Mental Chatter: What is it, Why it Happens, and How to Deal with it

A women sit side of the window

Mental Chatter

Mental chatter means where your thoughts continue running all the time, and where you are unable to control them.

It is also known as running thoughts, monkey mind, and internal monologue, where the mind is unable stop to thinking.

Especially, when it is negative, and it is also allied with anxiety and depression, but these ideas can be cheerful, negative, and neutral.

Around 50% of people experience mental chatter, and it is normal until negative thoughts dominate your thoughts (1).

Is Mental Chatter Harmful or Helpful?

If it is positive thoughts then it’s not harmful, but if negative thoughts dominate your thoughts, then it can affect your daily life.

Positive thoughts can boost your self-confidence, and improve your problem-solving skills.

On the other hand, negative thoughts are allied with mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, etc, and over time it leads to chronic illness.

A women sit side of the window

Why Did It Happen?

It happens due to many reasons, find your reason with a specialist, and then they will suggest what is good for you.

Here is why mental chatter is happening:

Multitasking

Doing multitasking is shown amazing but it gradually affects your mental health negatively and causes forgetfulness.

Multitasking at the same time affects our brain’s remembering area, which overloads brain capacity (2)

To reduce forgetting things make sure to do one thing with focus at a time, which allows you to grab more information (3)

Stress

It is one of the common reasons for running thoughts, and it affects everyone, whether it is old, mature, poor, rich, male or female.

Stress and anxiety both make it harder to focus and stress increases the chance of mental issues like forgetfulness, etc.

Dopamine Need

Our brain craves dopamine (a feel-good hormone), and mental chattering is run by anxiety and desire, where dopamine is released.

Day by day it’s increased and becomes a habit where dopamine release triggers your desires and thoughts.

NOTE: keep this happiness, or satisfaction in control, Otherwise, getting dopamine for any work will become a bad habit.

Unnecessary Movement

This unnecessary movement means not staying in one work, mentally and physically.

Gradually it is unable your mind to focus on one things which trigger anxiety and mental chattering.

Bad Habit

It includes late night sleep, consuming excessive processed food, smoking, alcohol, bad sleeping environment, etc.

Bad habits affect your mental health, where keep things in mind, not doing exercise, and not consuming healthy food.

Research indicates that the gut microbiome also influences your mood and mental health, which play a vital role in controlling internal noise.

Symptoms of Mind Chattering

There are several symptoms of running thoughts:

  • Lack of awareness
  • Inability to focus
  • lack of attention
  • forgetfulness
  • inability to deal with stress

If you have experienced or seen someone who experienced it, then it is good to talk to your doctor, where proper treatment helps in it.

The Downside of Mental Chatter

As we already know, mental chattering is normal until it does not dominate your thoughts, especially when negative thoughts are seen.

Mental chatter has several downsides the most common downside is negative thoughts which lead to several mental issues such as:

  • anxiety and depression both are common mental illnesses, so managing them before they become harder to manage
  • decreased self-confidence is very vital and helpful for facing life’s different experiences.
  • harder to focus on work which makes you irritable, and raises your anxiety level
  • disturbs your sleep, excessive anxiety, and overthinking, make it harder to focus on sleep, and cause a lack of sleep.
  • Interact with relationship, where continuous running thoughts can’t interact with relationship, indirectly.
    • for example, lack of sleep triggers your anger and stress level, which can come in your relationship.

Overthinking B/W Mental Chatter

Mental chatterOverthinking
It overall continuous running thoughts include positive, negative, and normalIt occurs when you keep thinking about the same thought or problem, especially when it is negative
Its overall continuous running thoughts include positive, negative, and normalIt generally comes from stress, anxiety, and other issues.
Mental chatter can also increase your skills, and creativity level.Overthinking leads to mental issues like anxiety, and stress.

How To Deal With It?

Continuous running thoughts make it harder to focus, and sleep, which triggers individual anger, and irritation, and affects mental health.

So here are several ways to deal with continuous running thoughts its include:

A-girl-doing breathing exercise-with-a-cup-in-her-hand-and-her-eyes-are-closed

Deep Breathing

If you are not able to focus on work, or it interacts with your sleep, then you can try this method.

I use it before sleeping, where my overthinking or continuously running thoughts through my mind, without any reason.

Deep breathing increases oxygen levels in the brain, which suppresses cortisol levels and increases melatonin levels (a sleep hormone).

It is one of the leading relaxation techniques to reduce stress, which brings calmness, and relaxation, and decreases mental woes.

Count 1 to 100 with deep breathing, I even can’t reach to 50 counts, before 100 I sleep.

Spend Time in Nature

Nature will heal it, it takes time, but continuous exposure to nature decides your mind to other things like mountains, green, etc.

You can go to the park for walking, which is beneficial for both mental and physical health.

So reaching in nature is very practical in diverting your mind, which does not allow your brain to create unimagine (4)

Apps

You can use also a smartphone where brain training apps are available which tell how the brain works in mental chatter.

Give your real-time date, which allows you to find the reason and provide you with the solution too (5)

There are paid apps too like CBT apps, etc which will suggest exercises, books, and videos (easy to understand)

Exercises

Do exercise at least 30 to 1 hour daily including yoga also (one of the best ways to promote mental and physical health at the same time)

Make sure to focus on mental exercises like:

  • Puzzle-solving
  • learning new things or promoting your skills
  • reading books
  • meditation
  • yoga
  • writing blog or articles post
  • take enough sleep
  • met with others and shared your thoughts

The brain is more powerful than we think, it can make us or destroy us, so keep your mind healthy through exercises.

Let Them Free

Controlling or fighting with your thoughts can worsen the situation, it’s better to do meditation, or yoga before it gets worse.

Be kind to what you thinking, and understand why it occurs, and first, it’s normal so do not take it too seriously.

Just follow simple tiny steps, and actions like stop it before it goes deep, and try the breathing method during sleep.

Tiny action brings patience, and calmness, and teach many new things like building your self-esteem, confidence, etc.

Meditation

It is one of the best-considered methods to manage your overthinking, mental chatter and any other type of mental issues.

Because in it you have to focus on your breathing or a single thing, no more thoughts.

If you are finding difficulty focusing, then start by saying “OM” which suppresses the disturbing sound and thoughts and focus on “OM

In Additional

Get enough sleep, which allows your brain to take rest, which brain can handle mental chatter very well.

Play your favourite games, do love can attract your mind and bring peace.

Down Line

Mental chatter is a normal mental concern, that affects millions of people, you can simply manage it through simple methods.

Meditation, yoga, deep breathing, CBT, take specialist help are some of the ways that can easily suppress these running thoughts.

If you experience or seen someone who faces any mental issues, when talking to a mental doctor is the best way.

Healthytalk8

Hello, I'm Sahil bisht, I am a Mechanical engineer, As well as, aspiring blogger with an obsession for health. This blog delicate to people who want to learn in health.

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