How to Talk to Yourself Like You're Someone Other

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Silently talking to yourself like you're someone else helps people take a step back from their experience and put their problems in perspective. Research shows this is true not only for adults, but children as well. "I wonder if every creative artist goes through the tortures of the damned trying to create a well," Fred Rogers wrote on his typewriter.

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.