How to Stop Overthinking & Take Back Control of Your Mind

Hey there,

In 1949, Walter Freeman set off on what he called the Lobotomy Tour, driving across America in a van he dubbed the Lobotomobile. He crisscrossed the country and performed thousands of surgeries in psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and in hotel rooms.

His surgical tool? An ice pick.

Freeman’s method was gruesome. He’d slide the ice pick beneath the patient’s eyelid, position it against the thin bone of the skull, then make cuts in the frontal lobes.

His goal? To stop obsessive thoughts, anxiety, and depression in their tracks.

It was hailed as a miracle cure. The man who pioneered the procedure even got a Nobel Peace Prize.

For a while, people thought it worked until it didn’t.

One of Freeman’s most famous patients was Rosemary Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy’s sister. At 23, she underwent the procedure to "calm" her mood swings. But instead, it left her barely able to say more than a few words, forcing her to spend the rest of her life in an institution.

The tragedy of lobotomies isn’t just that they were cruel. It’s that they came from a deeply human desire: the need to control our minds when they feel out of control.

🔗 Link: My Lobotomy — A fascinating listen for your next drive or walk!

Meet Your Inner Voice: A Tool, Not an Enemy

Right now, you’re reading this article. But in the background, another voice in your head is reacting, analyzing, maybe even judging what you’re reading.

That’s your inner voice.

Dr. Ethan Kross, a leading psychologist and researcher, says the inner voice helps us process experiences, plan, problem-solve, and reflect on our lives. Most of the time, our inner voice is a helpful guide that serves us as:

• A tool for self-reflection. It allows you to plan, make decisions, and analyze past experiences.

• A way to rehearse and guide actions. Ever mentally prepare for a job interview, a presentation, or play out an important conversation with a loved one in your head before it happens? Well, that’s your inner voice preparing you.

• A storytelling device. It helps you make sense of your life by creating a personal narrative.

Dr. Kross explains how kids talk to themselves because their inner voice hasn’t fully developed yet. So instead of just thinking “Don’t touch that, it’s hot.” they talk to themselves out loud and usually in the 3rd person and say “Katie shouldn’t touch that, it’s hot.”

As we grow up, we don’t stop talking to ourselves, we just take the conversation inside. And usually the voices we heard growing up — parents, teachers, friends — become the content of our inner monologue.

In its normal state, the inner voice isn’t good or bad. It just is.

But sometimes, the inner voice goes rogue. That’s when we enter the world of chatter.

Chatter: The Dark Side of Self-Talk

Dr. Kross calls the chatter the dark side of the inner voice. Chatter happens when the inner voice becomes too intense, too frequent, or loops negatively in a cycle.

Chatter is maladaptive self-talk that traps us in vicious circles of worry, doubt, and rumination. Instead of guiding us toward solutions, chatter amplifies stress and makes us feel out of control.

It can mind spin out of control spiraling us into negativity and anxiety that steals our sleep at night and our focus during the day.

Key Characteristics of Chatter

• Repetitive. The same thoughts replay over and over.

• Emotionally Charged. Unlike neutral problem-solving, chatter is laced with anxiety, sadness, or anger.

• Self-Focused. It revolves around you, your problems, and your feelings, often making them feel bigger than they are.

In short:

 💭 Inner voice = Helpful, neutral, or even productive when used in moderation.

⚠️ Chatter = The same mechanism overused or misdirected, causing stress instead of clarity.

How to Shift Out of Mind Chatter

The good news is that, unlike Walter Freeman’s patients, you don’t need to destroy part of your brain to escape chatter. These days we’ve learned that there are better ways to manage it so that it works for us rather than against us.

Here’s some powerful, science-backed ways to shift your thoughts and emotions, even those 2AM thoughts that just won’t quit.

READER POLL

Chatter takes different forms for everyone. Click below and tell me how your inner voice shows up in your life. 👇

Final Thoughts

Tennis legend Rafael Nadal was once asked about his toughest battle. He didn’t name an opponent or an injury. He said, “Managing the voices in my head.”

If someone at a party told you they were struggling with voices in their head, you might worry. But the truth is, we all have that inner voice that can go from harmless self-talk to harmful spirals.

It’s not a flaw. It’s part of being human. So, we don’t need to get rid of it.

The key is learning how to work with it instead of against it.

When your inner voice won’t quiet down, it doesn’t mean something is wrong. It means you’re human.

At the end of the day, your inner voice isn’t your enemy. It's a tool. Like any other tool, the more we learn to steer it, the more we can shift the way we experience the world.

Until next time,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.