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 ;)

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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

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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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