Talking to Yourself Isn't Crazy, It's Healthy
We all have an internal monologue for talking to ourselves. It's a common way for us to assess information, situations and coming to decisions, etc.
Talking to yourself might seem like something only "crazy" people do, and some people are careful not appear like they are talking to themselves, lest they appear "crazy". But seriously we all talk to ourselves. Talking to ourselves vocally for others to hear, that can get the bad rep for being "crazy". But if we're alone, talking to ourselves vocally isn't seen with the stigma of being "crazy". It's really a certain type of vocal self-talk that shrouds one in a veil of "craziness". Most of us aren't there, luckily.
Self-talk may not have existed long ago in human history, and it could have initially been interpreted as hearing voices, or even the "voice of God". That's a theory from Julian Jaynes about bicamerlaism that relates to this. Check it out if you're interested to know more, as that won't be the topic of this post.
In Ancient Greek, the word for "I meditate" was phrazomai, which means "I speak to myself", i.e. self-talk, talking and thinking to ourselves. This what meditation was originally for, in an active conscious form (which the passive form gets you into the mood and clarity for); to think, reflect, contemplate, introspect. To speak to yourself to figure things out. Reflecting images from the light of external reality, into the internal light projector of the mind’s eye (the 6th sense, consciousness), to discern and evaluate ourselves in existence, or discern and evaluate existence itself.
Talking to ourselves works great. We can get over conditioning from society by reevaluating ourselves, what we have been taught to accept, etc. We can dig into the past history to learn from mistakes and look into the future for the best way forward and what is potentially coming down the pipe for us to be aware of.
It turns out that talking to ourselves in the third-person might be even more effective in some cases, like for overcoming emotional distress. A first-of-its-kind study on third-person self-talk demonstrated the effectiveness of third-person talk in being less emotionally reactive.
What that means is, you can talk to yourself and refer to yourself by name, instead of using the "I". "Why am I upset?" becomes "Why is KrNel upset?". This allows us to dissociate from being attached to ourselves and what happened, seeing it in a less personal way, as though we are thinking about someone else. This provides some psychological distance and help to regulate our emotions.
Participants were shown neutral and disturbing images, and reacted in either the first or third-person while their brains activity was monitored. Referring to themselves in the third-person decreased the emotional brain activity compared to the first person. Activity for effort was also measured, and using the third-person narrative take no more effort than the first person. This may be a more effective strategy in the moment or "now" to cope with emotional regulation, compared to mindfulness or positive thinking which take more thought and effort.
Another experiment had people reflect on painful experiences in both the first and third-person perspective. Again, the third-person talk had less activity present in the brain region associated with reflecting on painful memories.
Both research teams that did each experiment are going to explore the benefits of third-person self-talk, and how they actually compare to other emotion-regulations strategies like mindfulness, positivity, EFT, etc. But so far, this seems like the easiest and most effortless form of emotion-regulation.
A quick dissociation from yourself using the third-person self-talk might prevent your from reacting emotionally and making a situation worse :)
Do you feel weird talking to yourself out-loud? I don't when I'm alone. Sometimes I'll murmur in public places like what to pick at the grocery store lol.
Do you ever talk to yourself (vocally or not) using the third person? I've only done it a few time as through someone else were talking about me so I spoke using my own name. I'll have to try this third-person trick out next time an emotional upset occurs ;)
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
References:
http://bgr.com/2017/07/26/science-news-talking-to-yourself-stress/
http://www.newsweek.com/stressed-talk-yourself-third-person-643628
https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/07/28/third-person-self-talk-helps-emotional-control/123869.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170726102906.htm
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-07-stressful-emotions.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-04047-3
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What an interesting article. I wont lie I have been talking to myself my entire life and I would like to think I am not all that crazy. When I was younger, I went through a lot of emotional and mental abuse from my stepdad and I was not very popular in school so talking with myself was often a way to help cope with my reality. Many times I talked myself off of the ledge so to speak.
I feel for ya. Some people create imaginary friends to have someone to talk to ;)
You say that like you are talking from experience ;) haha
LOL, I can understand much without having done it myself. But sure, some of it is relatable. I said I speak to myself sometimes to decide groceries. But I don't make big talking scenes lol
That was a wonderful read. Talking to yourself in the third person does help you deal more effectively with emotional stress and decision making. I have believed that more intelligent people talk to themselves. In other words there is a connection between talking to yourself and the intellect. On a side note your post on Serene Simplicity can Develop into Chaotic Complexity for which I commented on inspired a post of my own you may be interested in. It is on taking Responsibility for your Interconnection in Society in Religion. I want to personally thank you for the inspiration for this subject. Your posts are a good motivator in inspiring others. Again thanks for sharing. - Troy
You're welcome, and thanks for appreciating the work and learning form it to make your own works :)
It's called, thinking out loud.
I've heard all the highly intelligent and emotionally stable people do it.
I regularly do this. People laugh at me sometimes and I really couldn't care less. The only difference is, I do it out loud, they do it silently.
I mentioned a technique in passing a while ago in some post about repeating lectures to yourself in the mirror as it 'tricks' the brain into thinking the lecture is being given again. Kind of.
The brain can be manipulated in so many ways. It is brilliant and scary :)
Sweet, good tips for doing half the work :P
I never talk to myself in the third person, but I am always having internal dialogue. There may be some point to that disassociation though. There is a short clip by Marvin Minsky who calls them critics, and talks about building them in AI.. it's on YouTube. Marvin Minsky is a super interesting guy. But ya thanks for the thoughts and info
Yeah the part on dissociation was my own addition as I understand psychology. The third person talk is a dissociation that makes it more similar to talking about someone else, not ourselves
AI that dissociate to criticize themselves?
Nice! As one who has talked to myself and answered myself for years I am relieved to see I am not crazy, despite the many crazy looks I have received over the past few decades. For me "self talk" helps in thinking things out; sort of talking things through with myself. And I can see where talking to yourself can be an aid in developing Mindfulness in living. We just have to be careful in our self talk. Never call yourself an idiot, and never pull the Steven Wright trick of talking to yourself using a bull horn. That will seriously disturb the neighbors!
Thanks for the positive thoughts and have a great day. :-)
Thanks for the feedback, have a good one yourself ;)
This right here is what I was talking about. Marvin Minksy's critic selector model.. It's definitely worth a watch. Marvin Minsky was a crazy guy, cofounder of the MIT AI lab
Thanks. Very low volume on that recording hehe. Downloading will watch later.
Yeah, there are lots of interview questions from this interview a couple months befre he died.. But ya, the volume is so low I had to turn everything up to hear it too! Its worth the listen though, Marvin Minksy was super smart, and he has a way of explaining things to simpletons like me
Thank you for the reminder krnel.
One of the world's renowned self-help guru Tony Robins says he performs his own 'self-talk ritual' before entering the stage to this day.
I think the problem is NOT that people don't have self-talk, however, they have too much NEGATIVE self-talk.
In olden days it was enough to 'observe or contemplate' thoughts one had because they had no sense of AMOUNT of negativity that is even imaginable in these days...
To your point, we should all have conscious self-talk and keep it honest and positive!
Thank you for sharing krnel!
Keep it honest, stay positive, keep it honest and admit the negative ;) Thanks for the feedback.
Disassociating yourself from the situation sound like a great technique. People around me have noticed and pointed out to me that while I seem to be good at giving advice to others, I'm much worse when it comes to myself. This is possibly because I can't assess myself and my own situations as impartially as I can when it comes to others. I will try talking to myself in the third person when thinking about my problems and hopefully it will help me make better choices in the future.
Yeah, objective detachment is what I call it. Don't subjectively view things through your personal wants, wishes, desire and predilections alone, but look at the situation objectively that considers a wider view that merely a subjective, purely selfish, self-interested or self-concerned perspective of being the only one (solipsism). Not that this is an "absolute" "pure" "objective detachment" lol.
Here is where your "purist" view of defining things gets troublesome. As you might always object to any use of the word that validly applies simply because it;s not some rigid absolute definition. We would need to create more words to apply them specifically to reality, rather than meaning that apply in various ways and don't restrict it to one specific thing. I would say get real and accept that this is how the language currently is, and you're not going to get your absolute perfect definitions that apply to only one thing. Maybe sometimes, but not often. I look to make sense of reality as reflected through words, and understand how the words apply as reflection of reality through how we use them. Word symbols are an improvement upon pictographic symbols that convey many factors more of potential interpretations and meanings. I think Sanskrit was the most elaborated word symbol language that tried to create words for each application, while English and other languages have one word that applies in many ways.
Again, you probably disagree with my use of the word objective :P, but that's because I understand the comparative difference and can use it in applicable ways that you seem to limit yourself from using. Maybe the other post with the link to my post on objective subjective defined will help hehe. I'm not just straw manning in case you do object, explaining more on objectivity.
Everything we do, is from the position of our subjective consciousness. From that perspective, you can say every single thing we say or do or think or claim, is purely "subjective", rich renders nothing at all objective because everything is simply "subjective" in that fallacious mindset. So then there is no way to use the work objective, and nothing ins objective. Hence why some people don't know how to think properly, and become subjectivists yet don't realize how they fooled themselves into misunderstanding reality and deny what is. I've met quite a few left-brain imbalanced and right-brain imbalanced people who think like this, subjectivism and solipsism, hyper-doubt yet sometimes also hyper-open-minded lol. It's weird and funny and frustrating lol to deal with that type of thinker. I end up going in circles.
I would say all kinds of views break down in the face of solipsism, hard solipsism has no real solution that I'm aware of. You won't see me arguing otherwise.
I don't think I have an unrealistic view of language and I really like the saying "words are not magic". It's up to us to define and agree on usages that are useful in certain contexts. Of course words are fluid and their meanings change and differ in different communication situations. When I get nitpicky about a definition, it's not the word I care about, it's the depth of understanding that we can have and might be implied in a particular term, I care about the concept.
Does the fact that perfection is not attainable need to dissuade us from trying to better our concepts and definitions when we can? I do think more reliable definitions are a good basis for deeper and more accurate understanding, that's why I might end up advocating for them.
I'm not so sure about that. I haven't noticed that much of a difference actually. We might disagree on how objective certain approaches are, but I don't think we use the word that differently or at least I haven't noticed the dissimilarity yet :P Judging from your post on the topic, I think we approach it with a similar sentiment. Where we might differ in our evaluation might be the implications to how we should approach some things.
I absolutely agree. While we have no way to decisively demonstrate that the reality we seem to share is indeed real and even that other people are real separate agents, we accept it out of necessity - it's the only reality we have access to after all. But when we accept that and go past that, when we accept that other people are real, we can start establishing some claims that are more objective than other. With time and effort the level of objectiveness in our understanding and concepts builds and I think we should strive for than. Sure, 100% objectivity might be hard, but I see no reason not try and get as close as we can. I simply don't see any utility in going from solipsism or pure subjectivism and it looks like we are in agreement here.
im always talking to myself:) but i fear people who talk with their cats like long conversation: meow - you think so too? -meow - ye she did bad thing - meow
LOL, that's funny, but yeah we can talk to anything without any response, and we're really only talking to ourselves... hehe. At least other animals can comprehend some things, but I doubt they understand our abstract topics.