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Raising Good Humans
How to Help Kids (And Ourselves) Tame the Inner Voice and Clear the Chatter w/ Dr. Ethan Kross
00:45:57
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- [00:01]
Ethan Cross
The following podcast is a Dear Media Production.
- [00:10]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Welcome to Raising good humans. I'm Dr. Eliza Pressman and today I've brought back Professor Ethan Cross, brilliant psychologist and neuroscientist, who is talking today about shatter that inner voice that kind of just goes too far and stops us from problem solving and moving forward. How do we interrupt chatter, disruptive chatter? How do we recognize it in our kids? And at the end, I think after all of the concrete tools that Ethan provides, we talk about, how do you know when it becomes this co. Ruminative chatter where you've got a kid opening up to you? It feels like you're really helpful because you're being supportive and listening, but maybe it's going too far and actually backfiring. How do we recognize that and how do we move that into a more productive and supportive way of connecting? Okay, so the first question obviously we need to answer is what is chatter? And broadly and also like, is there any benefit, downsides? And then we'll talk about managing all of this.
- [01:27]
Ethan Cross
Sure. All right, so in order to answer what chatter is, we have to take a step back and first talk about what this mysterious concept that we've all heard about at times actually is, which is the inner voice. So what does it mean to have like a voice inside your head? You hear about this all the time.
- [01:46]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yes.
- [01:47]
Ethan Cross
Your inner voice is your ability to silently use language. And it turns out that that is a veritable superpower that we possess. So let me convince you of that right now. All right, so are you ready to do a few games with me?
- [02:06]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah.
- [02:06]
Ethan Cross
Might be the wrong term, but okay. So if I were to tell you my, my phone number is 209-05-01. Can you repeat that in your head a few times to memorize it?
- [02:19]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Uh huh.
- [02:20]
Ethan Cross
Okay. So you've just used your inner voice. One thing our inner voice does for us is it's part of our verbal working memory system, basic system of the mind that we all possess. It lets us keep information active for short periods of time. So if you ever go to the grocery store and think to yourself, crap, what was I supposed to get? You repeat the list in your head, right? Milk gummy bears, chocolate, whatever it is, Microsoft list. That's you using your inner voice. We all use our inner voice for this reason every single day and is a really fundamental tool that we possess. That's one thing your inner voice does for you. You do a lot of public speaking, you do a lot of interviewing. Just. You ever go over what you are going to Say in your head before an engagement.
- [03:10]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
It depends on. Yeah. Yes, of course. Unless I'm really trying to ignite some kind of new anxiety.
- [03:19]
Ethan Cross
There you go.
- [03:19]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
And then I just wing it.
- [03:21]
Ethan Cross
We'll talk. We'll talk about that later on too. So, like, if it's a, if it's a, a high stakes presentation for me, I will go over my opening right in my head right before. Here's what I'm going to say. I'll rehearse it. If I have a difficult conversation that I know I'm going to need to have with someone, I'll go over what I'm going to say, go over what I'm going to say before that conversation. So a lot of us use our inner voice to simulate and plan. Like imagine not being able to rehearse in your head what you wanted to say to someone or some group. That for me would be a major handicap. So that's another thing your inner voice lets you do. All right, let me give you two more. Let's talk about exercising. So we know each other quite well, but I actually don't know what you like to do to exercise. Well, do you have a preferred kind of exercise that you do?
- [04:10]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I don't like to exercise, so I just do it because I have.
- [04:15]
Ethan Cross
I think I did know that you don't like to exercise.
- [04:18]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, you did.
- [04:18]
Ethan Cross
Well, when you do it, what do you do?
- [04:20]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I just like work out with weights and a little bit of, you know, well, whatever. I used to do a mini trampoline. Then I fell off of it last week, so that's over. But let's say it was pre. Last week. Mini trampoline and weights.
- [04:35]
Ethan Cross
Okay. Do you ever talk, do you ever talk to yourself when you are exercising?
- [04:41]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yes, I mostly exclusively talk to myself.
- [04:45]
Ethan Cross
So tell, tell the listeners. What do you say to yourself?
- [04:48]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
This is very personal. I, I do one of two kinds of self talk, I guess, or inner voice is that there's either the. If I'm focused, then I'm just focusing on, you know, I can keep going. I just have to get to 12 or whatever. And if I'm kind of trying to let the time go by and I don't really care about the quality, I just want to do it. Then I'm just thinking about everything I'm worrying about at and like, or what I have to get done, or maybe I'm problem solving and brainstorming, trying to come up with ideas. I just use it as time.
- [05:28]
Ethan Cross
Got it? Well, you're not alone. So a lot of People report talking to themselves when they exercise. And they can talk to themselves in all sorts of different ways, some of which are helpful for their performance and others not. Some people are really motivating. Come on, you've got this, you're going to crush this. Other people are thinking about, oh my God, this sucks. This is so painful. I'm really hungry, I'd rather have a donut right now. Right. It turns out that that kind of self talk isn't as productive. When I'm exercising, I like to do. I typically like to either exercise with friends or do classes. I'm much better in those contexts and on my own. And when I do classes, I have this. It's almost a ritual. We'll talk about rituals later. Maybe where the instructor tells me to do really hard, painful things and I, I nod affirmatively, I smile. But in my head, you think it a mean thought, more than just me. Like it is filthy, dirty, expletive filled, like, why don't you try this? You know?
- [06:30]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Right, right.
- [06:30]
Ethan Cross
And I actually find that to be quite motivating. Don't read too much into what that says about me as a human being. But, but here's the reason I'm bringing this up. Because your inner voice is a tool that helps promote motivation and helps us control ourselves when we're doing difficult things. So there's research which shows that athletes who are skilled at harnessing their inner voice to be more positive and motivated actually perform better than athletes who don't. So that's a third thing. Your inner voice has few. And the final thing my favorite function of your inner voice is it helps us make meaning out of this messy world that we live in. So we experience unexpected situations that sometimes challenge our understanding of the world or our place in it. When that happens, we often stop and try to make sense of what is happening. And we use our inner voice to create these narratives that help us understand who we are. So if we back up now, we're talking about doing things as simple as keeping information active in your head, to planning and simulating, to controlling and motivating ourselves, to making meaning and finding purpose in life. Your inner voice is central to all of those things. You do not want to live life without a well functioning voice. The Big giant Catch. And what led me to get into psychology in the first place is because this is such a useful tool, we often reflexively reach for it when we're struggling. We want it. We, we sense that it can help us work through our problems, but it jams up on us so we go inside. We're trying to find solutions to our problems, to tell a story, to find meaning. But we end up just looping over and over and over again. This is what chatter is all about. I define chatter as the dark side of your inner voice. How do you know you're experiencing it? If you've got a. If you've got a problem, you're trying to work through it but not making any progress. You just keep turning it over and over. That's one sign. If you are overly harsh with yourself, I'm an idiot. Such an idiot. I mean, it's amazing how many ways we could say that about ourselves, right? Like, that's another sign. And I think this is one of the big problems we face as a species. It's relevant to us as adults and parents. It's relevant to our kids. It's why I've spent so much time trying to understand how to help people who struggle with it.
- [08:56]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
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- [12:12]
Ethan Cross
Okay, sure.
- [12:13]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
First of all, it sounds like you need pretty, pretty well developed executive function skills to manage all of this, which makes me curious about how we can grow these skills in our kids before they have capacity. Because I imagine it's easier to start intervening on disruptive chatter early on in life rather than when it's habit formed. So I think that's like one topic I want to get into. And the other is, is there value in talking about this with young, younger kids, or even teenagers, whatever, with your kids to help them think through this earlier?
- [12:52]
Ethan Cross
I think there's tremendous value in talking about these concepts with your kids. This is a way that we can support them invisibly. And so I, I talk about this as invisible support. And in my book. So let's just zoom out for a second and talk about two, two ways that we can help our kids when we sense that they are struggling with chatter, or if we just want to get them buffered ahead of time so that when they encounter instances in which they might experience chatter later on in life, they're prepared. There are some situations in which a kid is struggling with a problem. They're ruminating, they're worrying about it, and they're going to come to you and ask you for help. And when that happens, there are specific things you can do to help them. You've talked about issues like this many times on, on the podcast. You know, in my, in my work, what we find the key to helping kids when they ask you for assistance with something is first and foremost, you Want to. You want to listen, empathize, validate, right? Have that emotional connection be there. It's so critically important to establish those relational links. But after you then listen and learn and connect with the kid, once you sense they're ready, and maybe it's in one conversation, maybe it's over the course of several, eventually you want to work to helping broaden their perspective on the situation. Like, you're there, you've got insight, and you can work collaboratively with the kid to help them find a solution to their problem. So step one is listen, learn. Step two is shift into that kind of providing perspective, helping them work through the problem and, you know, depending on the kid and what they're dealing with, some kids need to spend more time in phase one where they're just getting it out and feeling like they can connect with you before they're receptive to. All right, let's. Let's try to think through how might we get this to work. And there are lots of ways you could do that, right? You could offer experiences that you've had that you've grown from. All you know, I was in a similar situation. Here's what I did, or what would you tell me if I was in that situation? What would you tell your friend? Or weren't you in a situation like this a couple months ago? And what did you do? So there are lots of ways you can broaden a perspective. Everything I've just described, though, deals with this instance in which a kid or a friend comes to you with a problem and they want to talk to you about it. As virtually every parent who is listening knows, there are many instances, maybe many more instances, in which you see your kid struggling and they do not ask you for help. And then the big question is, well, what do you do? Do you volunteer the support or do you do something else? I will admit sometimes it is very hard for me to not just volunteer the support. When I see one of my daughters experiencing chatter like, this is the one thing I know something about, right? Like, so let me try to help you. Inevitably, this blows up in my face. Because what happens when you volunteer support to a kid when they haven't asked for communicates to them that they are not capable of handling their own circumstances? Kids have these strong drives to feel autonomous and independent. And so that is a formula for an explosion and for. For the parents who are listening. I mean, just think about when you had a newborn and your parents decided to, like, critique your divinity practices. Like, you know, I mean, I've witnessed this I've experienced it. Like, the switchblades come out when that happens. It's like, how dare you say that? Well, it's the same thing with, with our kids. Here is the really good news. You don't just have to let them suffer in silence. You can help them invisibly. So invisible support is a concept. It's a scientific concept. And what it refers to is providing people, in our case, kids, adolescents, with the resources they. They can benefit from, but without shining a spotlight on the fact that that is what you are doing. And there's a. This is kind of like indirect support. And there are a couple of ways you can do this. So, you know, let's, let's. And you could do this with. With. With colleagues. Let's say someone on my. In my lab group is really struggling with deadlines. I know they're working around the clock. They don't have time to feed themselves, right? I just kind of order pizza in, like, take one burden off that plate. If it's my wife who is, like, super jammed up at work, right? It's her turn to pick up the groceries. I just take the groceries, make dinner. I don't ask for applause for doing that, right? I'm just doing. Giving instrumental support to make their life just a little bit easier can make our kids lives easier in some ways, too, when they're really, you know, overburdened with deadlines and tests and exams. Take a little bit off their plate to kind of ease the burden. That's one way you can help them invisibly. Let's say they're struggling with a skill. Let's say they're struggling with chatter. Rather than saying, hey, here are three things you can do. I've noticed that you're ruminating about something. Here's three things you could do better. What we could instead do is, like, have a conversation at dinner, which we will often do in my house. And I'll. I'll share. I'll just kind of bring up, hey, you know, I just. I just came across. I just heard this talk. And did you know that we're much better at giving advice to other people than we are giving advice to ourselves? Like, have you ever experienced that? And inevitably, you know, with that kind of frame, the kids will start talking. Oh, yes, totally. I'm so much better at giving advice. And so then, you know what? Like, this speaker said that when. When you're struggling with stuff, you should just, like, give advice to think about what you would say to a friend and then follow that for yourself. So what I'm doing there is, I'm, I'm putting the information out on the table, but I'm not targeting it to one person. I assure you, if your kid is struggling and is hungry to not struggle, they're gonna cling to, to information that can benefit from. You just have to not target it towards them. And so I do that a lot with my kids.
- [19:13]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
So in this case, you're not saying, hey, Maya, what you can do when you find yourself with all of this chatter is to give yourself advice as if you're talking to a friend. Maya, now would be a great time to. Instead, you're telling the story, hoping she kind of pulls from it because she's, she needs it right now. But it doesn't feel so direct in your face, front door that it backfires.
- [19:40]
Ethan Cross
You got it. It's like when you attend a talk. So you know, you and I attend lots of presentations. If you hear about stuff that like, you just hear a speaker talk about concepts that are interesting and could be relevant to your life, you try those concepts out when you leave the talk and that's what you're doing with your kids.
- [19:59]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
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- [23:05]
Ethan Cross
I have a. I have a personal story about this with my dad when I was growing up. So my dad was this very interesting kind of colorful character. On the one hand, he was this fit the stereotype of like a gruff Brooklynite, big bushy mustache, watched the Yankees and had a filthy mouth when he was driving on the road kind of stuff. But he also had this deep interest in Eastern philosophy and he would read about Buddhism and mindfulness and didn't graduate college, was not an academic, just was enamored with these concepts. And he would talk to me about this stuff from the time I was a little kid. And he would never like really target it towards me, like, well, you know, take a step back when you're feeling upset. Sometimes he would tell me to do these things, but more often he would just share with me what he was learning about. And I would find it painfully boring when he would talk to me about these things when I was five years old. But what I found happened later on in life is when I was struggling with a curveball, I would fall back on some of those life lessons that he spoke about. That's really what we're in a position to do with our kids when it comes to helping them manage their chatter. Right. You are aware of different tools that can help you. Scientific tools that have been discovered get those on their radar. Right? So that when they need them, they can draw from them. One other thing you could do, by the way, that's really simple. With their kids, when they're struggling with chatter, you can help them invisibly by touching them affectionately, which, you know, may sound, I don't think it should sound creepy, but you know, like, it's a hug, right? It's, it's a, it's a caress on the back. Touch is a powerful tool for managing another person's emotions. And so that's another form of invisible support. If, if one of my daughters is, you know, doing their homework late at night and I know they're a little stressed about the exams, like, I'll just come up to them and I'll just kind of check in and kind of rub their back affectionately and I don't say anything else. And then I, then I go away. And I know that when I'm on the receiving end of that, I really appreciate it. And the science shows that when human beings register an affectionate embrace, that is not creepy, that is actually important. Like, you don't get these benefits if it's an unwanted embrace, but if it's, if it's from a parent to a kid, if it's appropriate between friends, there's an automatic release of stress fighting chemicals that can work to reduce our chatter.
- [25:39]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
So I, this isn't creepy, but it totally sounds uncool. But with my girls, I do forced hugs where I'm like, I need an. It's. I. It's oxytocin time. Yes. Which is obviously don't really do that with your kids. If they're like, no, do not touch me. But we kind of have a joke that they're like, ugh, but we do it anyway. And I truly believe that it just does kind of. I mean, I, I say it's for me, it is for me, but I know it's for them. But I think there are all different ways that in our family, humor and ways of connecting that we can find that touch. But I do love to make sure everybody knows how it really is valuable. That's not just like the fun, delicious part of being a parent, but it's also the helpful, beautiful part of being a human.
- [26:37]
Ethan Cross
I was watching this wonderful show actually just the other night, and there was this very touching moment where an adult daughter lost her father and she just reached for a person next to her to hug them. In that instance, which I think is such a powerful experience that we can all resonate with and touch and our senses more generally, they're totally, I think, undervalued as a tool for helping us manage our emotions. We are a tactile species. I mean, what do we do with babies when they're born into this world? What do we do to soothe them? We hug them, we caress them, you know. Yes. You don't want to be doing that like across the board in all situations at work and so forth. But fundamentally we're a social species and you can leverage that to help your kids, to help your partners when they're struggling.
- [27:33]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
What, is there anything that you can do? Like, is there any benefit to sort of a self hug or some kind of touch if you're trying to turn down the volume of chatter in your own body, in your own mind?
- [27:45]
Ethan Cross
There is some research, not a ton, but there is some on a kind of self soothing and so like, you know, kind of caressing your face or chin a little bit when you're stressed. Some people do this reflexively actually, and, and reports that this can be, this can be helpful. I do it when I have an upset stomach. That might be a different situation. I kind of rub my belly. I get made fun of doing that by my daughters. So, so it has some other emotional effects.
- [28:12]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Okay. I have a question.
- [28:14]
Ethan Cross
Yeah.
- [28:14]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I wonder, is there a point, is there an inflection point in the, the process of development where we can notice our kids might be struggling with having chatter? Like, is there a point during which they go from just trying to think developmentally? It makes sense if this would emerge in adolescence or like just before adolescence. I don't know.
- [28:42]
Ethan Cross
Yeah, you, I mean, you, you see, you see chat. So you know, chatter, just to be super technical here, refers to getting stuck in a negative thought loop. And it's considered what we call a trans diagnostic mechanism. So it's a, it's a, a process that cuts across lots of different problems, including anxiety, depression. Right. The, the at the core those, those, those issues which aren't always clinical. Right. We all experience sadness and, and thank.
- [29:12]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
You for saying that just so that everybody doesn't panic.
- [29:15]
Ethan Cross
Yeah, absolutely. Like work all of those negative emotions. You know, we all experience them at times when we talk about clinical depression, anxiety. Those are extreme forms of it. But, but a common theme is this tendency to loop over and over. And you do see some young kids who can become anxious about things and they start. But you do see this tendency to emerge more strongly as we get into adolescence and our young twenties and then there's just, it can stick with us throughout our lives. I mean, I think chatter is A universal. We all struggle with it at times, which is why I think it's so important to understand what you can do to minimize that experience, to nip it in the bud when it strikes. And the really good news here is there are lots of different tools that you can engage in. So we just talked about relationship tools, right? How you can leverage your relationships with other people to help you directly or even indirectly. Or how you as a parent can help your kid directly or indirectly. But then there are lots of other things that, that you can do, some of which are more effortful, like trying to reframe your chatter, but, but some of which are not like a couple of easy things to do that we don't always think about. There's some wonderful data showing how just going for a walk in nature, like in a green space, a tree lined street, how that can be really, really useful for helping people manage their chatter. When we get stuck in chatter, we zoom in on the awfulness of the situation and we're really good at staying with that awfulness. And what if ing it? What if this happens? What if that happens? I mean, is this ever, have you ever gone down that path?
- [31:01]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I mean, weirdly, as you were saying that I was like, God, one of the ways that I can turn down chatter is just having a conversation with someone because I haven't had any chatter until you said it. But I was thinking also I don't, I don't have a lot of what if chatter until I get into catastrophic, like something that's the least likely. I could go down a rabbit hole of what ifs 10 ways to Sunday.
- [31:30]
Ethan Cross
Yeah, catastrophization. Yeah. And that's a common manifestation of it. You go oh my God. And the next thing you know, it's over in various ways for sure.
- [31:39]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
For sure.
- [31:40]
Ethan Cross
So you're like hyper focusing now on the issue. What research shows is when you go for a walk in a safe, natural setting, a green space, your attention is, is drawn to your surroundings. All the interesting things, the sights, the sounds, the smells. And that on the one hand gives you this opportunity to just restore your attention, which is being consumed by the chatter. And so you get, get to the end of the walk and you feel replenished. What a nature walk also does is it, it kind of broadens your perspective. Like you know what, there's more to this world then this, this catastrophization and, and this looping, like, look at, look, this is a beautiful world. Like I'm, I'm looking at trees right now. That have been here for hundreds of years, like longer than me. They've weathered lots of storms. So can I. And so, you know, going for a walk in a green space is an easy thing to do and it's another way you can manage your chatter.
- [32:37]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
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- [36:00]
Ethan Cross
So more effortful tools. So. So distancing is a category of tools that are useful for chatter. So what distancing refers to is sometimes you've got to stare the problem you're dealing with in the face and you've got to look at it from a different perspective. How do you kind of go to 30,000ft and really gain some perspective on this issue? Because oftentimes we lose perspective because we're focused so narrowly on the problem. Right. We're starting to just bathe in the negativity. Let's kind of look at it from a more objective point of view. There are lots of ways you can do that. My favorite distancing tool is, I think we may have talked about this on a different episode, something called distance self talk.
- [36:40]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yes.
- [36:41]
Ethan Cross
What it involves doing is it's simple. Use your name and you to coach yourself. All right, Ethan, what do you think you should do here? How are you going to manage this? The way this works is it goes back to what we talked about earlier today. We're better at giving advice to other people than we are to ourselves. Right. We are really good advisors to others. When you use the word you in your own name, it shifts your perspective. Most of the time we use the word you, it's when we are referring to someone else. Laura, what should you do right now? Here's how you should deal with this. Or you know, my daughters, you. When you use the word you to refer to yourself, it's putting you into this advice giving mode. It's probably the first tool I use when I'm trying to manage problem. You can do this with young kids by having them adopt an alter ego. Call this the Batman effect. So have them pretend they're a superhero. So we've done some research where we ask young children to work on a really difficult problem. And in some conditions, we say we find out who their favorite superhero is. All right, pretend you're Batman, if that's your favorite superhero, or Dora the Explorer. As you try to navigate this task, call yourself Batman and try to kind of go through the task pretending that you're that character. What do we know about superheroes? Do they give up when times are hard? No. Do they persevere? Yes. So when you adopt this alter ego as a kid, I'm Batman. Batman doesn't let the bullies. Bullies get the best of them. Batman doesn't let you know himself. Get a little bit distracted by the worries. Batman succeeds, you find that that actually has beneficial effects for the kids too. So there's a kid version of that strategy as well. Another distancing tool. My second line of defense here is mental time travel. So how am I going to feel about this next week, next year? How am I going to feel about this in 10 years? What that does is it helps break the person out of this hyper focused, ruminative, worrisome state. Because you realize, huh, well, life is going to move on and my emotions are going to subside. So what I'm dealing with right now, as bad as it is, it's temporary. Like, the test will end at some point and I'll go back to life as usual.
- [39:04]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
What is the line between saying to someone you're trying to help support versus doing that for yourself? Like, would it be alienating to say how, okay, let's look at how this will feel today, in a week, in a month, in five years, whatever, does that? What's the sensitive way to do that while still remaining empathetic?
- [39:27]
Ethan Cross
Well, I think so. The reason why it's so important for parents to learn about these tools is twofold. Number one. So I've heard parent parents can experience chatter at times. Right. So these tools are going to help you manage your. Never me. Never. My hair tells a different story. Obviously the color of my hair. So, like, these tools are going to work for you, but what they also do is, is you as a parent and a support provider are in a position to activate these tools in your kids. So if a kid comes to you and they want support, first, listen and learn. Connect empathically. But then when you're trying to help them work through the situation, you are in a position to activate these tools for Them. So one of my daughters comes to me. They're talking about an issue that they're worried about. I go, it sounds terrible. I know I've been in those situations. Here's what I do when, when that happens to me, I think about, how am I going to feel about this next year? How am I going to feel about this four weeks from now when we're on spring break? Right. I slip it in. Or you could, you know, there's another way you can activate, like, well, you know, you had a really hard test or you really stressful time last year. How did you feel a month after it was over? Oh, I felt better. I was thinking about summer camping. So there are different ways that you can kind of work with your kids to activate these tools.
- [40:50]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
It's so helpful when you frame it that way because you don't want to, like, overly jump in and solve. But there are so many great tools, and we, we need to practice using them. And I find that those two things can be really in conflict.
- [41:06]
Ethan Cross
Yes. Understanding the art of how to be a good chatter advisor I think is really important. And it's. It's sometimes counterintuitive. Like, we, we see our. When. When we as human beings, empathic human beings, see suffering, we want to help. There's this reflexive desire to help that is supercharged when it is your own kid we love. Right? Like, get out of the way. I need to help now. And so sometimes, like, we need to know how to channel that. Right. If they're not asking for the help, you take the indirect, invisible route that we talked about. If they do ask you for help, well, then let's load up the blueprint for being a good shadow advisor. Two steps. Step one, listen, listen, learn. Step two, work with them to solve the problem, Give them tools. And so I will say that before I knew about these different pathways for helping, I was kind of throw in darts aimlessly. Like, I didn't. No one teaches you how to help kids in these different circumstances. At least I didn't learn explicitly. And I think that's where the science and podcasts and books like your own really serve such a valuable function, because there are pathways to optimize helping, and they're not hard to do once you know what they are.
- [42:28]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Okay, last question. I'm thinking about this beautiful time in a relationship with your child where they tell you they're chattering out loud in front of you. And it's like, once you become an adult, you probably don't do that in front of someone. Because it, you'd have a little bit of shame involved in it. But that time, let's say you have a close relationship with your child, but it's, it's, it's at a point where you might maybe hear too much of their inside thoughts.
- [43:02]
Ethan Cross
Yeah.
- [43:03]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
And yet you want to support them. You just don't want to co ruminate. So these chatter tools seem so wonderful, but is there a point like, what is the point where you notice, okay, we are currently co ruminating, I'm like joining you in the chatter somehow. How do we get ourselves out of that?
- [43:23]
Ethan Cross
You know, if there's one giant take home from my book chatter, it is this take home about being a good chatter advisor and being careful about co rumination. Because co rumination is seductive. And here's why. It feels really good to know that there's someone who's willing to just get on your side and, and kind of get an oh, that awful person. I can't believe they did that. And it's so easy to connect with someone at that emotional level in ways that don't help you deal with the problem. And so whenever a friend or one of my daughters comes to me or my wife with an issue, certainly I initially connect. Listen, sounds awful. I can't believe you went through that. But I'm always thinking, when can I shift us into problem solving mode? Now, sometimes I could do it really fast, right? The person I'm talking to, my kid, my wife, my friend, they just need five or 10 minutes to get it out and then they actually want to get it to problem solving mode because they want to move on. The bigger the problem though, that typically the longer time they need to spend in that just releasing mode. And you know, if I'm not sure when to switch from listening to advising, I'll ask, hey, I get it. I have a thought. Can I share it? Sometimes they say please. Other times like, no, I want to just keep talking a little bit to get it out a little bit further. And then I respect that. But I'm always, always, always thinking about when can I move us to phase two problem solving mode? And so that's really helpful to me because before I knew about this, I thought my job as a support, as a supporter is just to let them air it out. And we know from lots of research that that does not help people manage their chatter leads to co rumination, which can be toxic and actually just make the problem worse.
- [45:18]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
And so we need to have a limit on it while still being capable of the safe harbor of support. There's still no. There's a difference. And that will be our next episode together.
- [45:30]
Ethan Cross
Yes. Yes. Stay tuned. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.