Negative thought-loops, he says, are “when you’re trying to work on a problem, but you’re not making progress, so you can’t stop thinking about it over and over again.” Think of it as those harried thoughts that keep us clock-watching at 3am or the paranoia that something inexplicably bad is going to happen. “When we face a challenge in life, we’ll often turn inward to try to make sense of the problem and find a solution.” Given that humans tend to sway towards self-doubt and depreciation though, things can quickly go awry: “Essentially we risk getting into a negative thought-loop, or what I like to call ‘chatter’.” “It can serve us well in many circumstances: it helps us to solve problems, plan for the future and can create a sense of who we are,” he notes, referring to the type of positive self-talk that sees us blissfully daydreaming about impressing on a first date or nailing an upcoming work presentation without any hiccups.Ī lot of people fall back on language-based chatter to help organise and focus their thoughts, but in some cases, Kross says that we can “get into trouble” when we rely on this tool to process negative experiences or trauma. “Our inner voice is our ability to silently use language to reflect on our lives, and it’s something that’s fascinating because it’s completely unique to humans,” Kross explains, speaking to me on Zoom from his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Through rigorous scientific research, his team haven’t just linked negative self-talk with poor health, but have identified a way to ‘pick the locks’ of our brain to manipulate the language of our own voices, the contents of which he has just published in a new, eye-opening book called Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It (Ebury, £20) Why Self-Talk Matters He’s spent his entire professional career researching these conversations - what they are, why we have them, and how they can be harnessed to make people happier, healthier, and more productive. Whatever your inner voice was telling you in the moment, it’s likely you haven’t paid much attention to it since, but studies have found that the contents of our inner chatter isn’t just innocent white noise it can have a profound effect on our wellbeing, impacting everything from our relationships, health, productivity and overall life satisfaction.Įthan Kross is an award-winning experimental psychologist and the director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab at Michigan University, an institution he founded 20 years ago to study the influence our internal dialogues can have on our behaviour. Or maybe you were thinking, rather hopelessly, that the day ahead is destined to overwhelm you before it’s even happened? It’s possible that your mind was already engaged in an upcoming work task. Perhaps you were reminding yourself to send an important email. What were you thinking about just a moment ago? Or this morning, as you made a cup of coffee and anticipated the day ahead?
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