Talk to yourself as you would to a friend

We are faced with something difficult.

We are alone and we begin to prepare, either for an exam, a new cooking recipe for some guests or to present the result of a job.

In the anteroom we do not stop listening to a silent voice that accompanies us stealthily as long as we have memory.

It is our inner voice.

It tells us about what we feel, about how we are.

Jump to past experiences, recall what you have learned and, of course, imagine the future: what our guests will say about the food or what grade we will get on the exam.

The inner voice has a great presence in our life. So much so that it is estimated that we listen to it between a third and half of the time we spend awake. And most importantly: the quality of the conversation will influence our mood and the result of what we do. It is not the same to face a presentation or an exam telling ourselves that we are going to succeed than to fall into obsessive phrases that remind us of our mistakes and past disasters.

Research certifies that our inner speech is much messier than when we speak out loud. In 1990 it was determined that, when solving a problem, we managed to silently say the equivalent of 4,000 spoken words per minute to ourselves. To put it in perspective: most of the people are not able to read more than 600 per minute, so we can conclude that we carry a true charlatan in the head. However, the inner voice is necessary.

Many times we insist on living in the present, but our brain has an automatic mode for survival that takes us to the past or the future to learn or to control situations. An essential human ability that also shapes our identity, as was proven 20 years ago. This is how the American neuroanatomist Jill Taylor lived after suffering a massive stroke. He lost his inner voice, got rid of the constant babbler and, among other difficulties, had trouble recognizing who he was.

If we want to improve our life, we need to improve the quality of our inner voice. Especially when dealing with problems, stressful moments or those in which we need more support. In these circumstances, our inner coach or coach can wake up: "Come on, I can get it." Or take the critical, ruminant or catastrophic helm: "I'm going to be fatal." Here are some of the tools for our inner conversations to help us feel better, as suggested by psychologist Ethan Kross, a professor at the University of Michigan (USA), in his book

First, we need to distance ourselves from what we say to ourselves. The recommended tactic is to change the way we address ourselves when trying to get through a difficult experience. Instead of speaking to ourselves in the first person singular, we have to use our name and the second person. This simple formula reduces mental rumination and improves our ability to cope with stress. Another way to distance yourself is to imagine giving advice to a friend who has had an unwanted experience. We have to think about what we would say to him and try to apply it (possibly, if we treat our friends in the same way that we talk to ourselves, it would break the friendship).

Another trait that characterizes the inner voice that hurts us, rumination or chatter, is how shortsighted it is. He does not see beyond what happened. To reduce its impact we need to broaden our perspective: remember how we were able to tackle something similar in the past or how those people we admire did. Another strategy to reduce myopia is to get on the mental time travel or relativize, that is, think about how we will feel about that event in a month or a year. In this way we can understand that, most of the time, a low grade, a bad presentation or an unfortunate cooked dish are not relevant over time.

Reinterpreting the experience as a challenge is another alternative. The inner voice can adopt two attitudes: that of encouraging us or that of sinking us. Usually the second wakes up when we are faced with a fear or a threat. If faced with a difficulty we can change our point of view, seeing it as a challenge rather than a danger, our internal conversation will be more friendly. Another of the recommended techniques in moments of mental bombardment is to capture what we say to ourselves in writing. We need to spend 15-20 minutes on it for three days in a row. Grammar does not matter, not even if it is understood. The important thing is the experience of taking distance and relieving our internal pressure.

Finally, Kross proposes to lean on a lucky charm, a positive superstition or something that arouses the belief that whatever we want will happen to save the problem.

Not so much because we think that there are superpowers, but because of the positive impact that relying on an expectation has on our mind.

Pilar Jericó is coordinator of the EL PAÍS Happiness Laboratory blog.