Introduction

• Introspection = paying attention to ones own thoughts and feelings; allows us to imagine, remember, reflect, problem solve, innovate, etc.
  • Seen as one of central evolutionary advances distinguishing humans
  • When we are distressed, introspection can actually lead to more harm than good: cyclic negative thoughts & emotions = chatter

1. Why We Talk to Ourselves

• Working memory = an essential task of the brain, and critical to the system = phonological loop which manages verbal information
  • Phonological loop → inner ear, which retains words we just heard, and inner voice, which allows us to repeat them to ourselves
  • Critical to verbal development, and thus also emotional development, in children
  • Internal voice = influenced by parents, culture
  • Leads to self-control, evaluates progress on goals/objectives, runs mental simulations (similar to dreams?), constructs autobiographical narratives

2. When Talking to Ourselves Backfires

• Paralysis by analysis: over-focusing attention on automatic behaviors/skills → breakdown in execution
• Neurologically, negative verbal rumination diverts resources of neurons to emotional distress from more useful executive functions
• Effect of inner voice on our social lives:
  • Tendency to overvoice our chatter: to talk to others about negative emotional experiences to an excess, which pushes people away → loneliness, isolation
  • Only intensified by social media: diminishes empathy, allows for less time to self-process things before sharing
  • Caught up in the cycle because sharing info about ourselves → similar dopamine response to consuming something desirable
• Emotional pain from chatter → physical implications
  • Emotional pain activates similar parts of brain as physical pain
  • Negative verbal stream → chronic stress, transdiagnostic risk factor for many mental illnesses
  • Chronic psychological threat leads to changes in gene expression associated with physical attack

3. Zooming Out

• Inner voice helps us zoom in & identify challenging situations, which is helpful— becomes problematic when we get stuck there → lose perspective
  • Activates self-referential processing, stress response
• How to use our thoughts to gain psychological distance?
  • Concept of distancing has somewhat become equated with avoidance, but doesn’t have to
  • Not the same as mindfulness, because you still want to engage with your thoughts, just from a distant perspective
• Visualizing a situation from a physically more distant POV makes you less emotional (even changes physical response), but dampens both + and - emotions
  • Gaining distance (ex. consider a situation happening to a friend rather than you) → increased wisdom: ability to have more perspective, reconcile opposing views, consider longer-term consequences
  • “Outsider perspective” helps overcome loss aversion, information overload
  • Creating temporal distance is also beneficial

4. When I Become You

• Distanced self-talk = referring to yourself in third person in internal dialogue → simple and powerful way to create emotional distance
  • Can more easily calm yourself down, improve performance, use wise-reasoning, prioritize morals over personal biases
  • Works within one second, and doesn’t require level of effort that other strategies do
• Works by harnessing ability to interpret sources of stress as challenges rather than threats
  • When faced with stress, we automatically consider 1) what is required from me? and 2) do I have the personal resources to cope with that?
  • If answer is no, stress becomes a threat; yes → a challenge; distanced self-talk leads people to frame this more in the latter way
  • When journaling, try using “you” or your name rather than the more immersive “I”
• Psychological comfort from normalizing experiences (often through use of the universal “you” to refer to anyone)
  • “If other people can get through this, so can I.”
  • Often how we try to learn from negative experiences

5. The Power and Peril of Other People

• Studies show that talking about/sharing our negative emotions doesn’t actually help— whether after tragedy or just normal life
  • Initial reaction is to fulfill emotional needs, engaging in “tend and befriend” response that attenuated stress response, releases oxytocin
  • Biased to give/receive empathy over practical support → co-rumination: re-living the negative experience, stuck in cycle of association
• To avoid rumination, need to attend to both emotional and cognitive needs
  • Example = NYPS hostage negotiation approach: active listening → empathy → rapport → influence → behavior change
  • Can start to identify what people to go to that provide balanced support
• Offering support when not requested can be harmful by damaging the receiver’s self-efficacy
  • Invisible support (that isn’t explicit) like talking about other people with similar challenges to offer perspective, can be helpful
  • Affectionate touch is also very powerful— lowers stress, anxiety

6. Outside In

• Exposure to green spaces and nature → many positive benefits to mental health, chronic stress
  • Attention restoration theory (Kaplans): nature draws involuntary attention through soft fascinations, allowing our executive functioning systems, drained by activities of voluntary attention, to recharge
  • Just being in nature produces positive effect, no matter the weather; even virtual nature (videos, pictures, recorded sounds) has similar impact!
  • Also proven to impact emotional health, reduce rumination vs urban environments
• Experiences of awe: the wonder we feel when encountering something we can’t quite understand, self-transcendent emotion allowing people to think beyond their own needs and wants → blur lines between self and surroundings (like LSD, meditation)
  • Experiences of awe → distancing effect, reduce stress, calm inner voice, provide perspective
  • People more prone to awe → more wisdom (balanced sense of strengths and weaknesses), show more humility
• Compensatory control: ordering arbitrary things around us → gives sense of control, efficacy → positive psychological benefits
  • Works because having sense of control depends on relies on the world around us is organized and neat enough for our actions to have predicted outcomes
  • Can simulate sense of order in the chaos of our minds by organizing and controlling parts of our surrounding environment

7. Mind Magic

• Placebo = treatment or condition with no “active” ingredient or cause/effect that can still bring about a change
  • Concept extends to things like lucky charms, special environments, healing humans
  • Why not take full advantage of this if it has real positive outcomes?
• Can be explained by the essential component of neural processing of expectations
  • Uses preconscious, automatic/reflexive pathways
  • Also shifts conscious thoughts— our inner voice— by providing belief, which shapes expectations
• Placebo effects strongest for psychological outcomes, but still very powerful for physical/medical ones— can act as enhancers to some medicines/tx
• How to utilize placebos without straight-up lying to people? Can get positive outcomes even when you explain what placebos are and how they work before administering!
• Rituals → another (cultural) tool to mitigate chatter
  • Different than habit or routine in that they are have more strict/rigid structure, infused with meaning (helps broaden perspective, foster connection)
  • Reduce chatter through several avenues: serve as distraction, provide us with sense of order and control, can cultivate awe/fulfill emotional needs

The Tools

Tools You Can Implement on Your Own

1. Use distanced self-talk
2. Imagine advising a friend
3. Broaden your perspective
4. Reframe your experience as a challenge
5. Reinterpret your body's chatter response
6. Normalize your experience
7. Engage in mental time travel (think about how you'll feel in the future)
8. Change the view (visualize the event from a physically different perspective)
9. Write expressively, from the perspective of a narrator
10. Adopt the perspective of a neutral third party
11. Clutch a lucky char or embrace a superstition
12. Perform a ritual

Tools That Involve Other People

Tools for Providing Chatter Support

1. Address people's emotional and cognitive needs
2. Provide "invisible support"
3. Tell your kids to pretend they're a superhero
4. Touch affectionately (but respectively)
5. Be someone else's placebo (provide an optimistic outlook)

Tools for Receiving Chatter Support

1. Build a board of advisers
2. Seek out physical contact
3. Look at a photo of a loved one
4. Perform a ritual with others
5. Minimize passive social media usage
6. Use social media to gain support

Tools that Involve the Environment

1. Create order in your environment
2. Increase your exposure to green spaces
3. Seek out awe-inspiring experiences