This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Two Goals of Sharing Chatter
When you find yourself experiencing chatter, you may feel intensely motivated to share what you’re going through with someone else. In other words, you may wanna talk about your chatter with another person. And the reason why that is is we often look to other people to help us satisfy two goals that we’re trying to fulfill. The first goal that we have is we want someone to help satisfy our social and emotional needs. We want someone to be there to empathically connect with us. We want someone to just be there to listen and validate what we’re going through, which can often be quite scary and hurtful. You also have cognitive goals as well. You’re struggling. You want to work through this experience. That’s why you’re focusing your attention inward in the first place, to get to the bottom of the problem you’re dealing with so you can move on with your lives. But you’re having trouble finding a solution for how to do that.
Here’s the problem. Throughout history, going back to Aristotle, continuing through Freud and to modern times, we’ve been getting strong messages from our culture which really focus on just the social needs that we have. We get these messages that tell us that when you’re experiencing chatter, find someone to just dump your emotions to. Just get it out, express your feelings, vent what’s going on in your head. Here’s what we know about venting. Venting to another person can be really good for satisfying our social and emotional needs. It feels good to know that there’s someone out there who’s willing to take the time to listen to us, a person who’s willing to take the time to empathically connect with you. But if all you do is vent in a conversation with someone else, that doesn’t provide you with the cognitive support you need.
Expressing your emotions is only one part of the solution. You also wanna ideally find someone who can not only listen to you, but also, at the appropriate time in a conversation, help you reframe your experience in ways that ultimately allow you to work through it.
Providing Support to Others
When you’re on the support side of the equation, when someone comes to you for chatter support, it’s important to keep in mind these two goals that the person talking to you has. And so what you ideally want to do is get that person to share their feelings and express their emotions. But at a certain point in the conversation, you wanna start queuing that person to think about the bigger picture. You wanna start offering them ways of thinking differently about what they’re going through that will ultimately help them reframe their experience in ways that make them feel better.
Now there’s an art to doing this. Some people that you speak to are gonna need to spend a little bit more time expressing their emotions before they’re receptive to getting you to help reframe their experience. And then during the conversation, feel it out. Ask that person, “Hey, do you wanna keep talking about what you’re going through?” If so, that’s great. Gently offer them alternatives. “Hey, can I share with you something that I’ve experienced here that’s relevant?” Or, “Have you thought about it this way?” And so you wanna feel that out during the conversation. When you switch from expression mode to giving advice is gonna differ depending on who you’re talking to and what they’re going through.
Your Chatter Board of Advisors
Talking to other people about our problems can be an incredible source of help, but it can also really sink us. It can make our problems worse if we talk to the wrong people. So it’s worth investing some time to think really carefully about who your trusted advisors are when it comes to managing your chatter. Who are the people in your life who are skilled at not only listening to you and getting you to talk about your emotions, but but they’re also able to help you think differently about the situation? They’re able to help you reframe the experience in ways that ultimately allow you to move on with your life. The more people that can help you do this, the better. I like to think of this as having a chatter board of advisors.
If you think about companies, companies have a board of advisors that they turn to when the company is experiencing problems. They go to the board. They get advice. And who do they put on those boards? It’s not just anyone. It’s people who have made a career of making good decisions, right? They’re trusted sources. I think we’d all be better off if we identified individuals who comprise our own personal board of advisors and then turn to those individuals when we’re experiencing chatter to get their support.