Do you recognise this scenario? 

You’re thinking about having messed up at work or about a misunderstanding with a loved one, and you end up being flooded by how bad you feel. Then you think about it again and again. 

And again. 

Then you look inward hoping to tap your inner coach, but find your inner critic instead.

 

 

Having just finished two interesting books on overthinking and mindchatter, I’m excited to share some of my learnings with you today. I’ll also tell you what I thought were some of the most useful techniques to stop chatter from knocking your confidence and immobilising rather than helping you.

The problem with overthinking and chatter is that it doesn’t uncover the true meanings and realities of your life. Rather than giving clarity and insight into solutions to your problems, it sends you down negative thought spirals by polluting your thinking with irrationality and negativity; in other words, you lose perspective.

Recent studies on brain processes have actually shown that most people spend between 30-50% of their waking life thinking about the past or the future, which is a huge contrast to the widespread cultural mantra of ‘living in the present’. The reality is that we spend most of our time going over past events (we ruminate) or imagining scary future events (we worry). 

What can you do to stop your mind from paralysing you when your inner chatter runs wild?

Some of the most useful tools I took from the books to regain perspective were:

 

 

  1. Use distanced self-talk

 

When you’re trying to work through a difficult experience, use your name and the second-person ‘you’ to refer to yourself. Doing so is linked with less activation in brain networks associated with rumination and leads to improved performance under stress, wiser thinking and less negative emotion. 

 

 

  1. Imagine advising a friend

 

Another way to think about your experience from a distanced perspective is to imagine what you would say to a friend experiencing the same problem as you. Think about the advice you’d give that person, and then apply it to yourself.

 

 

  1. Broaden your perspective

 

Chatter involves narrowly focusing on the problems we’re experiencing. A natural antidote to this involves broadening our perspective. To do this, think about how the experience you’re worrying about compares with other bad events you (or others) have endured, how it fits into the broader scheme of your life and the world, and/ or how other people you admire would respond to the same situation.

 

 

  1. Reframe your experience as a challenge

 

You possess the ability to change the way you think about your experiences. Chatter is often triggered when we interpret a situation as a threat – something we can’t manage. To aid your inner voice, reinterpret the situation as a challenge that you can handle, for example by reminding yourself of how you’ve succeeded in similar (or even worse) situations in the past. 

 

 

  1. Engage in mental time travel

 

Another way to gain distance and broaden your perspective is to think about how you’ll feel a month, a year or even longer from now. Remind yourself that you’ll look back on whatever is upsetting you in the future and it will seem much less upsetting. Doing so highlights the impermanence of your current emotional state.

 

 

  1. Write expressively

 

Write about your deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding your negative experience for 15-20 minutes a day for 1-3 consecutive days. Really let yourself go as you write down your stream of thoughts; don’t worry about grammar or spelling. Focusing on your experience from the perspective of a narrator provides you with distance from the experience, which helps you make sense of what you felt in ways that improve how you feel over time. 

 

 

  1. Build a board of advisers

 

Finding the right people to talk to, those who are skilled at satisfying both your emotional and cognitive needs, is the first step to leveraging the power of others. Depending on the domain on which you’re experiencing chatter, different people will be uniquely equipped to do this. While a colleague may be skilled at advising you on work problems, your partner may be better suited to advising you on interpersonal dilemmas. The more people you have to turn to for chatter support in any particular domain, the better. So build a diverse board of chatter advisers, a group of confidants you can turn to for support in the different areas of your life in which you are likely to find your inner voice running wild. 

 

 

  1. Minimise passive social media use

 

Mindlessly scrolling through the curated news feeds of others on Facebook or Instagram, can trigger self-defeating, envy-inducing thought spirals. One way to mitigate this outcome is to curb your passive social media usage. Use these technologies actively instead to connect with others. 

 

 

  1. Seek out awe-inspiring experiences

 

Awe is the wonder we feel when we encounter something powerful that we can’t easily explain. Feeling awe allows us to transcend our current concerns in ways that put our problems in perspective. Of course, the experiences that provide people with awe will vary. For some, it is exposure to a breathtaking vista. For someone else, it’s the memory of a child accomplishing an amazing feat. For others, it may be staring at a remarkable piece of art. Find what instills a sense of awe within you, and then seek to cultivate that emotion when you find your internal dialogue spiralling. You can also think about creating spaces around you that elicit feelings of awe each time you glance at them. 

 

 

I hope some of these techniques have inspired you to realise that it’s possible to resolve the tension between getting caught in negative thought spirals and instead thinking clearly and constructively. 

 

For example, by learning to zoom in and out, in other words by learning to add psychological distance, we can use our thoughts to change our thoughts. Also, strategies can be found in our personal relationships and in our physical environments.

 

Which of these techniques are you going to try out?