Chatter

Chatter — Summary

It is three in the morning. A serious adult with a serious scientific career is standing in his living room, in his pajamas, holding a child's baseball bat. Every so often he peeks out from behind the curtain, hoping to spot someone in the street. He hasn't slept in days, can barely eat. A few hours ago he caught himself seriously typing into a search engine: "bodyguards for academics." Then he stopped for a moment and asked himself the question that turned his whole night around.

This man is Ethan Kross. He runs the emotion and self-control research laboratory at the University of Michigan, which means that studying how we rein in the negative thoughts raging in our heads is literally his job. And yet, when he himself got into trouble, the very thing he knew the most about in the world took hold of him. His own inner voice got the better of him. If anyone should have known what to do, it was him. He still couldn't. And here is where the body is buried: the voice living in our head can be our greatest ally and our fiercest enemy, often on the same day.

This book goes after three big questions. Why do we talk to ourselves at all, and why does this voice sometimes turn against us? What happens in our heads, our relationships and our bodies when the voice gets loose? And, most usefully of all, with what concrete, scientifically tested tools can we quiet it when it gets too loud? Kross has gathered a whole toolbox, and by the end you get one too.

When the head starts to roar

Let's start with what this voice actually is. Kross has a word for it: chatter. Those circling, negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular human capacity for introspection from a blessing into a curse. We turn inward looking for our inner coach. Instead, we often find our inner critic.