Talking To Oneself: A Very Therapeutic Practice

Talking to oneself out loud has a little bit of madness, as does establishing an internal dialogue where you can break down sadness and blur concerns. Moreover, few practices are more therapeutic, because after all we all live with ourselves, and communicating with our own being is something vital, something cathartic and emotionally necessary to take care of ourselves as we deserve.

With great success, Aldous Huxley said that there is only a small part of the universe that we can know in depth and improve it, and that part is ours, which belongs to us: ourselves. However, curious as it may seem, we do not always give it the attention it deserves. We neglect ourselves like someone who leaves their personal diary in a drawer, like someone who leaves the house keys in someone else’s pockets.

What’s more, as psychologists explain to us, all of us make use of internal dialogue; however, we do it in the worst possible way. An example, Ethan Kross, a well-known scientist of emotional psychology at the University of Michigan realized that the human being is hopelessly prone to negative self-talk.

He himself perceived it when one morning while he was looking at his mobile phone. Inadvertently, he crossed a zebra crossing with a red light. After barely dodging a car that was about to run over him, he found himself saying his own name out loud and berating himself for how stupid he could be.

Most of us do. When something does not go as expected or we make a mistake, it does not take long for that avid voice of conscience to come out telling us how clumsy or useless we are. And it is that, that persistent negative internal dialogue that leads us to serious states of helplessness and dangerously bordering the abyss of depression. Let’s avoid it, let’s change the discourse.

Talking to oneself, the key to health

Professor Ethan Kross, cited above, carried out a series of experiments at the University of Michigan where he concluded with something as interesting as it was useful: people who spoke to themselves and who began their dialogues by saying their name were more successful in their lives, they showed greater personal security and perceived themselves as happier.

It may seem naive at first glance. However, talking to oneself allows us something that we cannot ignore: the brain works much better, its perception capacity is more skillful and we also manage our emotional world properly. Therefore, we are not facing any formula taken from the sleeve,.

Let’s see more data in detail.

Dialogue with oneself improves our intellectual capacity

Talking to yourself won’t make you smarter overnight. What will happen is that we will improve our intellectual capacity, that is, we will enhance our attention, our capacity for reflection, we will decide better, our concentration will be more focused and we will control distractions.

Something as simple as saying to ourselves that of “Let’s see María, focus more and think what you are going to do about this problem …” or “Carlos, you are wasting your time uselessly, calm down and reflect on what is happening”, it  will help us undoubtedly to improve many of our cognitive processes.

Talking to yourself improves self-esteem

Each of us lives in a certain environment and with a series of people with whom we get along better or worse. However, beyond all that context, with whom we really share life is with ourselves. So why exclude ourselves from that equation? Why not meet yourself throughout the day for tea or coffee and talk about how things are going? 

No one will call us crazy, and whoever does it will surely miss one of the best techniques for self-help and personal growth. These are a few small samples of it.

• Talking to oneself allows us to “focus on the present moment with present emotions” to become aware of them, understand them, manage them.

• Internal dialogue is also a powerful source of motivation, the most sincere, the most reliable, and the one that should never fail us. Thus, and even in the most adverse situations, nothing can be more energetic than saying to ourselves that “go ahead, Angela, you’re having a hard time but you can’t give up now, let’s go there”.
• On the other hand, something that is also explained to us in a publication of the ” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology” is that when we speak aloud we activate a “switch” in the cerebral cortex, the one where the consciousness of “I” is based. In this way, we develop better psychological control to think more clearly and more efficiently.
• Likewise, by giving way to that calmer and more confident inner voice, we gain perspective and relativize negative and ruminant thoughts.

To conclude, something that should be clear about the benefits of talking to oneself is that these will only be possible if we are first able to control the negative internal conversation. The one that every little bit whispers to us that “whatever you do, everything will go wrong” or that “you have made a mistake once again, it is clear that you have no remedy.”

Let’s avoid it. After all, there is nothing worse than becoming our own worst enemies. Let us remember, for example, the way in which Socrates defined thoughts: “they are an honest conversation that the soul has with itself”. So let’s try not to mistreat her, let’s take care of her as the precious asset that she is and talk to her in a positive, constructive and affective way.