This kind of inter-diologue can be a good thing, helps us focus and helps us work through problems.

But it can also go off the rails, turning into worry and negative remination.

My guest day calls this negative self-talk chatter, and in his book of the same name, he outlines

how to get a handle on it.

His name is Ethan Cross, he's a psychologist and director of emotion self-control laboratory,

and we begin our conversation with the way introspection can be both good and bad, and the

function of the voice in our heads.

We discuss why negative emotions make us want to reach out to other people and start

talking, and how this impulse can be harnessed in either a positive or detrimental way.

We then unpack how managing the way we talk to ourselves really comes down to zooming out

and getting distance from the self, and how this can be accomplished with a variety of

tools from engaging in a kind of time travel to going out in nature.

After the show's over, check out our show notes at aawim.is slash chatter.

Ethan, joys me now via clearcast.io.

Alright, Ethan Cross, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, delighted to be here.

So you're a psychologist, and you've spent your career researching and writing about

something that people, they do all the time, but they don't like to talk about it because

they think they might be crazy, but you research how people talk to themselves in their

head.

How did you fall in that line of research when you were like a young psychology student?

Why did you say, I'm going to look into that.

...