Overthinking starts the moment one bad thought gets stuck on a loop and refuses to leave.
Dr. Ethan Kross, a University of Michigan psychologist who has studied chatter for over 20 years, sat down with Lewis to explain why your inner voice spirals and how to pull it back. His book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, lays out 26 tools, and he walks through a handful of them here.
The simplest one sounds strange at first. You coach yourself silently, using your own name, the way LeBron James and Jennifer Lawrence both did in interviews. Ethan’s team texted people five times a day for two weeks to track this kind of self-talk and found no link to narcissism at all.
He also explains why venting to a friend can turn into co-rumination and leave you just as upset as when you started. A moment of awe in nature can shrink your problems, and Rafael Nadal lines up his water bottles because the ritual gives him “the order I seek in my head.”
Negative emotions still have a job to do, and the anxiety and stress you feel before a big moment can push you to prepare. When Lewis asked for his three truths, Ethan ended on a phrase he grew up with: “Be a mensch.”
Shift: Managing Your Emotions–So They Don’t Manage You
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It