The Importance of Distant Self Talk

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Distant Self Talk is when we use our name and second and third person pronounce to refer to ourselves. It's a way of shifting my perspective like I'm giving someone else advice. Research shows that that can be useful in a variety of ways from helping people perform better under stress, to feeling better, to thinking more wisely. You get the sense that a large portion of our fellow humans are really struggling with negative self talk.

Whether or not we care to admit it, we all talk to ourselves. A lot. The voice in our heads yaks it up about half the time we’re awake, and it can speak at a rate of 4,000 words per minute. When it really gets going like that, not everything it says is particularly helpful. We’ve all gotten stuck dwelling on the past, worrying about the future, or standing idly by as our inner monologue devolves from introspection into negativity. Experimental psychologist Ethan Kross calls those moments chatter. “When the inner voice runs amok and chatter takes the mental microphone,” he writes, “our mind not only torments but paralyzes us.” Luckily, there are tools we can use to take back the mic, and in this episode, Ethan talks Rufus through them.