Talking To Yourself: A Good Therapeutic Exercise

Talking out loud to yourself has little to do with insanity, as is having an inner dialogue to allay sadness and lessen worry. In addition, there are few exercises that are more therapeutic, because we all live with ourselves in the end. Communicating with our own being is something vital, purifying and emotionally necessary to take care of ourselves as we deserve.

Aldous Huxley said very aptly that there is only a small part of the universe that we can thoroughly know and improve upon, and that part is ours, that which is ours: ourselves. But as strange as it may seem, we don’t always give it the attention it deserves. We neglect ourselves as someone who leaves their personal journal in a drawer, or like someone who puts their house keys in someone else’s pocket.

Psychologists also explain to us that we all use inner dialogues, but we do it in the worst possible way. For example, Ethan Kross, a renowned scientist in the field of emotional psychology at the University of Michigan, realized that humans are irretrievably sensitive to negative self-talk.

He experienced it himself one morning when he was completely absorbed in his cell phone. Without realizing it, he crossed a crosswalk with a red light. After barely dodging a car that was about to run over him, he surprised himself by saying his own name out loud and blaming himself for being so stupid.

We almost all do this. When something doesn’t go the way we expected or we make a mistake, it won’t be long before we hear that eager voice of consciousness telling us how clumsy or useless we are. And it is this ongoing negative inner dialogue that leads us into a state of defenselessness and into the dangerous abyss of depression. Let’s avoid that, let’s change course .

Talking to yourself, key to well-being

The aforementioned professor Ethan Kross conducted a series of experiments at the University of Michigan, where he concluded something that was both interesting and useful: People who talked to themselves and who started their self-talk by calling their name were more successful in life, they showed greater self-confidence and they seemed happier.

It may seem a little naive at first glance. But talking to yourself gives you something you can’t ignore: your brain works a lot better, your perception is more alert and you can control your emotional world in a good way. That’s why we’re definitely not talking about something that just came out of the sleeve. Indeed, having inner dialogues clearly benefits, fact that is backed up by science, with many studies proving this.

Let’s get into it a little more.

A conversation with yourself improves your intellectual capacity

Talking to yourself won’t make you smarter overnight. What will happen is that you will improve your intellectual capacity, that is, you will increase your attention and your ability to reflect, you will be able to make better choices, you will be able to concentrate better and you will be less likely to be distracted.

Something as simple as saying to ourselves, ‘ Let’s see, Maria, concentrate better and think what you’re going to do with this problem…’  or ‘ Carlos, you’re wasting your time, calm yourself down and think hard. about what is happening’ , will undoubtedly help us to improve many of our cognitive processes.

Talking to yourself improves your confidence

Each of us lives in a certain environment and with different people with whom he gets along more or less well. But outside that context, we ourselves are the ones we really share life with. Then why should we exclude ourselves? Why not meet with ourselves every day to have a cup of tea or coffee and talk about how things are going?

No one will call us crazy, and those who do are definitely missing out on one of the best self-help and personal growth techniques out there. Here are some small examples.

• Talking to yourself allows you to “focus on the present and on your feelings at the moment.” You will become aware of them, you will understand and control them better.
• Self-talk is also a powerful source of motivation, the most sincere, the most reliable, and the one that should never let us down. So even in the most difficult situations, nothing can give us more energy than saying to ourselves ‘Come on Angela, you’re having a hard time but you can’t give up now, go for it’.

• On the other hand, something that is also explained in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology is that by talking out loud we switch a switch in our cerebral cortex, where the consciousness of our ‘I’ is located. In this way we develop better psychological control to be able to think more clearly and efficiently.
• In the same way, by giving way to that calm and safe inner voice, we gain perspective and can put negative recurring thoughts into perspective.

Finally, something that should be clear about the benefits of talking to yourself is that they only exist if you are first able to control your negative inner self-talk. Because every now and then a little voice whispers ‘Whatever you do, it won’t go well’ or ‘You made a mistake again, it’s clear you can’t do it’.

Let’s avoid this. After all, there is nothing worse than becoming our own worst enemy. For example, consider the way Socrates defined our thoughts: “It is an honest conversation that the soul has with itself.” So let’s not mistreat our self-talks, let’s take care of them as a precious thing, and let’s deal with them in a positive, constructive, and sensitive way.