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A Complete Guide to the Science of Self-Talk
How to stop rumination, compulsive thinking, unrealistic rule-following, and negative self-talk
Listen to an interview with the author about this article on the Better Humans Podcast.
For the past five years, I’ve been obsessed with language and self-talk, and how they relate to emotion. This obsession grew out of the realization that self-talk and anxiety drove me toward a life of chronic heroin addiction. Tormented by the voices in my head, and the stories that I told myself, I was completely unaware of how they controlled my behavior.
Addiction brought me to the very edge, but I was lucky. Pounded into submission by the most painful night of my life, I received a gift. Call it what you will — a perspective shift, an awakening, or simply dumb luck — this also became the most important night of my life.
I had fought long and hard to keep my addiction alive, terrified of facing reality without drugs, but through the pain of this night, I finally surrendered. In doing so, I released my vise-like grip on the story that I had been telling myself, the one that had protected my addiction. My mind went quiet, and my new life began.
Captivated by this experience, I soon went to university to study the source of…
