A Childish Way Adults Can Practice Listening To Their Internal Chatter Instead Of Waiting For It To Be Kind

We say things to ourselves we wouldn’t tolerate hearing from others.

Mindfulness can help us stop bullying ourselves, but maybe not in the way you might think.

While we’ll never be able to control the content of every spontaneous thought, we can practice listening to our thoughts differently so they pack less of a personal punch.

Would you please repeat that?

When you were a kid, you probably discovered repeating a word over and over makes it sound like nonsense.

Poet Ben Lerner writes about this in his book The Hatred of Poetry.

“Linguistic repetition, you learn from an early age, can give form or take it away, because it forces a confrontation with the malleability of language and the world we build with it, build upon it.”

You can put this effect to work during a meditation session to practice unhooking the sound of your verbal thoughts from their meaning. I learned this from Shinzen Young who calls the technique echoing talk.

Try it when you’re working with sounds as your focus object.

Break the words down

When your attention is pulled to a verbal thought, repeat each word slowly in your mind, one syllable at a time. Slow this down as much as possible as if you were making a mantra out of each one.

I still can’t believe I don’t know what to do with my life. What is wrong with me?

…becomes…

AHHH-EYE … SST-I-I-ILLL … CA-A-A-AN’T … BEE-EEE-EE … LEE-EEEVE

…and so on.

Break the phrases down

After a few minutes of this, move on to mentally repeating whole phrases with an emphasis on their musicality and auditory shape.

Take inspiration from the way Charlie Brown and his friends hear adults talk.

With a bit of practice, you might start to notice what it feels like to take your internal chatter less personally and even feel the underlying emotions behind the words.