“We spend one-half to one-third of our waking hours not living in the present,” said psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross during his opening keynote at the 2024 Environments for Aging Conference + Expo in Atlanta, April 13-16.
During those moments, people will talk to themselves and listen to their inner voice—defined by Kross as the ability to silently use language to describe what’s going on inside our head.
However, problems can arise when that self-talk turns into overwhelming chatter that can keep a person from making decisions or impact relationships with others.
Turning to the audience, Kross, who is the author of “Chatter” and faculty lead at the Eisenberg Family Depression Center, at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.), asked attendees to raise their hands if they ever thought their inner voice was a nuisance or nag, noting that most of the audience raised their hands.
“This voice plays a critical role in our lives,” he says.
And yet, he added, no one really knows how to manage it. Throughout his presentation, Kross shared quotes and video clips of sports stars, activists, and business leaders, discussing some their mental frustrations and challenges. For example, tennis champion Rafael Nadal told a reporter during an interview that what he struggles most with on the court is “quieting the voices inside my head.”
“This is quite remarkable,” Kross said, noting that Nadal’s comment had nothing to do with the physical side of the sport.
Offering his keynote as a “crash course” on the topic, Kross shared ideas and strategies with EFA attendees to help them understand why their inner voice matters and how to harness it.
Key functions of the inner voice
Calling it the “Swiss Army Knife of the mind,” Kross explained that the inner voice has four key functions, including keeping words in a person’s head for a short period of time (working memory system), helping them plan, and providing motivation. Lastly, he noted, that an inner voice helps people make meaning out of their lives.
“You would not want to live without a well-functioning inner voice,” he says.
And yet, getting stuck in a thought loop or having a lot of “chatter” in one’s head is a universal human condition that can result in several issues. Those include making it hard to think and perform, “paralysis by analysis” whereby a person has so many options that they can’t make any progress, and impacting physical well-being.
Furthermore, he added, “We just got out of the chatter event of the last 100 years,” Kross said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, with rates of depression and anxiety spiking during this time, especially among young people.
Because of issues such as these, Kross shared that people often ask him, “How can I silence by inner voice?” Instead, he said, they should be asking how they can harness it. “[The inner voice] is an amazing tool.”
Tools to address chatter
Noting that there are a variety of science-based chatter tools to help people do this, Kross focused in on four of his favorites during his presentation. They include:
1. Distance self-talk. Noting that people are much better at giving advice to others than themselves, this process involves coaching yourself through a problem. Switching from the first person to third person, he said, turns on a person’s “mental machinery to be thinking about someone else, which we’re better at.”
2. Mental time travel. During those 2 a.m. moments when he wakes up and his mind starts racing, Kross said he asks himself how he’ll feel about the issue in the morning. “As time passes, negative responses subside,” he says. Also, he added, during the middle of chatter, it’s useful to zoom out. “It gives you a sense of hope and that turns down the volume on it,” he said.
3. Built environment—create order around you. Kross said that when a person experiences chatter, they don’t feel in control. As a result, they may turn to activities, such as organizing a desk or cleaning the house, to create control in other areas. “Rituals compensate for lack of control,” he said.
4. Awe. Another strategy to make chatter feel smaller is “shrinking of self,” he said. For example, the feeling of being in the presence of something vast and indescribable can make a person feel smaller, and this perspective can help quiet the inner voice.
In closing, Kross noted that there’s no one size fits all and that most people benefit from using a combination of strategies. “Find the tools that work for you, and help others do the same,” he said.
