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>> so we have quite a treating them i had a chance to have lunch here with the doctor and i think this will be terrific it with doctor printed ifus you've not read this wonderful book, for the second time the other day, chatter, that's were talking about and this is his first book and he is professor of psychology at the university of michigan one of the worlds leading. [applause] [applause] and one of the leading researchers and experts in the area of controlling the conscious mind read and we all have one of those in the directory emotionss self-control laboratories and pioneering research and is presented it in multiple venues journalists and others, as well as popular media and with her friends and good morning america and articles in new york time and wall street and etc. and without his amazing introduction, i'm going to turn

to the doctor if that's okay and tell us about our inner voice and can you kind of go through and definete what it is and maye how you developed an interest in this topic, "chatter". >> sure, maybe i will start well first of all let me say thank you for coming, it is so nice to be here withh the leaders together in person been talking to the folks through zoom for the past year about this book and i'm glad that is over so thank you very much for coming here. [applause]re [applause] and the more interactive that we can be the better so do feel free to ask questions when we give you some east start by saying that i've been formally0 studying it "chatter" in the inner voice for about 20 years but i've been thinking about it for about twice a time since the time i was a little kid about three years old because i grew

up in a household with a pretty unconventional dad and what, i mean, by that is my dad this is very colorful character he didn't graduate from college, i had a voracious appetite for three things new york yankees, cigarette smoking, and eastern philosophy. [laughter] go figure right hand when he was not engaging in any of those activities, he was talking to me about two of the three non-smoking so in particular with respect to the eastern philosophy from seven-figure slowly start to tell me heyno whenever you have any problem with your not feeling good, he would say go t inside and try to use your mind to get to the col., find the kernel of truth that's what he would tell me like i thought it was a colonel in a g.i. show back then but the

idea that he was essentially trying to instill within me is using introspection to work throughnd your problems this waa skill that served me really well throughout my childhood and adolescence i get into an argument with my mom, i go inside of your wife and feeling this way and then i move on. i would ask the girls out on dates in high school and a lot of that, they would say no and a lot of the time but you know only would say no and i would say okay i would move on in the next one and i never really got stuck and then i got to college and into my first psychology class and when i learned that class was that this capacity that we have to use their mind and solve problems, is one of our greatest superpowers and it is the basis of our ability to innovate and create and problem just like my dad taught me however, a lot of the time, this ability that we possessed

backfires we experience some adversity in our lives and it turns her attention inwards we don't end up coming up with a solution we end up at spinning instead and we overthink things and we worry about the future and weex ruminate about the past and we express what they call a term thend that is used to refer to getting stuck in a negative thought loop and i think it's one of the big problems we face as a species and will get into that now and maybe also later and that's me was fascinating that we have this tool they had serves uss well a lot of times but all times backfires so i decided to go too graduate school to learn to use the tools of science, psychology and neuroscience and to try to figure out why this happens and most importantly identify the tools people confuse science -based tools, to pre- route our inner monologue so that is the origin story of

my in training and financial have handsome me of you experienced "chatter" from time to time. [laughter] [laughter] >> all right, we're going to have a lot of time today. >> you mentioned to think semi's illumination and worry, s can yu sort that out for us because we all ruminated we get stuck in these negative spirals and cycles and we also have a lot of worries.hr .. define rumination when we're thinking about the fact that you know, thinking about some some something that didn't go well in the past and try. oh my god, why did that happen? what does that mean? for example, i engage in a tiny bit of rumination just a little while ago. i didn't tell you about this. i went to the bathroom. and we i went to the bathroom, and it went fine. [laughter] usually t does. walking around the whole

festival. and as all the friends we have to tell you the back of your jacket look is tucked into your pants in the back. rumination is about the past or he is about the future and the present. but if it happens? oh my gosh nuclear holocaust. lecture mike went off. >> can you hear me now? how about now? >> we can switch i will use my professor voice couldn't hear me in the back? no. >> how about now but forget the professor voice. so ruminations about the past, worrying tends to be about the present or future. but the key idea here is we are looping things over in our head. there is a problem they are consumed with we are narrowly focusing on it and attempt to

work to the problem but we are not making any progress. sometimes people call it monkey mind lots of different terms for the tendency to over think. when it gets us in really deep trouble. if it undermines us in three domains of life that i think all of us care a lot about. i will mention these really quick to set the stage for what is to come. chatter it makes it hard for us to think and perform. how many people here has the following happen to you? you have sat down to read a book, i know you are all readers. you read a chapter or half a chapter. under oath you would swear the words have a pastoral field of site and yet you get to the end and you don't remember a damn thing you've read. [laughter] come on everyone that is chatter. your mind is somewhere else it is consuming your resources your intentional resource there's only so much attention being a focus on any given time.

i pulled the attention is on the chatter does not leave anything over to let you do the things you want to do whether that be reading or focusing on your kids, your partners, or your jobs. so chatter undermines our ability to think and perform. ite can create friction in our relationships with other people as we find people we want to talk about our chatter. and then we keep talking about it over, and over, and over again, pushr other loved ones away we are not censoring our chatter at all. and then it can also create physical health problems in ways that are pretty scary and we may not belabor here. think it's one of the big problems we face. >> one of the things you mentioned in your book is a venting and we have the need to vent. it has become exacerbated with social mediaia it's easy to get out there and put something out there. you make a point to say often

inventing is not necessarily a good thing. it can have certain negative implications. i am wondering at one point does the support you're looking for you've got an initial for what you are venting. in the new start in this vicious cycle down are they support that negativity and it becomes a spiraling downhill cycle, how do you view that? the idea of venting and its limitations? >> other people can be an unbelievable asset to us when iv comes to managing our chatter. but they can also be a tremendous vulnerability i'd spend a chapter in the book trying to break down how you can harness your relationships with other people for better brother than for worse. a lot of people think and have learned through culture andn socialization that when you are struggling with a problem they thing you want to do is find someone to just express your demotions too.

just event, get it out. how many people here have heard , thank you.el most of you here this is an incredibly common belief it dates back to aristotle josé first went to suggested and then freud ran with it and people magazine has ever since. [laughter] there's been a lot of research v on venting in the technical term catharsis. and here is what we know venting about your problems to other people can be really good for strengthening the friendship and relational bond that we share. feels w good to know there folks in my life i could turn to itey were just going to listen to me, get it out there, they are there for me willing to take the time to just let me express my emotions. here is the problem with venting. if all you do is vent in a conversation with other people you're talking about what happened, how you felt a nursing that's terrible i would've felt the same way but what did you do

next? they called co- rumination you're ruminating together with one another, and it turns out that could be really good for relationships. but it does not help you actually work through your chatter. because she will have done is rehearsing negativity. so you leave those conversations you feel really good about the spoke to if you have got my back, yes. we were just as upset if not more upset after you finish talking to them. so the scientific formula for getting good chatter support from other people actually involves doing two things. you do want to -- if you are the support provided the person's is there to help someone else, you do want to take a little bit of time to learn about what the other person is going through. to hear them out, to learn about the circumstances. but a certain point in the conversation you want to start nudging them to look at thehe bg

picture. often time our problem so we are experiencing chatter feel all-consuming we are tunnel vision focused on the problem at hand. we can find solutions to our problem that make us feel better and other people can help us do that. we might say to them that sounds terrible but how have you dealt with this in the past?in a big picture this is one of them is not going to happen to them and so on and so forth. that is the fundamental for providing good chatter support for there to take comes here i don't very quickly mention if you yourself find yourself wanting to talk about your chatter think ou really carefully after four people when i go to for personal issues, five or six professional.

we are on tv now so i've got to be careful here. there are people on going to be may not be able to go home. very close to its love them dearly, the kinship bonds if you know what i mean. w i never talk to them about my chatter. i know they want to help stoke the fire further. ask me about what happened and making me fee' worse.r really selective about who i would talk to us when take him for the other when someone comes to you with their chatter you know have a scientific blueprint for helping them.

i will throw back to you there is an art what i mean by that depending on the person and the problem more time expressing their emotions before they are ready to start having the perspective be brought into. he's my wife is an example here, to hell with the tv. i love you if you're watching. sometimes my wife will come to me with some chatter she is experiencing. and i will be there for her, and listen and i learned about what she's going through. a certain point in the conversation when i see myalta opening i will say totally get it, can i give you my advice about this? she will look at me like just listen okay. then she keeps going and i tried to broaden later. i

other conversations other types of chatter shall come to me, i listen i i offer advice please us just why i'm here. want to be delicate as you feel that out. but that is how to take other people and turn them into an asset rather than a liability. >> before we get in more detail inabout the toolbox which you go through in some detail, when do you know that you have surpassed the skills of your board of advisors? when do you need to seek real professional help? that wasn't really covered a lot in the book that was of some concern for it when you know you're really in trouble? >> the book really focuses on the run-of-the-mill chatter that is part and parcel of the human condition. i have yet to speak to an audience and i am talking about audiences that range from middle school kids to executives and everywhere in between. chatter is an incredibly common experience. if there's one thing you leave

here with, just know that if you experience chatter at times congratulations welcome to the human condition. this is part of life. having said that, chatter can morph into more serious kinds of problems, psychological disorders. in which you would want to get more focused and concentrated forms of help beyond the tools i talk about in the book. the indications you might want to talk to someone else or if you find y your self experiencig chatter for at w least two weeks and to a degree that it is impairing your ability to live the life you want to live on a daily basis. that is it indication the run-of-the-mill chatter is morphing into something more distant serving if that happens i would encourage you to find someone who practices in empirically supported form of therapy. there are many out there.

but that would be my go to advice. >> so, i would really like to open the toolbox. in the toolbox as i read through things, three different bins you want to go through that? it's lots of great anecdotes, examples can all relate to and how we deal with chatter and how we control. once you go through that forestry quick so like to break -- what has scienceht taut us about how to manage this inner voice that we have that is usually helpful but can sometimes be harmful. i talk about 26 different tools in the book. you can find these tools falling into three different categories. things you can do on your own. ways of shifting the way you are thinking that can help youth harness this chatter. then there are what we might call itss relationship tools whh we just talked about how toan

harness relationships with other people. and then there are environmental tools which refer to tools that exist in the physical world around us. ways of changing the way we talk to ourselves by engaging with our physical environment in particular ways. there is no magic tool. people often ask me journalists often ask whatt is the one thin, what is your favorite tool? what is the one tool you should used to manage her chatter? i don't have a favorite tool third what i know is that people generally use multiple tools. but the challenge i think we all face is hey, what is the combination of healthy tools that works best for you to help that you manage your chatter? quick so it's go into depth than on each of the different tools, different boxes of tools if you will. so looking at self. what self-control kinds of tools i mean meditation, faith, we

have ritual, we have all kinds of tools that can help us structure, reorder things in our heads. can you go through some examples of self-help first? >> so, one kind of tool that is useful for helping people manage chatter on their own is what we call distancing tools. they're a bunch of these are talk about in the book i will tell you about two. first thing to keep in mind about chatter is booming experience it, what happens is a resume in narrowly on the problem at a hand. that's all we can think about. tunnel vision. what we have learned is that when you are in that space the ability to t step back and think about your experiences from a broader perspective can be really useful. one tool that we've studied a lot inth our lab, i use this tol myself that's useful toward this is called distance self talk. what it involves doing is using

your own name or the second personf pronoun, you, to coach yourself through a problem. one of the things we know about we human beings as we are much better, there's a mic problem. we are much better to giving advice toe other people giving advice ourselves. how many people here by show of hand artist situation where itt comes to them relatively easy to coach them through. we can advise ourselves. what we have learned is that you can use a language to shift your perspective. to get you to think about your urchair a chart like someone ele that involves using your own name. so i'm struggling with chatter might think to yourself start problem-solving accordingly.

lots of research shows this could be effective or there's a cop that you do not want to do this out loud what you're walking on the street of tucson if you are feeling compelled to do it out loud have air prods in your ears it looks like you're talking to someone else. but, actually there are people on record using this tool during stressful times throughout history dating back to julius caesar, andrea adams, lebron james, jennifer lawrence and so on are in the book. that is one or really simple thing you can do when you'ree managing chatter. give yourself advice like you'd give advice to your best friend username to helpn you do it.om another very easy tool to implement on your own is something we call temporall. distancing or mental time travel. this is my 2:00 a.m. chatter strategy. is anyone here have 2:00 a.m. chatter? it kind of stinks. so, when i have chatter at 2:00 a.m. i don't start meditating for 20ar minutes.

i can barely think at 2:00 a.m. i do not have the resources to do complicated things. instead, what i do is i remind myself that whatever it is that i am worrying about at 2:00 a.m., which often has a form of being life ending by the way. whatever is to a.m. this is it. i am usually fired, in jail or dead by the time that chatter is done. i reminded myself, you are going to feel better about this in the morning because i always do. because in the morning when my brain is firing at full force i have the ability to think these things through in no way i suffer, i cannot do none of us can do to the same extent in the middle of the night when our brain is partially sleeping if you will. this is a mental time travel. when you travel in time in your mind and ask yourself how my going to feel about this tomorrow or a week from now? or a year from now? what that does is it highlights

however awful what you're going through is right p now, it is temporary. it will eventuallyy pass. that does something really powerful for us, it gives us hope. hope is a very powerful antidote to an inner voice run amok. that is another distancing tool. many others ofl. the sort you asked about rituals. limited about a ritual purple switch gears you're giving you a flavor of the richest of what is out there but how many people here partake in rituals when they are stressed out? how many people here part take in religious rituals spiritual rituals? me tight with that is. i talk about rituals as a kind of ancient chatter fighting tool. that in many ways our cultures give us when we are dealing with

chatter. if you think about for example what happens when you lose someone you love, many of our religions give us things to do precisely when that happens. there are morning rituals that are incredibly common that our cultures giveur us. what a ritual is, you can define a ritual as a rigid sequence of behaviors that you perform the same way each time that are infused with meaning. in judaismn for example and someone dies you dressed in black, you let your hair grow in your own pheromone level. [inaudible] cracks test test. now the question is, did you hear the last 15 minutes of what i was saying? [laughter] show to start again? are at rituals that anyone hear anything i said about rituals?

anyway here's the deal. rituals they are chatter fighting tool here is how they work. when you are experiencing a chatter you often feel like you are not in control. your mind is taking over. it is running away from you. everything feels in disarray like you do not have order. one of the ways rituals work as they provide us with a sense of order and control. because a ritual is something you can do so it needs to what scientists call a state of compensatory control. you areng compensating for the lack of order and control you feel when your mind is racing by doing something that is under your control. this is also why cleaning and organizing can be really goodan when people are stressed out. whoo here is a stress cleaner? who organizes? a lot of you but i will share personal anecdote here but i am not a particularly orderly person i think i'm relatively

clean but in terms of order i am a kind of person who usually estimate there's a trailwe of clothing from the shower to the bedroom closet to the downstairs. and yet, when i am experiencing chatter what i do first is i neatly stacked all of the booksu and papers in my office. then i go put my clothing away. then i go into the kitchen, wash all of the dishes, scrubbed on the island. i am doing that because it provides with a sense of order and control which makes me feel good. one added bonus of engaging in a ritual is that it can be really good for your relationships with your partner. i sometimes think that my wife secretly would like me too be experiencing a chronic level of chatter she is so pleased with how the house looks better really hope not watching right now. [laughter] soap rituals provide us with a sense of order and control pigmented of the rituals may

engage in are also done any religious or spiritual context, which also helps broaden our perspective. it provides us with a sense of meaning in a sense that if there is a higher power whether that be religious power or spiritual force, that is going to ensure that your life is in order,o what's meant to be is meant to it to the universe to decide, this also presents us with a sense of order and control because there is that other forces going to help us out. that is the way religious rituals can help to two different pathways. quick set up meditation, self hypnosis those that can be accessed as well? >> meditation is great. one of the ways in meditation works is by helping give us a sense of distance. allowing us to recognize for example thehe thoughts that are streaming through our heads that are paralyzing us at times,

these are just mental event separate from ourselves but it's one of the things meditation strives to do. so meditation is a great tool. my only caveat about levitation is i think it's often promoted in popular culture. i think this is in part a consequence of capitalism is that it is promoted as a one size fits all sure all. and we know that is not the sscase. meditation works really well for some people but less so for others. it is one tool admits the broader toolbox we possess of tools. one other point i like to throw in there that's related to meditation concerts living in the now, being in the moment. how many people have heard that you should strive to always be in the moment? right would you do some myth busting you ready for this?

if you think about it one of the things that really distinguishes us from all other animal species is our ability to not live in the moment. we developed a marvelous thing called a frontal cortex a beautiful giant brain that allows us to do things like reflect on the past. and time travel into the future. that can be the source of enormous pleasure and innovation. a fewde weeks ago my family went on a wonderful vacation for the kind of which we could not do for several years because of covid. i regularly find myself savoring that experience of going back in the past thinking about what i was doing with my wife and kids on how wonderful that felt. that brings me much joy. i'm also transporting myself to the future regularly and thinking about the next vacation not happening soon enough. but i'm also planning for the future and thinking about hate earlier today i thought about what i wanted to say to all of

you. so i didn't just show up your credit know what i'm talking about. i'm constantly moving and time in my mind i'm not just in the moment. i think what we want to be teaching people how to do and what we need to be striving for is to learn how to be better mental time travelers. yes the mental time travel machine sometimes breaks down and find ourselves stuck in the negative past or the worrisome future. when that happens, focusing on the future can be useful but so can other tools but we don't want to only be in the moment. you want to learn how to time travel in your mind is more effective for quicksort to comment again on ritual i've been playing tennis for 60 yearp or whatever i love the comment about people here tennis observers, players, rafael and his ritual of the thing, the thing, the thing, and the thing.

he says his greatest demon is what is in his head. he does these rituals like we all do in my going to double faults? that kind of a ritual of combing your mind helps to calm your mind and get you through that moment of dismay if you will. so turning just to help with others, as a healthcare person, we have used the placebo effect for many years. you could go into some detail about the placebo effect. i would like you to comment about some you've done with that and how a beliefg in something helping you and work. whether there's an actual physiological mechanism for what you areer promoting. quick how many people here have a lucky charm that they like to clutch? okay keep doing it because science says it will help you if

you think it will. that is the placebo effect in a nutshell. the placebo effect when it refers to is the power of our belief to actually bring us in the context of chatter some emotional relief for is been well documented for centuries that if you can dupe someone into believing oftentimes is exactly what happens i've talked to tell a story who is a person who is responsible for the term mesmerism which are probably familiar with. with living in the 1700s secured by storm the sham ritual and technique that involves using

magnets to make people feel better. what he was really skilled at doing was convincing people that if they partook in his medical treatment which had no active ingredientsur, they would actuay feel better. it turns out the medical treatment was a total fraud.wa the person who demonstrated this was none other interesting enough than benjamin franklin he was moonlighting in paris at the time. so we have known about the power of aki belief to structure our thinking for ages. often times just taking a sugar pill is as powerful for relieving our depression and anxiety as an antidepressant medication. lots and lots of study it's a test of this for moderate and mild forms of depression anxiety sugar works as well. that is powerful if you think about some the side effects

associated with these active, active drugs. so, for really long time we have known this.ol but there is one important element that has prevented folks like yourself from using this knowledge to help people. which is you cannot lie to people. you cannot give them the medicine said this is a pill it's p going to make you feel better, trust me and then give them a sugar pill think about lawsuits malpractice would go way up. so over the past ten years there has been a real -- amazing growth in our understanding of how to harness this capacity. what scientists have shown is if you can teach people how placebos work by talking to them about the science as we are doing today and we do in the book and actually convince them that hey, this bracelet that you are wearing there is nothing special about it. y but if you believe it's going to

make you feel better it actually will. and if you can convince them of that you can still benefit from this placebo effect for the called non- deceptive placebos i've done some this research in my own lab. we show you get reductions and how distressed people feel and so i think this is really powerful. it suggests that we can actually harness the power of placebos without lying to people. and so it is really the front tier new work in this space. corks who talked a little about self-help. we talk about interpersonal support, venting et cetera. we have glossed on the environments up with the out side control in were some of the rituals. you and expand on that a little bit? for me my constant every few weeks to a to do list that just helps me organize my thoughts about getting stuff done. what other tools we have our

love examples going back to nature. quick so we talked about creating order from the outsideo in. let me say some the tools i talk about in the book are things that you may be already doing but are not really deliberately doing. just kind of stumble onto it. i think the one real value surrounding knowing the science is that it gives us the opportunity to be delivered you to wait to slide into using a tool. the moment you sniff a little chatter brewing got a plan you know you're going to these fouro things. then of course are some tools that may be you never knew about thought were wacky like talking to yourself using your name. try it out it could extra benefit. in terms of environmental tools, creating order and participating in rituals are two things you can do. seeking out awe-inspiring experiences is another. and for those of you here who live in tucson you areec and an

ideal environment just go out your front door and look around you. my god it is amazingly beautiful. let me talk to a little bit about how this works. it's an emotional experiment to me in the presence of something vested m indescribable looking t it fills me with awe, my god this is so amazingly beautiful. even the cactus forest is at the appropriate term? i've never seen anything like it is amazing, it isyo beautiful. you can find this experience a lot in the natural word. amazing sunsets look up at the stars which are common experiences that trigger awe. you can also find this i experience in the world of human innovation like looking up at a skyscraper and a city tour for me contemplating interplanetary travel. which for a long timee was a stuff of science fiction.

nowadays we are actually doing recently added an suv on i mars. it projects back imagery about that planet like this fills me with awe. how did we figure out? how do we go from struggling to start fires to landing spaceships on other planets? i don't have the mental apparatus to make sense of that. when you experience the motivation when you contemplate something as vast indescribable comment that lisa something we call a shrinking of the self. you feel smaller when you're in the presence of something vast indescribable. and when you feel smaller, so does your chatter. so experiencing this emotion is kind of the ultimate perspective broaden her. the results of cutting as research that shows this can be very helpful people struggling with chatter. one of the thing and they saw little note wrap up soon for questions, fiber minutes. once you get me talking about this i love thehe stuff.

one other thing i want to mention about nature, there is another way that enhancing your exposure to green spaces or in this case off brown spaces i men that in a nice way where i come from now michigan is all gray. you got a lot better than us. there is another way this can help us it has to do with our attention. earlier we talked about the book anecdote when you are struggling with rumination in chatter you cannot focus your attention because your chatter iss consuming it. one of the thing scientists have shown is when you go for a walk and a safe natural setting, one of the things that happens is that natural setting very gently grabs our attention. our attention drifts onto the beautiful surroundings. recall this getting stuck in a type of soft fascination purchased taking it in. you are not focusing really hard

on the geometrical structure of the cactus plant. maybe somee of you i think most of us probably aren't. i okay bad example. you are just kind of taking it and usually paid what that does is allows our attention. all of the attention were previously devoted to our chatter but it allows those reserves to restore her to go for a walk and a green space even watching a movie of interesting green surroundings can be really u restorative. nature can help us from the outside in pickwick 63 or four mental inch one of the discussion. that is social media and kids and chatter and when you introduce the idea of controlling the conscious thoughts with children. particularly with the onslaught of all the terrible news and social media out there. it is a big topic we spent an hour on it for a few minutes and then we will light up for some questions in a few minutes. >> so when to start with your

kids customer i think as soon as a star social media or express an interest in wanting to do so. we have learned a lot about how you interact with social media ways that are harmful versus helpful i think sharing that information with kids is really, really important. there are couple ways social media can really be quite bad for our chatter. one thing that we know social media allows us to do is curate the way we present ourselves to the world. us out to dinner last week with my wife and some friends and i noticed there is a person sitting at the other table they were doing this. [laughter] i assure you it was one-shot they were after. they were trying to get the perfect selfie which they will then filter photoshop and thenrm post.

but we have learned is this is a normal human response. always curating the way present ourselves to others award jacket here don't always wear a jacket on sunday afternoons i'm i'm doing it because of thisve venu. we are always curating the way present ourselves or limits our ability to do so. the physical world there absent on social media. and so we put our glamour shots and glamour tweets up there. and what happens is other people are bathing themselves the purified glorified lives of others which can lead them to feelings of envy which in turn create m chatter and so forth fr that's what my social media can get not just kids but adults in trouble per the other thing social media allows us to do is event we know people like to express their emotions. social media and our smart phones allow us to do at the moment our emotions are active.

i don't one other important elements, one way social media it changes the way we express our emotions in everyday life or communicating with other people we are awash in rich source of information that comes from the people we areia talking to. your facial expressions right now are giving me all sorts of information, empathy cues you can see people are engaged, some folks who are not. don't look at them too much just joking. this provides me with information that modulates how i talk to even on the phone we hear people's vocal tone. we can tell if they are engaged or being a route that social media that information is absent and allows us to say things to people that we would never say to their faces. it allows us to act in some cases ugly which promotes things like cyber bullying and trolling which are significant problems we now face as a society.tt we actually see chatter manifesting in social media in

ways that can be quite toxic at times but not to say social media cannot be useful to looking at the ukraine situation social maid has garnered tons of support that can be an achilles' heel as well per. >> if anyone has questions we invite you to the microphone right up here. please project as best you can fbecause we like to hear your questions. we can't repeat them if we can't hear them. >> i have two questions print i was surprised you said talking about it can be kind of negative. theen example of your wife and wanted to there's a difference for men and women meant want to get right to the solution for me talking about is a way to figure how to solve it to extend that energy and wondering what your science says of that? >> let me say that one might working memory is only so much attentionn left at the end of te day. you are talking about in a way that ultimately led to come to a

solution that is fantastic you want to keep doing that.ut i by no means mean to imply we should not talk about it. we want to talk about it in a that ultimately gets us to the point where you are ending up. it seems to me you are expressing your emotions on working through it at the same time which is what we want to put in terms of theug gender difference interestingly enough there isen a myth women like to talk about things more than men that has been studied and does not hold. menmo have just a strong a need and desire to express their emotions andhi talk to other people about it as women parasites of this research in the book. it certainly updated my views om that. looks like ours men are from mars women are from venus? >> know know they are all from this planet. >> my second question comes from more from the political realm

talks about the mind control the scientology and trump uses and i've read books and i can't think of what his name iss the one that trump models himself after the positive language and programming and saying it's not effective but then tony robbins sees it very well guess what i am wondering is in terms of chatter the idea of positive chatter versus negative chatter can come into negative mindr control and authoritarian organizations use with the focuses on so he succeeds.

>> thank you. >> right questions i sure hope none of these tools help people mind control others. any tool could be mis- abused with respect to linguistic processing and these other approaches to helping people, a lot of them have not been held up to scientific scrutiny. every single thing in this book is science -based. i am a scientist that is my day job it's very important to me this work is grounded in science it does not mean a future we won't learn new things itt updates what we think. o at the time that book was written the best cutting edge io terms of what we know. and respect us and those other practices there may be some interesting elements in there. but until we subject that to science we just cannot know how

much of that is placebo kind of intervention. so i will leave it at that big. >> i wonder at some point it gets to be the narcissistic personality really think of stuart smalley people love me that really becomes self inflated it's great to have self talk but if it's not based in reality i could have negative implications, yes but. >> hope i do not flood this i ruminated for a long time a correction not going to it's going to be great. when my mind gets carried away and i can't think about other things it goes, goes, goes it seems i have like a circuit breaker andom it just stops. i don't think about something else but sometimes it could take a day sometimes an hour. am i crazy, unique or both? >> you really want an answer to that question.

[laughter] obsolete not unique. that explains in part help mental time travel that distancing strategy works because the circuit breaker does switch eventually for you it turns off and when you think to yourself how my going to feel about this in a week or month what you reminding yourself in that moment that you eventually will feel better that often takes the edge off the chatter.r there is some research really interesting stuff that looks at the duration of our chatter and it varies depending upon the source of the chatter the kind of emotion where the anger, anxiety, but most of the experiences we have surrounding chatter do eventually fade overg time. but my hope is, teaching people about these tools, with that can do is shorten the amount of time you get stuck and chatter. people often ask me you are an

expert studied this your whole career to ever experience chatter? yes i told you about the bathroom episode. but what i ams really good at is the moment i detect the chatter proliferate. set of tools i implementpl right away shorten the period of time i'm stuck so thanks that question you didn't flub it. close like to have a question about the impact of social media going back to that. concerned about is the echo chamber effect social media has a lot of commentary inflammatory, opinionated comment and it almost, at least to me sounds like that aspect of social media could be a ripe breeding ground for this venting that you discussed.

what are your thoughts on that? we could implement a solution to prevent social media platforms from being this epicenter of negative venting. >> we completely agree it is a tremendous problem for we do research on this topic and my lab. i think there are two solutions to addressing thist issue. we don't have the solutions yet. one thing i think will make a difference is teaching people about how this all works. it has been a giant experiment. we have stumbled through without really teaching ourselves or our kids how to navigate the space.

we teach them how to navigate the physical world don't go here, go here. don't talk this s way talk this way. we have not socialized kids and how to use social media. think we now have enough science we can begin to do that but we can begin to explain the culture of duration we can talk about how social media it makes it easy for us to act in ugly ways to other people. i'm really curious what effect teaching people how all of this works might have on their actual behavior for that's one thing we can do the other thing we could do a little bit more challenging when i say we i mean people who aree designing algorithms and program spirit my hope is they use the science to change the waye these platforms operate, to make it more challenging for people to get stuck in an echo chamber that's characterized that can lead to violence and moral outrage for that is

definitely within the power of social media companies to leverage the science to inform how their product operates. the hope is they begin to do that so great question. >> thank you. >> my question is aboutut rumination. you described it morbid negative on ruminated on a negative experience but can we ruminate on a positive experience that can lead to a negative outcome? >> a great question. i don't know if any work so ruminating on a positive experience is generally sacked about in terms of savoring. i will often actually prescribed savoring two people i will say we do a lot of research in my lab on distancing the ability to step back and reason objectively

about your problem work through them you want to do that when you're focusing on something negative. but when it comes to something positive my advice is to immerse yourself as much as possible when i'm at the playground with mike kids having fun on a soccer belt i don't to be ethan what you doing right now i don't want toer be stepping back out to be totally engaged in that experience. i am not aware of any work on positive stuff can get us into significant trouble. >> thank you so much. >> you're welcome. >> my therapist says that the episodes of chatter i have are episodic. i am not sure she is right. she is no kind of sciences. >> a heck with her. [laughter] she isbu really sweet but i'm nt sure i believe that. if that is true is there a way

to plan for this because you know what your cycle is or is it actually cyclic? homer going to follow victim to chatter life is filled with chatter sugars sometimes i log into my e-mail there goes that gets at all going. to familiarize yourself with the different tools that are out there although you cannot necessarily predict your andiv you're going to start

experiencing their ideas when you get that plant in the identify tools that work for you it may not be all of the tools i talk about. identify the subset that works it's going to nip that in the bud much different that it would if it was left to run on its own. you're welcome for. >> one quick question please. >> you spoke about as a listener ruminating or venting, is to listen and then terms of solving or fixing? what if it is not solvable? survivors of homicide victims it can't be fixed. >> there is a way of making sense, thank you for that question buried there is a way

any kind of negative experience to solve the problem it's going to happen. the way to put in perspective one of the influences on my thinking was an austrian psychiatrist named victor frankel who wrote an amazing book man searching for meeting. in that book he talks about what allowed him to live through the holocaust after losing everything. he was a physician before the holocaust. he is now a slave essentially. he was murdered he found a way he found a purpose to his life he found a way to make sense of what he was going through that ultimately allowed them to persevere and live a flourishing life after.

it's not why that purpose and meaning we can find in any circumstance that can be difficult to identify but we are immersed in the chatter. >> on that uplifting note i reminded a sailor trying to control the winds we cannot control the winds we can trim our sails. we can control our conscious thoughts and enter chatter. thank you for a lovely session. >> thank you for coming. >> weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents a story and on sunday brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors funding for cspan2. >> you think this is a community center? why more than that. >> thousand committee centers to get wi-fi enabled list serves

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