6 ways to fine-tune your inner chatter
Your inner voice can be your best friend giving the best insights at the best possible time, or the worst enemy- making you contemplate, agonize, and self-sabotage upon a moot point. The chatter within yourself most often determines your mood, feelings, brain activity, and physical activity at any given time. Losing my father at an unanticipated time who passed without any warning signs, and having to be alone but in my own company for two and a half days following the news, on my commute in the long flights and longer layover times have brought a lot of realizations, grounding, and a general sense of life.
A life-altering situation like this could be a breeding space for the annexure of built-in chatterbox, taking over the cognition, and ultimately ruling days and lives for some, for the worst. I have read a few books, but I have always been critical of myself for not remembering the contents by heart. Being with myself and the heaviest news, without any internet distractions made me come to cognition, the number of habits I have adopted with or without realizing the deepest reasons, and the mysterious ways that these thought patterns adopted from several books I've read have helped navigate through the noisy chatter.
Here's a list of recognitions, realizations, activities, and truths that one can adopt, whenever the chatter tends to overtake cognition:
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1. Anxiety and suffering:
"We suffer more in imagination than in reality"- Seneca.
At any given time, you should be conscious of the internal dialogue. Since the dialogue happens endlessly, it sometimes fly by as a second nature. The first step is to recognize that the chatter is active. Then realize if this is about an event that already happened or something that could happen. We suffer the past and stay anxious about the future, which can be the predicament for human race altogether- we suffer imagined troubles. So, anytime the chatter goes on and on, stop, call your name, and recognize if that's the memory being replayed from your lenses or imagination about the possibilities of the future. Thinking about the past wouldn't change what already happened, anxiety about the future which is yet to come has no outcome but rise your adrenaline.
This Stoic concept is the process of negative visualization, which might seem quite contrary to the most prevalent beliefs. This concept suggests that with any object, possession, person, activity, or idea, always find the worst-case scenario if things were to go wrong. A famous Stoic writer and influencer, Ryan Holiday discusses how he thinks that it might be the last day he'd see his child when he tucks him in the crib at night. This doesn't mean that one should lack the love and passion for things, people, and activities, but quite the opposite- to have the utmost passion. Chatter becomes a downward spiral only when it lacks order, control, and clarity. Knowing the worst-case scenario would mean that the chatter now has fewer negative things to imagine.
3. Journaling:
Anytime the chatter doesn't stop, it is magical how writing it down on a paper or typing it out instantly calms the mind. With the ongoing incessant chatter, writing them down in a sense acts as taking those thoughts from within and laying it outside. The aesthetics don't matter, what matters is that you write it ALL down. Note that this is not for re-reading unless you choose to, not for others to read, not for storing it for the future purposes, you can even destroy them as soon as you're done. If you don't know where to start, ask yourself WH questions- What is going on? Why is this thought coming up? Where did I acquire this ideology? etc. It is a proven methodology and I have personally experienced the benefits of journaling. Refer to morning pages by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist's Way.
King Solomon who became a ruler in his early 20s, was known for his wisdom and the efficiency he possessed in finding justice for his people. However, his personal life had in fact, quite a contrary fame. Despite his excellence in handling other's matters, he was quite foolish in dealing with his issues. This asymmetry of wise reasoning may be explained by the different mindsets of self-transcendence when people reason about various conflicts (personal vs. others’), and mood should play a fundamental role. Recognizing that any decision you make for yourself may be subject to Solomon's paradox can help you think twice before following the conclusions brought about by the mind's chatter and some strong anchoring effect.
Given the prevalence of the infamous Solomon's paradox, you must use some distancing techniques to view personal matters from the second or third-person perspective. Chatter, a book written by the award-winning psychologist, professor, and researcher at the University of Michigan discusses a concept where one can instantaneously distance oneself from the incessant chatter, by just uttering one's name, and thinking in the second-person view. So, anytime the negative chatter seems to take over and try to put you into the never-ending spiral, utter your name, and redirect the chatter to cognitive reasoning. Another way of distancing is to time travel in the head, laying out how the current present would pan out in the distant and near future.
6. Co-rumination and cognition:
Commonly used tool to calm the chatter is to talk your dialogues to people who actively listen to you. As social animals, we find solace in co-rumination. But, co-rumination never found to be healing, in fact the experiments show the opposite effect, increasing the chatter and ruminating on the scarring memories. Suffering the past or imagining the future that I mentioned in the previous point is not to be confused with learning lessons from the past mistakes and planning for the future. But that is where you're actively thinking, in a sense, you're taking those passive chatter from amygdala to prefrontal cortex. That means we are actively engaged in making those thoughts to obtain a productive outcome. So you move from Co-rumination to cognition, hopefully with a good caring companion, which could be your notebook as well!
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