In Chatter: The Voice in Our Heads, Why It Matters and How to Harness It, Ethan Kross presents intriguing scientific insight into the private conversations people have with themselves and offers a diverse toolbox of research-driven strategies for guiding the inner voice away from self-defeating rumination or "chatter."
Kross defines chatter as the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse instead of a blessing. When chatter strikes, our inner coach becomes hijacked by our inner critic, exhausting executive functioning capacity and leading to the question at the crux of Kross's research: Is there a right way and wrong way to talk to yourself?
An engaging writer and self-described "mind mechanic," Kross is an experimental psychologist, neuroscientist and founding director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Chatter chronicles his success vanquishing intrusive thoughts, and walks readers through empirically validated anti-chatter tools. Gaining psychological distance from one's preoccupations, it turns out, is key, through self-talk methods such as addressing oneself by name or engaging in mental time travel to gain temporal distance from the agitated present. Immersion in nature, engaging in rituals and the use of placebos, even when we know they are placebos, can act like painkillers for distracting rumination.
"The key to beating chatter isn't to stop talking to yourself," Kross explains. "The challenge is to figure out how to do so more effectively." Readers who are chatter-prone will find many avenues for relief in Kross's entertaining and highly informative guide. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and freelance reviewer