Dr. Ethan Kross is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Director of the Emotion & Self-Control Laboratory, and the author of the bestseller "Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It."
This article focuses on how to manage inner voices, overcome mental noise, and improve emotional states, addressing common issues, scenarios, and challenges everyone faces, while providing practical, actionable tools.
Structure of this episode:
1. Inner Voice / Chatter
The human brain naturally generates an inner voice—a silent operation of the mind. This ability serves as both a tool (for memory, planning, self-motivation) and a mechanism that can cause suffering (known as chatter: rumination, anxiety, intrusive thoughts). It is a double-edged sword, influencing our emotional state, confidence, anxiety levels, and achievements in life.
Benefits: ① It helps keep information active, such as remembering a phone number or a shopping list through silent repetition; ② It aids in simulation and planning, like rehearsing key points before an interview or speech; ③ The brain can summon motivation, such as recalling a coach's voice saying "Don't be weak" when you don't want to exercise.
Drawbacks: Chatter refers to looping and chewing over the same problem without progress. It not only causes pain but also acts like a sponge, consuming limited attentional resources, interfering with focus and problem-solving, and reducing efficiency.
1) Chatter or intrusive thoughts can be a transdiagnostic mechanism predicting various emotional disorders such as anxiety, depression, and trauma. However, note that chatter is a normal part of being human—a minor glitch in brain function. Nearly 100% of people experience inner noise.
Relevant research statistics show that within a one-to-two-month period, almost everyone experiences dark or negative thoughts:
① Some hear voices in their heads saying things like "You're not good enough" or "You'll never amount to anything."
② Some suddenly imagine dropping a heavy dumbbell on someone's face while holding it. (*This is the brain simulating worst-case risk scenarios to warn against danger. Having such dark intrusive thoughts does not mean you are inherently bad or morally flawed; as long as you don't act on them, these thoughts are harmless.)
③ A common phenomenon is the sudden urge to jump when standing on a high bridge or dam, despite having no actual desire to do so. (*This is simply the brain identifying danger, predicting extreme consequences, and assessing risk levels.)
2) Having chatter does not mean you have a mental illness. Only chatter of extremely high intensity and long duration aligns more with clinical populations. *Additionally, moderate negative emotions also serve a function, such as motivating oneself during exercise by recalling a coach's voice saying, "Get it together, don't chicken out."
① Depression: If the loop consists of sad thoughts ("I'm worthless," "I'll never reach my potential," "I don't belong here") pushed to extreme intensity and sustained over time, it can slide into depression.
② Anxiety: If the loop consists of uncertainty and fear about the future ("What if this happens? What if that happens?"), it leads to anxiety.
③ Trauma: If the loop consists of painful traumatic memories, it pushes toward trauma.
Conclusion: ① Chatter is normal; it's a minor glitch in brain function. Nearly 100% of people experience it. Having these thoughts doesn't mean something is wrong with you. The core of emotional issues isn't their presence, but their intensity, duration, and impact on functioning.
So, how much attention should we pay to inner noise/emotional dilemmas? When should we address them, and when is it better to leave them be?
In fact, when facing emotional dilemmas, flexibly managing attention is a precious psychological capacity: we need to distinguish when to focus and when to shift away. It's not about always confronting problems head-on or constantly avoiding emotional issues (which can harm身心 in the long run). We must avoid missing the present and neglecting the future by dwelling on the past, while also preventing past traumas from secretly infiltrating our hearts and affecting current life destructively. This is an extremely delicate psychological balance.
There is a general principle: You don't always need to confront problems directly. After something bad happens, first use healthy ways to distract yourself (non-harmful distractions like reading or exercising). If a) the painful thoughts no longer recur and you've achieved psychological reconciliation with the past, or b) thinking no longer yields constructive results, then there's no need to revisit them. However, if distractions fail and past thoughts continue to intrude on daily life, that's a signal to stop avoiding and start sorting through them. For everyday trivial negative feelings, letting time dilute them is sufficient; over-analysis is unnecessary.
But distinguish between healthy avoidance and pathological avoidance: The distraction/diversion we refer to is healthy and moderate. Pathological avoidance, such as addictive behaviors or escapist indulgence, is entirely harmful. Long-term, bottomless avoidance also causes psychological damage. *One hidden form of unhealthy avoidance is endlessly listening to virtual audiobooks when facing difficulties, filling the brain with stories to escape reality. While audiobooks themselves are harmless, excessive immersion and refusing to face one's problems is harmful in the long run.
*The guest's grandmother grew up in Poland during WWII. Her life experience was deeply traumatic: her entire family was killed in the war, and she wandered alone in forests for years before surviving and immigrating to the US. She often said, "Why is a curved letter," meaning there's no benefit in obsessing over "Why did this tragedy happen to me?" For 364 days a year, she refused to talk about the war, focusing instead on present safety and love, only entering the church to fully release emotions on the annual "memorial day."
2. Historical & Contemporary Methods for Handling Emotions
Actually, emotional issues aren't new. Throughout human history, survival environments were harsh, with invasions, plagues, and short lifespans. Modern humans, despite technology, face new psychological dilemmas.
For millennia, humans have struggled to find effective emotional regulation methods. Ancient humans used crude methods (trepanation, lobotomy), but even today, we haven't fully solved the puzzle of emotional regulation. Drug and surgical interventions remain imperfect. Currently, behavioral tools far surpass drugs and surgery in precision, safety, and effectiveness. Modern science has given us numerous non-invasive, science-based psychological tools rather than destroying the body to gain peace.
Some historical and contemporary methods humans have used to handle emotions:
① Trepanation: The earliest invented emotional regulation tool—drilling holes in the skull. 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, this was cutting-edge technology, like today's latest smartphone. Ancients believed emotional turmoil and inner chaos were caused by evil spirits residing in the skull; drilling holes allowed spirits to escape, thus calming emotional dysregulation.
② Lobotomy: Jumping to the 1940s, a Portuguese doctor pioneered this surgery, inserting instruments through the eye socket into the brain to stir the prefrontal cortex. It was even performed as a simple door-to-door procedure. This technique was once highly praised, earning its inventor a Nobel Prize. While it could suppress anxiety, the cost was destroying the inner self: erasing interests, will, and perception, causing permanent brain damage. We've long abandoned such extreme methods. Additionally, soccer players who frequently head the ball and boxers engaged in long-term combat suffer repeated prefrontal damage, leading to cognitive decline.
③ Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), still used today, causes the brain to massively release neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin indiscriminately, with uncontrollable directional effects.
④ Hallucinogenic substances: Currently, academia pays high attention to hallucinogens, especially psilocybin and MDMA, often used to treat depression and PTSD. These substances mainly act on serotonin pathways, enhancing whole-brain neural connectivity in a resting state. However, these tools remain very crude: they drastically alter concentrations of specific neurotransmitters, with completely uncontrollable directional effects and huge variations in individual experiences. Nolan Williams at Stanford University is conducting integrated research, combining hallucinogenic experiences with transcranial magnetic stimulation to precisely locate and activate specific neural circuits during hallucinations, followed by continuous tracking.
The brain is an extremely complex organ, and much about its functioning remains unknown. Studying psychological phenomena from multiple dimensions is crucial: both psychological (thoughts, feelings) and physiological/biological (neural activity, hormone secretion). In the future, we'll likely help people regulate emotions through various means: drug intervention, behavioral intervention, and interpersonal support. However, the entire research field remains complex and chaotic. *One major research dilemma relates to the scientific system itself: Cross-dimensional research is extremely difficult with many realistic constraints. Conducting large-sample, cross-intervention, cross-population comprehensive studies requires huge funding and time, while researchers face project deadlines and assessment metrics, so few undertake such complex research. Therefore, the guest is cautious about "trying": absolutely do not recommend casually attempting biological interventions with serious side effects; such medical-grade tools must be used under professional medical supervision.
Good news: Today, we'll introduce numerous data-confirmed effective and safe tools you can try personally to find what fits you. Everyone can practice these immediately.
3. Tools for Regulating Emotions
Applicable Principle: All emotions have functions; if moderate in intensity and short in duration, let them dissipate naturally. However, when you find yourself "stuck" in an emotion (looping negative thoughts), strategically activate tools as soon as chatter emerges: *There's no universal tool for emotional regulation; different methods suit different people and situations. On average, people use 3-4 methods daily.
Effective emotional regulation includes two core elements, both indispensable: tools for regulating emotions + willingness to regulate emotions.
1. Tools: All emotion-conversion methods: sensory perception, temporal distancing, nature therapy, space organization, writing, etc. If willingness to regulate emotions is strong but one lacks methods, results will be minimal, and one might even adopt self-harming ways, such as relying on addictive substances to numb emotions, causing short-term suppression but infinite consequences.
2. Willingness: Intrinsic motivation and life goals. Even if one masters all scientific tools in the world, without the willingness to regulate emotions, they won't be used. Life goals aren't static; they adjust with growth. For everyone, the key is finding goals that fit, then matching corresponding psychological tools to steer life toward desired directions.
A beautiful life probably includes effortless focus, appropriate mind-wandering, sincere social connections, and stable intimate relationships.
The underlying formula for a fulfilling life is: establishing healthy, positive life goals + possessing emotional regulation tools to achieve them.
1) First Line of Defense: Two Distancing Tools.
*Distancing means stepping back to view oneself from a more objective perspective.
① Linguistic Distancing. Deliberately change how you refer to yourself, using your name plus the second person "you" to talk to yourself, e.g., "Ethan, how will you handle this?" This automatically switches perspectives, making you treat yourself as you would advise others. Giving advice to others is easier than to oneself; we're clearer as observers. Essentially, it's training yourself to stand in the position of "advising others."
② Mental Time Travel, asking yourself using your name combined with distancing self-dialogue: "Ethan, how will you view this tomorrow morning? Next week? Next year? In ten years?" You'll realize that no matter how painful the present is, it's temporary and will pass.
*Many people wake up at 2 AM occasionally, falling into extreme anxiety and self-doubt, feeling everything is ruined. This is common. Long ago, I set a rule: I never believe any thoughts that arise between 2 AM and 5 AM because the brain's prefrontal cortex is impaired then—it's lying, and these thoughts are rarely constructive, good or bad. You'll find that no matter how terrible 2 AM feels, by morning when the brain is fully awake and the prefrontal cortex functions normally, things never seem as scary. We experience countless such nights and mornings. When your mind explodes at 2 AM, ask yourself: "XX, how will you feel about this after waking up tomorrow morning?" This question activates cognition, reminding you current pain is temporary and will fade, instantly lowering the emotional volume.
*From a neurobiological perspective, 2-3 AM is indeed a turning point. The first half of sleep is dominated by slow-wave sleep with less REM; after 3-4 hours, sleep structure shifts dramatically, with REM sleep proportion rising sharply, dreams becoming more intense and emotions stronger. REM sleep is closely related to the release of morning emotional load. Thus, suddenly waking at night with accelerated heartbeat and surging emotions is actually a normal feature of the sleep cycle.
*Scientific correlation between time perception and chatter processing: The core of time experience in chatter is extreme focus on pain-inducing things, narrowing vision drastically (*trauma or car accident survivors feel everything is in slow motion), whereas relaxed time feels slower, like slow motion (*flow is the opposite of chatter in many aspects). Therefore, what we must do is dynamically adjust our "time experience frame rate": pull back, enlarge perspective, expand time perception, using a bigger picture to contain the present. Almost all effective methods for coping with depression and anxiety—writing, meditation, even some drugs—share a commonality: they bring people into another time perception mode. When in unhealthy psychological states, such as being awake when should sleep or anxious when should be calm, changing time perception is often one of the most useful means.
2) Second Line of Defense—Expression Tools: Writing; Friends/AI.
① Writing—Expressive Writing. Sit down daily and freewrite for 15-20 minutes. An almost side-effect-free intervention helping cope with sudden life dilemmas. The Pennebaker Writing Effect. Our brains hold many irregular voices; writing gives structure to chaotic inner information flows. Chaos is part of pain. Writing provides structured tools for thinking; conversing and confiding serve similar functions.
② Social Support—Not all confiding is useful. Effective support = empathy + helping expand perspective; ineffective support = complaining and ruminating together. You can also use AI tools; they stably provide clear, personalized support.
*Be a channel for emotions, not a dam. Don't try to block others' emotions; guide them. When someone urgently needs to vent negative emotions, the core principle is first emotional acceptance: acknowledge their emotions as real reactions to current situations. [Emotions spread within seconds: when people are confused about their own emotions and stance, they're most easily infected by surrounding emotions, subconsciously using others' feelings as their own judgment basis.] If a friend is in pain but doesn't specify, provide invisible support. Offer help to those in need without刻意 emphasizing you're helping.
*Simply venting negative emotions is harmful and amplifies them. Research shows confiding consolidates interpersonal relationships, making彼此 closer; but if the other party only empathizes and validates without helping broaden perspective or solve problems together, you'll feel the relationship improved but negative emotions strengthened. My chatter advisory group first empathizes and supports me, letting me know they're on my side, then helps broaden perspective and sort through problems together.
*Social media algorithms automatically provide massive content; for most, social media is more about consumption than creation. We need to learn to use social media strategically, distinguishing what's healthy from harmful. It can make people avoid thinking and lose the natural decay time for emotions, leading to rapid venting (one reason for cyberbullying and rapid spread of extreme emotions); but we can leverage AI for personalized emotional regulation. It's always clear-headed, unaffected by states, emotionless, and highly personalized, excellently helping solve problems. Watching funny videos before bed can also relax the brain.
Third Line of Defense: Environmental Management (Nature, Attachment Places, Cleaning Environment, Cultural Environment); Sensory Regulation; Touch; Other Tools
① Environmental Management: Walk in safe natural environments; return to places full of attachment; organize space, using external order to compensate for internal loss of control; clean environment of distracting things like phones; switch external cultural environments.
② Sensory Regulation: Music, visuals, etc.
③ Touch: Releases stress-resisting chemicals, producing comfort. Note it must be mutual, desired, affectionate touch.
④ Other physiological and thinking tools: Long-exhale breathing, physiological sighs, meditation, exercise (subconscious activation: load the problem first, then exercise/zone out to let answers emerge), WOOP framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan).
*Walking in safe natural environments: Extensive research confirms green spaces have healing effects: flowers, trees, scents, and sounds gently attract attention, making you unconsciously focus on the environment, giving tense cognitive environments room to recover; natural environments evoke awe: facing something vast, ineffable, and much larger than oneself instantly broadens perspective, such as magnificent sunsets, ancient galaxies captured by telescopes, or Mars rover images. Awe is the ultimate perspective-shifting tool; it shrinks the "self," and when the self shrinks, problems shrink too.
*Some places provide attachment. Just as some have attachment objects bringing security and comfort, e.g., after betrayal, returning to one's childhood home, sleeping in one's childhood room, can regain a sense of control and emerge from life's lows.
*Cleaning the environment. For instance, a phone, even face-down, is a cognitive tether causing distraction; removing it from space is a more effective emotional management method.
*Spatial Psychology: What environment lets the inner self enter the most comfortable, efficient state? Sometimes I like nature, countryside, and coast; natural quiet slows thoughts, soothing ideas and emotions. But sometimes, in noisy environments with continuous sensory stimuli, one feels calmer. Sometimes when in a good state, I like my office messy, piled with clutter; amidst chaos, thinking becomes more organized and creative. But when in a bad state, trapped in inner chatter, I subconsciously start organizing surrounding space—compensatory control effect—using environmental organization to combat emotional internal friction. These are extremely common psychological phenomena. When inner chatter裹挟 s you, you lose control. Humans naturally crave control, desiring an orderly, predictable world. When inner chaos and disorder arise, creating external order compensates for inner loss of control. When humans personally organize themselves and their environment, establishing order with surroundings, the brain's operating mode fundamentally changes.
*Culture: Culture itself is an emotional conversion tool. Culture is the air we breathe. Within a day, we're in different cultural contexts: Stanford campus, labs have exclusive rules, values, habits; podcast recording sites have another atmosphere. The culture we're in profoundly shapes emotional preferences, what emotions we want to have, and provides corresponding rituals and methods to help complete emotional regulation. This is rarely noticed but hugely influential.
*Sensory Tools—Music and visuals are powerful tools for driving emotional shifts, guiding emotions and states toward desired directions. Emotional consistency: we choose music matching current emotions; e.g., when sad, we won't listen to happy music.
*Meditation: Wendy Suzuki's lab at NYU confirmed: 13 minutes of daily meditation improves focus and emotional state.
*WOOP Framework, proposed by Professor Gabriele Oettingen, is a psychological technique converting goals into actions, applicable to emotional regulation. Wish: Define a specific, clear goal (e.g., fully accompany family after work); Outcome: Imagine the best result after achieving the wish to stimulate motivation; Obstacle: Honestly identify internal obstacles; Plan: If... then... ["If I want to check emails at 8 PM, then I'll remind myself: being a good father is more important than replying to this email; if I feel chatter starting, then I'll activate the 'mental time travel' tool."]
*Guest Example: In 2015, I struggled between two job opportunities. Both had huge advantages; neither had obvious flaws. I was in painful internal friction, listing pros and cons, searching math models, decision trees, and YouTube decision methods. Most were useless. Ultimately, two key pieces of information helped, from these two approaches:
1. Forget all surface pros and cons; fully simulate spending a workday and weekend on each side: what time to wake up, how to commute, walking through the actual daily flow. Because once you're in a certain environment or relationship, grand labels fade; what truly affects you are daily details. Don't just think about macro information like institutions, relationships, schools; walk through a full day. —Solve with rational writing and conversation. Deliberately construct complete sentences with pen and paper for structured thinking.
2. I was hitting a speed bag at a boxing gym. After entering a flow state, movements were completely unconscious; the central pattern generator took over, hands flipping and striking naturally. Suddenly, a thought surged out; I instantly made a decision and never wavered. When I stopped deliberately dissecting problems with language, the subconscious popped out the answer. —Don't force answers; leverage the subconscious insight when not thinking deliberately. For example, before exercise, load the problem to solve into the brain—maybe how to write a passage, what story to use in a book, or a relationship needing 缓和 —then stop grinding the problem and start exercising. Afterwards, ideas and solutions almost inevitably emerge automatically.
Fourth Line of Defense: State Transitions in Daily Life
*Fixed total energy for body and mind: Everyone has different intrinsic energy thresholds; we naturally need to channel and convert this energy, whether through interacting with people or focusing on tasks. This applies to both physical energy and cognitive energy. *Cognitive rate: The speed of brain thought operations, the flow speed of inner mental energy.
*Flow: When external task difficulty perfectly matches one's ability reserve. Things are challenging, but you're fully capable, entering immersive flow. During conversation, time perception completely dissolves because attention is fully poured into the present, leaving almost no extra space in the brain for chatter to sprout. Long-distance runners are similar; such people inherently have extremely vigorous energy. Without high-intensity exercise to channel inner energy, body and mind become imbalanced.
We need to balance between high concentration and relaxation to optimize body-mind state, avoiding excessive fatigue or low mood from unexported energy. Understand your intrinsic energy thresholds on cognitive and physical levels for reasonable use, and rest timely when energy is depleted.
Everyone should examine how fast they enter and exit certain body-mind states, and how much they carry thoughts and emotions from one scene to the next. Then use various emotional regulation tools to help find the version that suits you best. For example, some set one day weekly for body-mind relaxation; others need one hour daily. *Failure to exit current states is also a big problem: from work to life, from high intensity to relaxation, from thinking to relaxing.
"Guest 1 sets one day weekly for body-mind relaxation": "My shortcoming is poor state-switching ability; I enter focus states slowly, and once in, it's hard to detach. If I densely record guest programs, solo programs, and edit intros within a week, by Saturday my brain becomes chaotic, thoughts like white noise. I call this the body-mind reset day: low energy, low cortisol, empty leisure, entering a state of no thoughts, no language, letting thoughts naturally dissipate for about an hour, keeping only basic physiological activities, rest随意 watching food videos or funny shorts." *We often overlook that screen entertainment itself is an emotional regulation tool; film scores and news narratives deliberately guide audience emotions, so before bed I deliberately avoid content stirring emotions.
"Guest 2 needs one hour daily for relaxation": "I'm in a high cognitive rate state all day: morning exercise, research thinking, academic exchange,事务 communication. After handling emails at night, I need a full hour of mindless zoning out to calm body and mind before entering the pre-sleep routine: using mental time travel, recalling beautiful pasts, imagining the future, then sleeping peacefully. This is the reverse regulation of high cognitive rate, an essential counterbalance. I often lecture consecutively for three hours, but after returning home, I need a transition buffer period to switch from work mode to family life mode. This has always been hard for me; children expect to play with me, but I first need to dissolve inner mental tension, complete the state drop, before fully accompanying them."
4. Minimalist Action Framework
1) Chatter is normal; no panic needed. All emotions have functions; if moderate in intensity and short in duration, let them dissipate naturally.
2) However, when you find yourself "stuck" in an emotion (looping negative thoughts), timely activate healthy ways to distract attention as soon as chatter emerges. [If emotions no longer recur and psychological reconciliation is achieved or thinking yields no constructive results, there's no need to face emotions directly; but if, after distraction/avoidance, negative emotions/past thoughts continue intruding on daily life, it's a signal to stop avoiding and start sorting through them.]
3) There's no universal tool for emotional regulation; different methods suit different people and situations. On average, people use 3-4 daily:
Linguistic distancing (XX, how will you handle this problem?); Mental time travel (How will I view this tomorrow? In a week? In a year? In ten years?); Writing sorting for 15-20 minutes; Friends' empathetic listening + co-thinking solutions, AI conversation; Nature walks; Returning to attachment-filled places; Organizing environment, clearing phones, changing cultural environments; Music, visual sensory regulation; Touch and hugs; Long-exhale breathing, physiological sighs, meditation, exercise, WOOP framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan); Understand your energy thresholds, including physical and cognitive energy, timely dispersing and resting in daily life.