Talking To Yourself Can Be Very Beneficial To Our Mental Health

Talking to yourself is not crazy. In fact, it is just the opposite! An internal conversation with ourselves can be extremely useful when we are carrying out a difficult task or want to remember something important.

People who talk to themselves actually do tend to hide it, as it can be stigmatizing and perhaps a target for anxious stares around them. However, research tells us that it can be very beneficial for our mental health.

Talking to ourselves helps us concentrate, remember, make decisions, and distance ourselves from mental content. This private speech is common, especially in younger children.

When we are young, we never stop learning new things. This learning sometimes forces us to learn on our own to better consolidate the information obtained.

Moreover, if we have to perform a task that we have just learned and in which we are not yet very good, we very often let ourselves be guided by speech to ourselves.

Talking to yourself – a form of training

Talking to ourselves can help us improve our attention, concentration, and achieve success in a difficult task. However, it can also help us with other cognitive and psychological processes. Find out more about it in our today’s article!

The purpose of such a conversation is to modify your internal dialogue to help you cope with a specific situation. In 1969, the psychologist Meichembaum developed a cognitive technique called “self-study training.” Its purpose is to modify a person’s internal dialogue to make it easier for them to cope with a given task, situation or event.

Properly directed self-talk is typically used as therapy when what a person says to himself is disturbing or inappropriate for a specific task or situation.

It can be used in all types of population, from children to adults. The key to success is learning to talk to yourself, loudly or covertly, in order to achieve optimal coping with the task.

Phases of talking to yourself

The procedure consists of various phases. At each stage, a person has to verbalize self-learning that leads to a better execution of that particular step.

• Problem definition : “What do I have to do? I need to know what exactly I have to do.
• Problem Approach : What do I need to do to get this task done? I have to take them into account when I start working. “

• Focusing attention : “I only need to pay attention to what I am doing now and try not to be distracted by anything else.”
• Self – empowerment : “I have to congratulate myself on what I do well.”
• Verbalizations to deal with mistakes : “If I make a mistake, I can try to correct it. If I fail, I’ll try to do better next time. “
• Self-assessment : “I need to see how I’m doing.”
• Self – empowerment : “I have to congratulate myself on having done my job well.”

Self-education training is effective for many mental disorders, such as ADHD, in which the patient has difficulty focusing and staying focused on the target. However, this can benefit the entire population as well, as it increases concentration and thus productivity.

Other processes that improve when you talk to yourself

As we mentioned, talking to ourselves can help us improve our attention, concentration, and achieve success in completing the task. However, it can also help us with other cognitive and psychological processes, such as:

Memory

Talking to ourselves is of great benefit to our memory. Hearing ourselves makes it easier for us to preserve and remember information. Research shows that learning the lesson material aloud helps to keep it in mind. This is because the fact that you hear yourself aloud causes the content to be audibly recorded.

When we need to retrieve this information, we’ll likely hear our inner voice verbalizing it as if it were a cassette tape. Therefore, speaking only out loud on a given topic may be beneficial for students or people preparing a paper, or a speech in front of a wider audience.

Decision-making

Talking to ourselves can help us make decisions about a complex problem. Speaking our thoughts aloud allows us to look at them from different perspectives.

When we verbalize all the available options regarding the circumstances, we can sort the information better, dismiss thoughts that get in the way of making decisions, and then find a solution quickly and efficiently.

Self-enhancement

Designing positive phrases for ourselves and verbalizing them can also be useful for our mental health. It is very important that when we manage to do something that we have planned, we will empower ourselves in this way.

This improves our self-esteem and encourages us to keep challenging ourselves. For example, if you have been preparing for a competitive exam for a long time and finally passed and received the job you want, it is very good to allow yourself to say, for example: you did very well, you deserve it!

Improving social skills

Talking to yourself increases your self-confidence and thus strengthens your social skills. These skills are important because they allow us to relate healthily to our environment.

Therefore, speaking alone in front of a mirror, practicing the tone of voice, what to say, what phrase we choose, etc., is a good test of assertiveness that allows us to gain experience before exposing ourselves to actual action and real interpersonal situations.

Help with pure obsessive-compulsive disorder

Pure Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a disorder that does not have mental or motor compulsions. In these cases, scientists have found that talking to yourself has many benefits.

The fact that the obsession is verbalized several times a day makes the patient get used to his thoughts, and the anxiety decreases. In this sense, talking to yourself is not something “crazy” at all, it is even a valuable therapeutic tool.

Conversation with yourself – a few words of summary

Now you have good reasons to allow yourself to talk to yourself from time to time, without judging yourself and without fear of judgment.

Private conversation with ourselves is beneficial on a psychological level, and practicing it can help us both in everyday cognitive processes and when we suffer from some mental disorders.