The Case for Talking to Yourself
There’s a well-known stigma attached to mental illness. There can be a shame in talking about, for example, your anxiety disorder, that would never be attached to a physical ailment. In the hope of helping to open the door to talking more openly not only about mental illness, but also mental health, we asked independent journalist Sara Coughlin to tells us about her favorite method of keeping it together.
I have a minimum of eight browser tabs open at any given time. I’m active in multiple group chats. I get a non-stop stream of news notifications, even though my blood pressure spikes every time I get one. As hard as I try to dial this all down, I remain woefully online. Moments of quiet and focus are in short supply. Luckily, I know just the thing to create these moments: talking to myself. And I mean actually speaking out loud — sometimes in full sentences, sometimes in quick asides — to no one but myself.
A quick remark about the weather helps me get dressed. Reciting my grocery list under my breath gets me up and out of the house faster. This is how I’ve always imbued my life with a sense of order, even as a screen-free child of the 90s: I would narrate my every move, whether I was running errands with my mother or going to ballet class. It may have looked and sounded odd, but I found that my own voice cut through the anxious noise in my head. And nowadays it seems to be the only thing that can pull away from all those screens sucking at my my attention.
“A form of thinking”
This habit may seem embarrassing, but talking to yourself is good for you, according to both psychotherapist Matt Lundquist, and psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School instructor Ash Nadkarni. “Talking aloud to oneself is a form of thinking, and one that seems to exaggerate the effects of focused, intentioned thinking,” Lundquist explains. Dr. Nadkarni notes that talking to oneself “serves the dual purposes of stimulating attention and mood,” while also bolstering your sense of initiative.
Research also suggests that “instructional self-talk,” in which someone verbally guides themselves through their actions, can increase focus and memory. Dr. Nadkarni: “Instructional self-talk can assist someone in retaining recall of information or facts, task management, and organization.” Suddenly, my need to read my shopping list aloud makes more sense. Doing so helps me maintain a clear understanding of the steps involved in completing whatever task is at hand.
Another study found that saying the name of an object out loud makes it easier to locate and remember. “At any given moment we are sorting through and filtering out much more data than we realize, both internally in the form of thoughts and sensations, and externally in the form of sights and sounds and people,” Lundquist says. “Saying something aloud brings it into our primary consciousness and helps keep it there.” I’d very much like to chalk up my need to note the weather — and the fact that I’ll need an umbrella — to this connection between speech and object recall, even if I wind up forgetting said umbrella.
Self-talk and depression
Meanwhile, “motivational self-talk,” where the speaker makes self-validating statements out loud, has a positive impact on your emotions, Dr. Nadkarni says, as it can “serve as a coping mechanism in stress management, or boost one’s mood.” To that end, I work from home, often by myself, during which it can be difficult not to get stuck overthinking every minor concern that comes to mind. So, the fact that I do most of self-talk during these periods might reflect my need to relax, diffuse my internal worries, and generally feel less stressed out. Or, as Dr. Nadkarni puts it: “Because people have a tendency to engage in self-talk when they’re alone, it could certainly assist in maintaining one’s mood when one is more isolated.” She adds that talking to oneself can actually be a self-soothing technique which should, in turn, help you maintain concentration and feel more at ease.
That brings us to the one downside to self-talk — one which has made me realize I may need to adjust the not-so-nice things I say after making a mistake. “An important concern about self-talk is when it’s negative,” Dr. Nadkarni says, explaining that negative self-talk isn’t just a hindrance to healthy self-esteem but could also be a feature of depression. Lundquist echoes this concern, especially if that negativity is expressed in a flat-out angry or violent manner. In general, negative self-talk should be countered (or, even better, replaced) with a sense of humor and the aforementioned motivational language. Because, Dr. Nadkarni explains, “motivational self-talk could help someone overcome inertia around an activity.”
Overall, Dr. Nadkarni is curious and optimistic about where the research on self-talk is headed: “Further research in what role it could play in therapeutic interventions for cognitive or mood disorders would be helpful.” While that remains to be seen, it seems safe to suggest that, as our workdays feel busier, our screens get brighter, and our collective anxiety around the state of the world reaches a peak, there’s no reason not to talk to yourself every now and then, if it helps you maintain something resembling mental clarity, if not peace of mind. I, for one, certainly don’t plan to stop narrating my bedtime routine.
Sara Coughlin is writer living in Brooklyn, NY.
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