrative that many people had. I think the idea of chatter (which is really a type of negative spiraling?) definitely applies to those other internal modes of thinking. I would have liked broader acknowledgement of how these processing techniques apply to people who have a visual or sensory-dominant pristine experience. - There's a lot of "what" but still not much "why" behind the concepts in this book, which felt pretty unsatisfying to me. Some of that is probably a function of how these population psychology studies work, but in cases where experts have brain scans/deeper mechanistic understandings, it would have been nice to learn more about those things. Fair authorial choice to make, just a note of personal preference.