Talking To Yourself: A Very Therapeutic Practice

Talking to yourself aloud has little to do with insanity, as well as establishing an internal dialogue to lessen sadness and alleviate worries. Furthermore, few practices are more therapeutic. Because, after all, we all live with ourselves and communicating with our own being is vital, cathartic and emotionally necessary to take care of ourselves as we deserve.

With great accuracy, Aldous Huxley said that there is only a small part of the universe that we can know in depth and improve it, that part is ours and belongs to us: ourselves. However, as curious as it may seem, we don’t always give the attention that this part deserves . We are careless like someone who leaves his personal diary in a drawer, like someone who leaves his house keys in someone else’s pocket.

Also, as psychologists explain, we all make use of self-talk; however, we do it in the worst possible way. An example: Ethan Kross, a well-known scientist in emotional psychology at the University of Michigan, realized that human beings are hopelessly prone to negative self-talk.

He himself realized this one morning while watching his cell phone. Without realizing it, he crossed a crosswalk with a red traffic light. After narrowly dodging a car that was about to run him over, he was surprised to say his own name out loud, berating how stupid he could be.

Most of us do this. When something doesn’t go as we expected or when we make a mistake, it doesn’t take long for that eager voice of conscience to come out telling us how clumsy or useless we are. And it is this persistent negative self-talk that drives us into serious states of helplessness and dangerously rounding the abyss of depression. Let’s avoid this: let’s change the speech.

Talking to yourself, the secret to health

Professor Ethan Kross, mentioned above, conducted a series of experiments at the University of Michigan, with which he concluded something as interesting as it was useful: people who talked to themselves and who began their dialogues by saying their name were more successful in their lives, showed greater personal security and appeared to be happier.

This may seem naive at first glance. However, talking to yourself allows us something we can’t let go of. The brain works much better, its perceptual capacity becomes more skillful, and we also manage our emotional world properly. Therefore, we are not facing any unsupported formula. Self-talk has a clear benefit that has been proven by science, and there are many studies that show us this.

Let’s look at more data in detail.

Dialogue with oneself improves our intellectual capacity

Talking to yourself won’t make us 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 make better decisions, our concentration will be more focused and we will control distractions.

Something as simple as saying to ourselves “Maria, concentrate more and think about what you are going to do with this problem” or “Carlos, you are wasting your time uselessly, calm down and reflect on what is happening” in it will undoubtedly help improve many of our cognitive processes.

Talking to yourself improves self-esteem

Each of us lives in a certain environment and with a number of people that it gets better or worse. However, beyond all this context, we share life with ourselves. Why exclude us from this equation then? Why not go out with ourselves during the day for tea or coffee and talk about how things are going?

No one will call us crazy, and those who do will certainly miss out on one of the best techniques for self-help and personal growth. Here are some small samples of this:

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

• Self- talk is also a powerful source of motivation, the most sincere, the most reliable and the one that must never fail. So, even in the most adverse of situations, nothing can be more energetic than saying to yourself “Go ahead, Angela, you’re having a hard time, but you can’t give up now, let’s go”
• On the other hand, something that is also explained to us in a publication in the “Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology” is that, by speaking out loud, we activate a “switch” in the cerebral cortex, where the consciousness of the “I” is based. In this way, we develop better psychological control to think more clearly and more efficiently.
• Likewise, by making room for that calmer, more assured inner voice, we gain perspective and relativize negative and persistent thoughts.

In conclusion, something to keep in mind about the benefits of talking to yourself is that this will only be possible if we are able to control the negative self-talk in the first place. The one that little by little whispers to us that “no matter how hard you try it will go wrong” or that “you were wrong again, it is clear that you have no solution”.

Let’s avoid this. After all, there is nothing worse than becoming our worst enemies. Let us recall, 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 good that she is and let’s talk to her in a positive, constructive and affectionate way.