Our “inner voice” isn’t a quiet companion. At a rate of 4,000 words per minute, our brains bolster us to maintain self-control and achieve our goals, solidifying our identity and enabling us to conquer feats as varied as taking out the trash to running a marathon. But what do we do when these internal instructors turn into cruel tyrants? When our thought patterns disintegrate into harmful “chatter,” we lose one of our most helpful allies and stumble onto a merry-go-round of anxiety, negativity, and alienation. Psychologist and neuroscientist of human emotion Ethan Kross demonstrates how we might escape this carousel of toxic self-talk and employ our thoughts with freedom once again.

Imagine how life might feel in the absence of that seemingly constant waterfall of thoughts, encouraging and chastising, advising that you do this or that, tying you to imprisoning mental railroad tracks? Would living be more peaceful, less noisy? Or might it seem vacant? These are questions neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor answered after she experienced the devastating impacts of a stroke, rupturing her physical ability and more drastically, her capacity for internal thought, language, and memory. Quiet swallowed her “inner voice.” Despite the fear and isolation that arrived with this loss, the death of her internal life was ambivalent. 

In the absence of her oftentimes imprisoning inner monologue, a sense of peace grew in its place. No longer did Jill have to fixate or ruminate on negative thoughts that held her in the past—silence may have robbed her of language, but it gave her the gift of tranquility instead. Years after she recovered from her stroke and underwent surgery to exhume a blood clot in her brain, she regained her capacity for language with the renewed understanding that the way we speak to ourselves inside of the small, dark space in our heads is incredibly formative to our identities and our ability to enjoy our lives. The inner voice is simultaneously a creator and a destroyer, the sound that strings the words of a life together and the scream that shatters.

Jill’s experience of losing her words and the sense of who she was as an individual resulted from a failure in the functioning of her working memory. The brain’s working memory is the puppet-master behind our ability to remember the seemingly rapid fire external inputs we receive moment to moment. Our inner lives are closely tied to our working memory through a mechanism called the phonological loop, a section of the brain in charge of language and composed of an “inner ear” and an “inner voice.” Working memory keeps track of the present and requires the phonological loop to process the language received from such—reality emerges from the interactions between our outer world and our inner world. According to the author, this function of the brain grows when we’re infants, and it exists as the foundation for the formation of our inner voices thereafter. 

Not only do our inner voices enable us to process our emotions and our worlds, guiding our behavior from the time we’re young, but they build the structure for who we are as individuals and dictate our experience of reality. In fact, a study from 2010 proved that all of those quickly moving, always blabbering thoughts are more impactful to one’s happiness (or lack thereof) then actual circumstances are. 

Next time you’re feeling frustrated or depressed, watch your inner words—they may be silent to others, but to you, they’re everything.

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The usually well-intentioned advice to “settle down, it’s all in your head” isn’t entirely true—at least not when stress, anxiety, and negativity are chomping at your brain. The Mr. Hyde to your inner instructor’s Dr. Jekyll is this kind of circuitous, damaging thinking, a thought track the author calls “chatter.” In 2007, the author and his colleagues collected research on 40 lovesick New Yorkers to gauge how the brain wires emotional pain as opposed to physical pain. It turns out, the parts of the brain that process physical pain were also involved in the participants’ recollection of emotional trauma. And we each may have our very own Mr. Hyde to blame.

The damage begins when a stressful experience we face hijacks our executive functions, which are located in our brains’ prefrontal regions. The executive functions enable us to remain attentive, think clearly, imagine creatively, and do a host of other things that require a fully present brain. When we latch onto a particular problem or negative situation, we drain our executive functions of precious neurons and attention. Watch the way your thoughts progress the next time you’re trying to complete a task that requires focus, but you simply can’t stop stewing over a comment so-and-so made to you who knows how long ago. The result? All of your attention holds a magnifying glass to the issue that’s snagged your brain, making it impossible for you to get work done and leaving you slumped in a slew of negative thoughts.

The stress that moves us to wallow in a frustrating conversation or chew on our pencil before an important exam ignites the same mechanisms our brains use to protect us from external threats, and they can be destructive to our bodies (and our pencils, too). When the part of the brain called the hypothalamus gets word about a potential danger in the area, it sets off a process that floods the blood with adrenaline and cortisol. Both adrenaline and cortisol provide us with quick, razor-sharp senses and heightened energy to tackle our threats with ease. Mr. Hyde goads us on in our internal reveries, stimulating a physical process that leaves us stuck in place. What happens when the threat that was first “all in your head” moves into your body? 

According to Professor of Medicine Steve Cole, when destructive self-talk grows “chronic,” it speaks its negativity into existence—our genes are listening and actually responding to what they hear. Gradually, our thoughts literally wear us out, causing our inflammation genes to be expressed and our virus-fighting cells to grow mute. 

Blabbering Mr. Hyde fixates and channels all of our attention onto the problem, stimulating a set of internal and physical processes that only exacerbate the “chatter” rather than relieve it. Before you grow anxious about being anxious—remember, Dr. Jekyll is just around the corner. Our brains may dig us into mental pits, but they can lift us out of them too.

Flinging ourselves into streams of distractions isn’t always the healthiest way to remedy hurtful self-talk. When the series ends and the music sings to a close, our problems—those anxious thoughts—are still sitting there, staring at us, begging for attention. And so, the cycle continues. How do we step out of this endless loop and move our feet on stable cranial ground again? Contrary to negative self-talk’s endless circling, channeling every bit of attention on the particular problem and expanding its scope, we must back away. We must take a look at ourselves outside of ourselves. We must practice “distancing.”

Along with the famed psychologist Walter Mischel and fellow graduate student Özlem Ayduk, the author pioneered a study confronting whether the act of visualization could alleviate negative emotions and enable people to confront situations without the pull of intense feelings. The researchers asked a group of participants to visualize a previous negative experience as either an “immerser,” placing oneself at the heart of an event, or a “distancer,” simply watching the conflict unfold from afar. The language both parties used to talk about the event stood in stark contrast: Those in the thick of the action used highly emotive, negative terms for the hurt they experienced, whereas the group that envisioned the circumstance as observers used level-headed thinking and understood the dilemma in a healthier, more holistic way. When they looked at themselves and their situations from outside themselves, their chatter grew mute.

Endless studies prove how impactful this tool is for calming emotions and regaining a more balanced perspective of the issue that’s fueling mental distress. Distancing takes a variety of forms as encouraged by the author, and some of them include “temporal distancing,” or envisioning a future in which the stressful situation isn’t so important anymore, and journaling, a sometimes intuitive desire to get all of one’s thoughts down on paper. The most immediate form of mental reprieve is “distanced self-talk,” perfect for those days where every situation seems to lead to damaging thought storms. Distanced self-talk is as easy as changing a few words around in your cranial repertoire. It may sound crazy (and you might, too), but talking to yourself about yourself is incredibly helpful for snapping out of harmful self-talk. After all, that’s what Fred Rogers and Malala Yousafzai did. It seemed to work for them, too—if you consider pioneering a new form of children’s education and winning a Nobel Peace Prize as markers of success. Not even your inner chatter can deny that.

When you have a deadline breathing down your neck or a stressful presentation at work right around the corner, try envisioning yourself as a simple spectator would and replace all of your “I” language with third-person pronouns. Numerous studies conducted by the author and others document the power of taking yourself out of the equation and altering your self-talk. A distanced mindset enables you to view your problems as opportunities for understanding, innovation, and growth.

We’ve all been on either side of the coffee shop or dining room table—giving advice to a distraught loved one or receiving some help ourselves. When chatter comes to stay a while, it’s natural to turn to others for support and insight. But contrary to what prominent thinkers like Aristotle and Freud tell us, expressing our feelings to other people isn’t always beneficial to our mental and emotional lives. The work of psychologist Bernard Rimé found that though unpleasant or traumatic experiences drive us to talk about those instances with others, that seemingly restorative act can actually be destructive. More talk leads to more “chatter.”

According to the author, when our brains are steeped in worry and distress, they seek out the companionship of others in a reflex called “tend and befriend.” In this desire to squelch our inner dictators with help from another person, we satisfy only one side of the coin of calm, our “emotional needs.” Though our friend may provide the kind sympathy and pat on the back we need at the time, her empathy often does little to actually solve the issue at hand and satisfy the other side of the coin, our “cognitive needs.” Yet again, we’re stuck. 

To make matters worse,  despite our best friend’s best intentions, her efforts often dissolve into a form of “co-rumination,” in which we simply reignite those anxious thoughts and fretful feelings we wish would subside. It’s not her fault; it’s simply the way we function. When our minds dredge up situations or events that trigger unwanted emotions, others usually follow in what the author relates to a kind of domino effect, or a string of negative thinking. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to leave our friends (or ourselves) high and dry, captive to excruciating mental cycles. Simply satisfy both sides of the cranial coin: emotional and cognitive. Follow the example of the FBI—they created their own method for dealing with intense hostage situations based on the practices of the NYPD Hostage Negotiations Team, which were found to be incredibly successful at the time. Your friend might not be holding anyone hostage, but her mind surely is. The FBI’s Behavioral Change Stairway Model consists of “Active Listening, Empathy, Rapport, Influence, and Behavioral Change,” and it exemplifies the kind of engagement we should practice when our friends come to us for advice and what we should look for when we need someone to silence our own stymying self-talk. 

Hostage situations and coffee chats aren’t so different—not when it comes to alleviating mental mayhem and cooling negative self-talk to a simmer.

Your house may not overlook a stretching countryside of densely wooded forests and white-crested mountains. Maybe you wouldn’t really call yourself the “outdoorsy type” either, but that doesn’t mean your inner voice can’t get a little pick-me-up from even just the sight of nature or anything with the capacity to ignite awe. As we recognize our place beneath a sprawling sky of stars or appreciate the otherworldly beauty of a painting in a museum, the “chatter” in our brains grows dim as the processes that enable its noise decline. 

The particular power of nature and greenery to dim the din of our brains lies in its restorative abilities, a revelation made by the psychologists Stephen and Rachel Kaplan in the 1970s. Their “attention restoration theory” drew on the insights of Henry James to propose that natural surroundings refresh our often depleted “voluntary attention,” or our executive functions’ ability to hone our attentional prowess, by stimulating our “involuntary attention.” Watching a leaf coast effortlessly down the arm of a stream or listening to the soft clatter of a squirrel bounding through a tree not only imparts us with improved feelings, it also restores our attention and our ability to dampen negative self-talk, allowing us to approach problems afresh. 

In 2015, a research team at Stanford sent participants out for a walk in Palo Alto, directing them toward either a crowd-laden street or an area filled with greenery. Afterward, the researchers measured rumination levels in the participants’ brains and asked them about the state of their self-talk. Not surprisingly, those who took the midday stroll among nature fared far better than those who took the other route. And as the author points out, the benefits of natural places, sights, and sounds are not confined to our natural environment itself. A 2019 study on the impacts of the sound of natural elements documented that our focus is bolstered by the simple noise of the earth surrounding us—even if it’s artificial, pouring out of your phone’s speaker rather than a calming river.

Our brains crave what nature has to offer, whether that be through a winding walk around a lake near your neighborhood or the hum of wind, water, and other natural sounds playing throughout your room. We don’t have to travel the world to replenish ourselves with the earth. Start simple—change the background of your laptop to a picturesque forest scene or take a short walk on your lunch break. Your inner voice will chatter with thanks.

Our thoughts often devolve into imprisoning towers of anxiety and negativity, latching our emotions in a mental dungeon and throwing away the key. But the “inner voice” can be incredibly empowering, too, especially when it comes to our beliefs. You’ve probably heard of the placebo effect, but did you know that the same principles that underlie its ability to deceive us into better health can actually be used to bolster our self-talk? When the human brain solidifies a belief, its capacity to form expectations enables the structures within it to accommodate themselves to that particular belief. Therein lies the brain’s crucial power.

After hearing about a 2010 study conducted by Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard, one that measured the power of known placebos on participants’ physical ailments, the author and his lab tested the impact of overt placebos on the chattering brain. Enlisting the same group of weary New Yorkers they tested previously, the singles just coming out of a harsh breakup, the researchers separated the volunteers into two groups. They administered the placebo of a nasal spray to one of those groups. The catch was that the researchers actually told their placebo group that they were indeed receiving a placebo, advising them that their simple belief in its ability to foster better thoughts and emotions would actually produce that result. After showing both groups several unpleasant photos with their permission, the researchers found that those who received the placebo portrayed less intensity in their emotional responses. Belief builds our brains. All we need to do is supply the bricks and get to work on believing.

When our thoughts tie us up, fixing our minds on a particular problem, impending concern, or habitual worry, we sacrifice their inherent ability and design. Our brains weren’t built to ruminate in dark corners of anxiety and negativity. Letting our thoughts languish in distress actually forms a future to fulfill that fear. But on the other side of this intensity is an opportunity: Molding your mind is a chance to discover everything it can do. It’s time to have a little chat with your “inner voice”—it’s time to teach her how to sing.