The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Welcome to Raising Good Humans.

I'm Dr. Lisa Pressman.

And today I've brought back Professor Ethan Cross, brilliant psychologist and neuroscientist, who talking today about chatter, 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.

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,

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.

Yes.

Your inner voice is your ability to silently use language.

And it turns out that that is a veritable superpower that we possess.

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