“Chatter: The Voice in Our Head” by Ethan Kross (post 1)

“Our verbal stream of thought is so industrious that according to one study we internally talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking four thousand words per minute out loud…Sometimes this chatter takes the form of a rambling soliloquy; sometimes it’s a dialogue we have with ourselves…Sometimes it’s an…imagining of future events.  Sometimes it’s a free-associative pinballing between negative feelings and ideas.  Sometimes it’s a fixation on one specific unpleasant feeling or notion…” (1, p xxii).

In short, Kross’s “voice in our head” is not always or necessarily an intelligible voice, per se.

1. Ethan Kross. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It matters, and How to Harness It. New York, Crown, 2022.