Dr. Ethan Kross
speaker
968 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Dr. Ethan Kross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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And when those different kinds of curve balls get thrown at us, what we do is we often stop and we try to, okay, how do we make sense of this so we could get back on track of living our lives? And we make meaning, we use our inner voice to try to make sense of our circumstances, to essentially create a story that helps us understand what we're going through. and who we are.
So your inner voice is actually shaping your sense of self. So if we just pause here and zoom out, your inner voice helps you do things as simple as reminding yourself what's on your grocery list and memorizing a phone number when you're repeating in your head, to simulating and planning for the future, to controlling and motivating yourself, to making meaning
If I told someone I could give you a tool that does all those things, like these are the things that are really important to us in life. Your inner voice is central to all of those things. It's an invaluable tool that you do not want to live life without. The big question, of course, that really got me into this business in the first place was, on the one hand, we have this remarkable capability.
We reach for it when we're struggling, but as you know, as I know, as you who are listening knows, oftentimes we don't activate this voice and get clear solutions to how to move on. we just start stumbling. We start looping over our problems in an attempt to work through them, or we start berating ourselves incessantly for mistakes that are endemic to human life.
And when that happens, I think that is one of the big problems we face as a species. And as I have said before, I say that not to scare or sensationalize. I say it based on what I know of the data, because if you look at what Chatter, which I define as the negative manifestation of your inner voice, when it turns into that negative thought looping, that self-beratement, that just tanks us.
It makes it hard for us to think and perform. It creates friction in our relationships and it undermines our health and wellbeing. These are the things we care about in our lives. And so that's why I think it's just critical to address it.
Well, thank you. I mean, it is truly remarkable when you take a 30,000-foot view and think about What does our chatter look like? What does it sound like? I mean, we say things to ourselves that many people not only wouldn't say to a buddy, right? We often talk about that. Talk to yourself like you would talk to someone else. This is a great tool, by the way. We'll talk more about that later.
We sometimes say things to ourselves that... We are ashamed to even say out loud. Sometimes when I do exercises, workshops with groups or students, I'll sometimes invite people to just write down their chatter on a piece of paper. And it's really remarkable. People are often reluctant to even put in writing what they're thinking, even when I assure them.
Like the shredders right here, there's another garbage bag with lighter fluid, like not bag, garbage can, right? You can, I'm joking here, but like no one is going to look at this. Just admitting to what is happening up here can be so challenging for folks. And I think that speaks to the gravity of what we're talking about.
There are three key forms. Number one, what I call rumination, which is going over the past, something you did in the past, you can't fix it, right? But you just keep turning it over and over in your mind. Why did I do this? Why didn't I do it that way? What implications might this have moving forward? So rumination is getting lost in this thought. It's a legitimate issue from the past.
And you're trying to work through it, but you just keep turning it over and over. You're not making any progress. That's often a telltale sign of chatter. Legitimate issue. You want to work through it, but you don't make progress.
Well, it's a predominant form because I often think that we navigate life in an ideal sense on autopilot. We just kind of want to live the life knowing that the world is orderly, it's safe, it's predictable. And then when we encounter some challenge to that view that the world is safe, that everything's okay. It's like an alarm gets hit in our brains that says, stop, pay attention, fix this.
And so then we zoom in really narrowly on what the impediment is. And so maybe it's something from the past and then we keep focusing on it until we can resolve it. Oftentimes though, we don't know how to resolve it. We just keep on playing it over and over in our minds. And then the alarm button stays pressed and And we just get into this rut of turning it over and over and over.
Some of us don't want to let go of that either, because at least if we're focusing on it, that's step one. But in the process of doing that. we're really harming ourselves. We're making it very challenging to think and perform.
I mean, have you ever gotten stuck in rumination and then tried to have a conversation with someone or read a book only to find that you're physically there or you're reading the information on the page, but nothing is penetrating because your mind is somewhere else?
Exactly. So that's thinking and performance, right? Like that is a major, major obstacle to being successful in life. If your ability to really hone your attention now is lost. And the way that works, just if you want to geek out with me for 30 seconds, our ability to focus is limited. We have these limited attentional resources.
They are subserved by our prefrontal cortex, the front part of our brains. And chatter acts like a sponge that soaks up all of those attentional resources. And it leaves very little left over to do the things that we often want and need to do, whether that be just pay attention to the person we're talking to or read the chapter in the book and absorb the information.
That's one of the ways it really sinks us. So you asked, though, how does chatter manifest? Rumination about the past is one. Right. Another one that will be familiar to everyone in the world or most of us is worry, right? We worry about the future. We think about the what-ifs. We are what-if machines. We can easily, what if this happens? What if that happens? And before you know it, you know.
life is over, right? And that goes really fast. So worrying is getting stuck in these negative thought loops, typically about the present and future.
The third form that is very common to folks is this self-beratement, this kind of like, you idiot. How could you do this? You're worthless. So this kind of inner critic is another manifestation of it. It can, however, take different forms. So chatter really is this process of just looping, looping negative information over and over.
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