3 Reasons Why It’s Okay To Talk To Yourself
When ever I ask people if they talk to themselves or if they catch me talking to myself, I often get a weird stare and they proceed to say, “Wait, you talk to yourself? Are you crazy?”
“Erm, wait, you don’t? Am I not supposed to?”
I don’t seem to understand why there is a stigma against self-talkers, I can’t seem to grasp people’s judgment towards a harmless conversation with yourself. Here are a few reasons why I am not crazy and why it is okay to talk to yourself:
1. The function of language
Language is invented to get ideas out of your head and into the material world. Your thoughts are a messy, mountainous pile of clothes that sits in your mind — all the concepts, ideas, and perspectives just sits there in the pile. Language acts like hangers, and words act like hooks, that hangs these individual concepts on a clothes rack that makes things easier to perceive. It allows you to simplify and express what you know (and don’t know) into explainable chunks to yourself and potentially to people whom you might speak to, rather than just a massive lump of thought that you just know. Rather than just knowing, now you gain the dimension of being able to explain it — putting it into coherent sentences for easier understanding.
2. An extension of Subvocalization
Subvocalization is basically ‘the voice in your head’ when you read and think to yourself. It still boggles my mind that not all people has a voice in their head when they read, and I do envy them as this makes me a pretty slow reader.
Of course, there are many people who do have a voice in their head (which is possibly not even theirs, it’s just some voice) when they read and think. And talking to yourself is basically thinking out loud — rather than subvocalizing, you’re just vocalizing, and there is nothing wrong with that. You are just voicing out your thoughts, which shouldn’t count you as crazy or “need help”. How are you going to debate about both sides of the argument in your head without the use of words and language?
There has been research done on recording vibrations on the vocal chords when a person is reading, and whether we subvocalize or not, there are minute vibrations detected when we are reading a book, which is why we get thirsty easily sometimes when reading. Therefore, without you knowing, your vocal chords just read to yourself ever so slightly.
Which is why self-talking is in no way Schizophrenic nor bipolar, and there are many of us out there, so just ignore if society thinks of people who talk to themselves as crazy, they probably do it themselves and are afraid to admit it.
3. You are essentially vlogging
Talking and debating with yourself is no different from what vloggers do on YouTube, you are just vlogging without a video camera! If you take away the camera from Hank Green and John Green, Phillip DeFranco, and Anna Akana, just to name a few, aren’t they essentially talking to themselves? They are talking about issues that concern them, concern the world, talking about how they feel to a certain news or idea — sex, religion, education etc.
People sometimes just need to rant, need to voice out about something — even if it’s into the void with no one listening.
I can’t understand how people who don’t talk to themselves vent their emotions out without moving their lips. But I’m glad you do.
They point and shout at you, saying you are weird or crazy, “Who the hell are you talking to?” or “Did I just hear you talking to yourself?”
You know what? Yes, yes I did, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Thank you for reading! Better so if it is the tiny voice in your head doing so! If you liked this and resonated with it, give it a ❤! And check out my other stuff if you’re interested too, have a nice day!
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