Again and again, [Bernard] Rime landed on the same finding: People feel compelled to talk to others about their negative experiences. But that wasn't all. The more intense the emotion was, the more they wanted to talk about it. Additionally, they returned to talking about what had occurred more often, doing so repeatedly over the course of hours, days, weeks, and months, and sometimes even for the remainder of their lives.

Rime's finding proved true regardless of people's age or education level. It was characteristic of men as well as women. It even occurred across geography and cultures. From Asia to the Americas to Europe, he kept finding the same thing: Strong emotions acted like a jet propellant, blasting people off to share their experiences. It seemed to be a law of human nature. The only exceptions to this rule were cases in which people felt shame, which they often wished to conceal, or certain forms of trauma, which they wanted to avoid dwelling on.

Such consistency in a finding was stunning, though it may sound like a confirmation of the obvious. [...]

While this sounds normal and harmless, repeatedly sharing our negative inner voice with others produces on of the great ironies of chatter and social life: We voice the thoughts in our minds to the sympathetic listeners that we know in search of their support, but doing so excessively ends up pushing away the people we need most. It's as though the pain of chatter makes people less sensitive to the normal social cues that tell us when enough is enough. To be clear, this doesn't mean talking to others about your problems is harmful per se. But it highlights how chatter can transform an otherwise helpful experience into something negative.

Many of us have a limited threshold for how much venting we can listen to, even from the people we love, as well as how often we can tolerate this venting while not feeling listened to ourselves. Relationships thrive on reciprocity. That's one of the reasons why therapists charge us for their time and friends don't. When this conversational balance becomes lopsided, social connections fray.

To make matters worse, when this occurs, the people who are overventing and inadvertently alienating those around them are less capable of solving the problems. This makes it harder for them to fix the breach in their relationships, begetting a vicious cycle that can end with a toxic outcome: loneliness and isolation. A S (Chapter Two, "When Talking to Ourselves Backfires," Section "A Social Repellent," pp.30-31)

The passage of time is likewise essential to helping us manage our social lives, especially when it comes to processing upsetting experiences. When we identify someone to talk to off-line, we often have to wait until we see the person or until they're available to chat. While one waits for that person, something magical happens: Time passes, which allows us to reflect on what we're feeling and thinking about in ways that often temper our emotions. Indeed research support the common idea that "time heals" or the advice to just give it time.

Now let us transport ourselves to the parallel world of digital life and our ability to access it anytime thanks to our smart devices. Social media allows us to connect with others in the immediate aftermath of a negative emotional response, before time provides an opportunity to rethink how we're feeling or what we're planning to do. Thanks to twenty-first-century connectivity, during the very peak of our inner flareups, right when our inner voice wants to rant from the rooftops, it can.

We post. We tweet. We comment.

With the passage of time physical and physical elicitors of empathy removed, social media becomes a place amenable to the unseemly sides of the inner voice. This can lead to increased conflict, hostility, and chatter for both individuals and arguably society as a whole. It also means that we overshare more than ever before.

Similar to talking for too long and too frequently to others about your problems, overly emotional posts irritate and alienate others. They violate unspoken norms, and users wish people who overshare online would look for support from friends off-line. Unsurprisingly, people with depression -- which is fueled by the verbal stream -- share more negative personal content on social media yet actually perceive their network as less helpful that nondepressed people do. (Chapter Two, "When Talking to Ourselves Backfires," Section "A Social Repellent," pp. 34-35)

Yes, we can create a chronic physiological stress reaction just by thinking. And when our inner voice fuels that stress, it can be devastating to our health.

Countless studies have linked the long-term activation of our stress-response systems with illnesses that span the gamut from cardiovascular disease to sleep disorders, to various forms of cancer. This explains how stressful experiences such as feeling chronically isolated and alone can have drastic effects on our health. Indeed, not having a strong social-support network is a risk factor for death as large as smoking more than fifteen cigarettes a day, and a greater risk factor than consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, not exercising, being obese, or living in a highly polluted city

Chronic negative thoughts can also push into the territory of mental illness, though this isn't to say chatter is the same thing as clinical depression, anxiety, or post-trauma stress disorder. Repetitive negative thinking isn't synonymous with these conditions, but it's a common feature of them. Indeed, scientists consider it a transdiagonistic risk factor for many disorders, meaning that chatter underlies a variety of mental illnesses.

But here is what if most frightening about the ways in which chatter feeds stress. When our panic response is prolonged, the gradual physiological erosion is prolonged, the gradual physiological erosion it causes can [...] change the way our DNA influences our health. (Chapter Two, "When Talking to Ourselves Backfires,"The Piano Inside Our Cells," pp. 40-41)

We had uncovered a novel distancing tool hidden in the mind: distanced self-talk. As our experiments and others demonstrated, shifting from the first-person "I" to the second-person "you" or third-person "he" or "she" provides a mechanism for gaining emotional distance. Distanced self-talk, then, is a psychological hack embedded in the fabric of human language. And we now know that its benefits are diverse.

Other experiments have shown that distanced self-talk allows people to make better self-impressions, improves performance on stressful problem-solving tasks, and facilitates wise reasoning, just as fly-on-the-wall distancing strategies do. It also promotes rational thinking. (Chapter Four: "When I Become You," section "Say Your Name," pp.74-75)

Psychologist have shown that when you place people in stressful situations, one of the first things they do is ask themselves (usually subconsciously) two questions: What is required of me in these circumstances, and do I have the personal resources to cope with what's required? If we scan the situation and conclude that we don't have the wherewithal needed to handle things, that leads us to appraise the situation as a threat. If, on the other hand, we appraise the situation and conclude that we have what it takes to respond adequately, then we think of it as a challenge. Which way we choose to talk about the predicament to ourselves makes all the difference for our inner voice. And unsurprisingly, the more constructive framing of a challenge leads to more positive results. [...]

Research shows that distanced self-talk leads people to consider stressful situations in more challenge-oriented terms, allowing them to provide encouraging, "you-can-do-it" advice to themselves rather than catastrophizing the situation. (Chapter Four: "When I Become You," section "Get to It, Fred," pp.78-79)