How to Change Your Self-Talk
By Doreen Stern, Ph.D.
The Stepping Stone, January 2022
It’s all my fault. That’s what Ethan Kross was telling himself.[1] It was a curious confession since he’s an award-winning psychologist. He also directs a lab at the University of Michigan that studies self-control.
Kross specializes in how to control negative thought spirals. Seeing a shadow and imagining it to be a kidnapper is an example of such a spiral.
Yet, in 2011, Kross was pacing his living room, at three o’clock in the morning. He was clutching an ancient Little League baseball bat; he planned to use it to protect his wife and new baby.
His situation piqued my interest because I berate myself, too. And sometimes spiral downward.
I’m bad, I think, as my stepmother told me, when I was growing up. Recalling her words makes me shrivel in shame.
What could have Motivated Kross to Blame Himself?
The week before, Kross had been featured on “CBS Evening News.” He and his colleagues had just published research that found human brains register emotional and physical pain the same way. That’s why heartbreak feels like being body-slammed.
Maybe someone in the community saw the segment and became agitated, since the next week Kross discovered a hate letter sitting atop a stack of scientific journals in his university mailbox.
The letter included vile drawings and vicious taunts. It had been mailed from a location twelve miles away.
University administrators told Kross to report the incident to the police. He envisioned them assigning a detail to protect him, his wife and their little daughter. That’s not what happened, though.
“Drive home a different way each day so no one learns your routine,” a police officer told him. “Call the phone company and make sure your telephone isn’t listed and keep an eye out for suspicious people hanging around your office.”
“Probably nothing will come of this,” the police officer offered, nonchalantly.
Case closed.
But Kross could feel his racing heart and clammy skin. As a psychologist, he recognized these responses as what he would be experiencing if he knew a kidnapper was lurking in the bushes outside his house.
“What have I done?” his inner voice was shrieking. “Should I call the alarm company? Should I get a gun? Should we move? How quickly can I find a new job?” were all questions Kross was asking himself.
Why is What We Say to Ourselves a Big Deal?
At the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory, which Kross founded and directs, he and his colleagues investigate the silent conversations people have with themselves.
Why would they do that?
They do it because researchers have discovered that we all talk to ourselves. We humans spend anywhere from one third to one half of every day thinking about the past or the future.
Researchers call it introspection. They say it matters.
“We’ve learned how specific things we say and do can improve our inner conversations,” Kross reports.
Likewise, researchers have identified how things can go awry when humans experience distress. The chatter inside our heads can become deafening, and sometimes destructive.
Kross describes it this way: “It puts our performance, decision making, relationships, happiness, and health in jeopardy. We think about that screwup at work or misunderstanding with a loved one and end up flooded by how bad we feel. Then we think about it again. And again. We introspect, hoping to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead.”[2]
The rub is that we humans listen to what our inner voices say.
What Strategies Can We Use to Decrease the Din?
In his 2021 book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, Kross describes three surprising steps we can take to calm the ever-present chatter inside our minds.
The first is distanced self-talk: Talk to yourself in the second person, using your own name—or the pronoun “you.” This changes your self-talk.
It might sound something like this: “Doreen, you’re afraid now, but you’re going to work things out, just as you’ve done in the past.”
“Research,” says Kross, “shows that distanced self-talk leads people to consider stressful situations in a more challenge-oriented way [rather than threat-based], allowing us to provide encouraging ‘you can do it’ advice, rather than catastrophizing the situation.”[3]
It works even when a loved one dies, or when we make a major mistake. Plus, it affects how our bodies respond to situations we formerly saw as threatening.
Another way to calm our chatter is to spend time in nature. Green surroundings calm our minds and change how we speak to ourselves. Indeed, research has found that the things people say to themselves—and how they say them—is impacted by whether their abode looks out at green space or a brick wall.[4]
Nature walks have been found to improve cognitive functioning, too. They help even depressed people feel happier. They also change self-talk.[5]
A third way to change our internal chatter is to remove the physical clutter in our lives. This could be paper piles that litter our desks, emails that leak from our Inboxes, or rumpled clothes laying on the floor in our bedrooms.
Why does this matter?
Humans have a desire for control, Kross points out. “What scientists have discovered is that we can simulate a sense of order in the world—and by extension in our minds—by organizing our surroundings and making sure that our physical environments conform to a particular, controllable structure.”[6]
How did Kross’s 2011 Crisis Help Him Access this Information?
After staring out the living room window at 3 a.m., Kross stumbled to his computer. He intended to type the word “bodyguard” into Google’s search bar. He imagined adding the delineation, “ones that specialize in protecting professors” to his query.
And then he stopped, leaned back from his computer and thought, “Ethan, what are you doing? This is crazy!”
In that second, Kross returned to his rational self. “How is pacing the house with a baseball bat going to help?” he asked himself.
These thoughts motivated him to say to himself, “You’ve managed worse situations. You can deal with this.”
Finally, Kross gave himself good advice: “Ethan, go to bed.”
Saying his name saved him, Kross says. As a result, he started paying attention to how others used the same strategy. He spoke to colleagues and students about his experience, too. Eventually Kross’s lab designed a scientific experiment to identify how saying their names affected research participants.
“We uncovered a novel distancing tool hidden in the mind: distanced self-talk,”[7] Kross says, proudly.
Using Kross’s experience as a model, I’ve changed my personal coda, too: “I love you, Doreen Audrey Stern,” I tell myself.
As soon as I do, I feel my shoulders start to relax. My breathing slows, too. I seem to gain strength, and also focus.
Perhaps it’s a placebo. But since it works, I’m going to continue doing it. It beats the alternative.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Dr. Doreen Stern is a writer, motivational speaker and success coach in Hartford, Conn. Her dream is to become a best-selling author. She’s currently writing a book about creating the courage to act in spite of being terrified. She can be reached at Docktor@DoreenStern.com.