Is talking to myself a sign of mental illness

Why Do People Talk to Themselves? The Impacts of Self-Talk

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

Why People Talk to Themselves

It’s more common for people to talk to themselves than to not. According to one study, 96% of adults say they have an internal dialogue. While self-talk out loud is less common, 25% of the adults say they do it.

Many people talk to themselves in everyday situations. There’s a stigma around talking to yourself out loud in public, but doing it can help you understand the world around you. When you talk to yourself you’re intentionally taking in your surroundings.

Inner dialogue usually sounds similar to the way you would speak to others. This kind of self-talk can occur quietly inside your head or be spoken out loud. Either way, it’s a passive activity – simply listening to your own thoughts.

Another type of internal self-talk happens when you’re debating something with yourself – not just listening to your thoughts. Some people feel their inner dialogue come from a specific place in their body. This could be in their chest or certain parts of their head.

Self-Talk and Mental Health

When people talk to themselves, they may be working problems out in their minds and speaking them out loud. This is also known as “self-explaining.” Talking out loud helps people work through their thoughts.

This is a healthy problem-solving tactic. There have been studies that show when people talk through what they’ve just experienced, they’re more likely to learn from it and understand it.‌

Self-talk refers to the way that you talk to yourself, whether positively or negatively. Positive self-talk can help you hype yourself up and feel confident before a situation. When you talk to yourself this way you’re able to motivate yourself and pay more attention to your thoughts.

The mental and social benefits of self-talk have long been debated by philosophers. Self-talk can help you make decisions more easily and motivate you to do things you may be putting off. Keeping a positive outlook and talking to yourself kindly can have great impacts on your overall mental health.

Mental Health Conditions

There are some cases where talking to yourself can be a sign of a mental health condition. Muttering and speaking random sentences out loud could be a sign of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia affects many people worldwide. It’s more common in young people when they’re going through major transitions in their life.

Schizophrenia is more common than Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. It can affect men in their mid-20s and women a bit later in life. Schizophrenia in children is rare.

This condition doesn’t have an exact cause, but certain things make someone more prone to developing it. These could include brain chemical balance, genetic causes, and environmental issues. Drugs could also play a part.

One of the main symptoms of schizophrenia is disordered thoughts. Your thoughts may feel blocked or jumbled. When you speak them out loud they may not have a logical order. When you talk to yourself you might make up new words, repeat single words or phrases with no context, or give new meanings to words.

If caught early, schizophrenia can be treated and managed.

Is talking to yourself normal? What it means for mental health

Researchers have widely studied the act of talking to yourself, concluding it is a common and normal behavior. People refer to talking to yourself as self-talk or self-directed talk.

Although people often associate self-talk with mental health issues, healthcare professionals consider it normal at all ages and even beneficial in some circumstances.

In this article, we explore why a person might self-talk. We will also look at its benefits and when it may indicate a mental health condition.

Researchers have been studying self-talk for a long time. In the 1880s, scientists were particularly interested in what people say to themselves, why they talk to themselves, and the purposes of self-talk.

Research defines self-talk as a verbal expression of an internal position or belief, meaning it expresses inner feelings, non-verbal thoughts, and intuitions about a situation through speech. The person only intends to direct their speech at themselves.

While children often talk to themselves, it should not be a cause for concern for parents or caregivers. It is a way of developing language, staying stimulated during a task, and improving performance while completing tasks.

The habit of self-talk may continue into adulthood and is generally not a problem.

Self-talk may have several benefits. It causes no significant health risks unless a person also experiences other symptoms of a mental health condition, such as hallucinations.

While performing a task with a set of instructions, self-talk may improve control over the task, concentration, and performance. It may also enhance problem-solving skills.

A 2012 study examined how self-talk affects visual search tasks. The findings suggest that self-talk while looking for a particular object, such as a lost item of clothing or set of keys, or trying to find products in a grocery store, may help a person find them sooner.

Research also suggests there could be benefits to engaging in self-talk during sport, depending on how the person self-talks and what they say.

For example, self-talking in a motivational or instructional way could improve performance. However, although negative self-talk may increase motivation in sport, it may not improve performance.

There are three categories of self-talk that differ depending on the tone of voice. These include:

Positive self-talk: Encourages and reinforces positive beliefs about a person. Engaging in positive self-talk may decrease anxiety and improve concentration and focus.
Negative self-talk: Usually involves critical and discouraging dialog.
Neutral self-talk: This type of self-talk is not significantly positive or negative. People may use it to give instructions themselves rather than reinforcing or encouraging a particular belief or emotion.

People may also refer to talking to yourself as overt and covert self-talk. Overt talk is self-directed speech that other people can hear. Covert talk is speech that occurs internally that no-one else can hear, for example, by mouthing speech rather than speaking out loud.

There are several reasons why a person might self-talk, including:

Regulating emotions

Self-talk may help regulate and process emotions. For example, if a person self-talks about feeling nervous or angry, it could help them by:

directing their focus to improve their nerves or anger
controlling their emotions
thinking about how to respond to their feelings at that moment

Reducing anxiety

A 2014 study suggests that people with anxiety, including social anxiety, could benefit from engaging in self-talk.

The researchers found that people referring to themselves in the third-person could distance themselves from their distressing feelings and process, regulate, and analyze these emotions to help reduce anxiety. Engaging in self-talk may also decrease anxiety after stressful events.

If self-talk interferes with a person’s life, there are ways to reduce this behavior.

Writing down self-talk in a journal may help a person transfer thoughts from their mind, organize thought processes, and manage stress and anxiety.

Maintaining a journal can help people identify everyday situations that cause them to self-talk and become more aware of what could trigger these scenarios in the future.

Practicing the shifting of self-talk to internal thoughts when they occur or mouthing speech instead of vocalizing it may also reduce self-talking.

People may find their self-talk affects their mental health if they are negative and self-criticize when they talk to themselves.

In these situations, they should speak with a mental health professional to find ways to improve self-esteem and adjust self-talk to focus on being more positive and encouraging.

Schizophrenia

If a person self-talks as part of a hallucination, they should seek help from a healthcare professional. Self-talk and hallucinations may indicate a mental health condition, such as schizophrenia.

A person with schizophrenia may experience changes in their behavior and thoughts, such as hallucinations or delusions. Hallucinations cause a person to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel things that are not part of the world around them and are only present in their mind.

Hearing voices and responding to them is a common hallucination in schizophrenia. These voices and sensations seem real to the person experiencing them. Healthcare providers state that the brain reacts to these voices in the same way as if they were engaging in a conversation with a real person.

People with schizophrenia may also withdraw from the world, losing interest in everyday interactions with friends and family and finding it hard to express emotions.

For most people, talking to yourself is a normal behavior that is not a symptom of a mental health condition.

Self-talk may have some benefits, especially in improving performance in visual search tasks. It can also aid understanding in longer tasks requiring following instructions.

Self-talk is not a harmful act to engage with, and parents or caregivers with children who often talk to themselves should not be worried.

It is natural for a person to have an internal monologue while engaging with tasks and processing thoughts and emotions. They may choose to verbalize this inner monologue, which is common.

Why it's okay to talk to yourself and how this habit can make you more effective

Everyone does it: they do an internal monologue. It is part of the constant stream of consciousness that cannot be absent when we are awake. How to learn to talk to yourself correctly, our friends from the Reminder project tell.

“Okay, romantic moment, tell her something. Tell me how you crushed a pony. No, she likes ponies, I guess... Ask how long ago she had tests. What the hell is in my head? Lord, what a huge leg she has, tell her about it. No, don't talk, shut up! So, the pause dragged on, we must at least say something. Approximately such internal monologues were scrolled in the head by the protagonist of "Clinic", one of the most believable medical series.

Like him, many talk to themselves or hear an inner voice—when they are alone in a car, when they get bored in line, when they try to sleep, and so on. I sometimes talk to myself out loud - most often these are sarcastic comments if I did something ridiculous, or voicing what I should do, for example: "Now I'll do the dishes, and then I have to get dressed and go to the store." Sometimes all this makes you wonder: is it okay to talk to yourself if we invented speech to communicate with others?

It's embarrassing for many to admit it, but talking to yourself is completely normal and very common, says psychotherapist Laura Dabney. This is not something you “need to grow out of” and certainly not a sign of psychological problems. Moreover, psychiatrists call internal (or voiced) monologues a healthy practice. Firstly, they can be a way to get rid of negative emotions, such as fear, nervousness, anger or guilt. And secondly, they help organize thoughts, plan actions and consolidate memory.

The “inner voice” has been studied since the beginning of psychology. The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky made the observation that young children begin to talk to themselves at the same time that they learn to talk to others, and first they do it out loud and then to themselves. Such behavior - an internal monologue that sometimes breaks into speech - we retain for life.

Over the past few decades, we have learned that when talking to yourself, a person makes the smallest movements with the muscles of the larynx, and Broca's center is activated in the brain - the area responsible for the motor organization of speech. If the work of Broca's center is disturbed, the ability to conduct an internal monologue is also violated. That is, the same tools in the brain are used for internal conversation and articulated speech.

Another confirmation of this is the operation of the efferent copy mechanism. This is a signal that helps the body to distinguish the processes that we cause ourselves from external stimuli. A prime example is tickling: if we try to tickle ourselves, the brain “predicts” that the touch is due to our own movements, and the tickling sensation is extinguished.

The same signal operates when we talk to ourselves. Experiments have shown that the brain "mutes" the effect of other external sounds when we speak aloud.

Another interesting experiment found that the inner voice seems to help us to cope better with everyday tasks. Animals performing tasks to correlate two stimuli (the so-called matching tasks - tasks when the subject is shown an object and then asked to choose the same one from those in front of it) activate different parts of the brain depending on whether the stimulus was visual or auditory . We, humans, “turn on” several areas of the brain, regardless of the stimulus perception system.

But if a person is asked to mumble some meaningless word under his breath, for example, "blah blah blah" - and therefore deprive him of the opportunity to use his inner voice - he will behave (in a sense) as animal. That is, when performing tasks with visual or auditory stimuli, zones in his brain are activated that are responsible for either vision or hearing.

Interestingly, speaking thoughts out loud may have a different effect than speaking them silently. In one small experiment, psychologists at Bangor University in the UK asked one group of volunteers to read instructions for a task to themselves while another group read aloud. Those who read the instructions aloud performed better than the participants who sat in silence.

This is why it is not surprising that many people use self-talk to get things done. For example, this is what athletes do (very often tennis players), who, at critical moments, cheer themselves up with motivating (“Come on, you can!”) Or instructing phrases.

Unfortunately, although the inner voice can help us control our behavior and improve our results, it can be a problem. For example, it can interfere with sleep just when it is needed. And self-digging, rumination (constant scrolling in the head of the same thought) and negative words about oneself are associated with the development of depression. In addition, people suffering from depression cannot stop the flow of thoughts in their head, even when they need to focus on something else.

It turns out that, on the one hand, we need conversations with ourselves, and on the other hand, the ability to use them to our advantage is important here, that is, to get rid of useless thoughts and include those related to current tasks. It takes time to learn how to do this, but the goal is quite achievable. Here are some tips that psychologists give. More precisely, not even advice, but ideas that should be remembered.

Talking to yourself is normal. The internal monologue is part of a constant stream of consciousness that cannot be absent when we are awake. According to some estimates, the speed of internal speech is up to 4000 words per minute, 10 times faster than oral speech. If a person really has serious psychological disorders, for example, schizophrenia, he can also talk to himself, but there is a difference: he is talking with voices that he perceives as outsiders, while in a normal internal monologue we know for sure that the author is this is us.
Negative self-talk is also normal, but up to certain limits. Usually psychologists call to get rid of negativity in conversations with oneself, to eradicate thoughts like “I can’t do it”, “I don’t deserve this”, and so on. But some experts point out that in principle there is nothing wrong with thoughts with a negative coloring, because evolution taught us to do so. “Two-thirds of our daily thoughts are negative,” says Sherry Benton, a former professor emeritus at the University of Florida. “They warn us of danger, help us analyze past actions, and help us understand who we are. All this gave us a chance to survive when we were hunters and gatherers. If 1/3 of the internal dialogue can be called positive and self-affirming, then you are doing a great job.
However, an excessive amount of self-criticism and reproaches in the internal monologue is an alarming sign. The internal narrative is connected with emotions, and if it is gloomy, it can lead to anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.
The internal monologue will be useful if it is neutral. If he relies on facts, if mistakes are perceived not as a disaster, but as something that can be avoided next time, if the feeling of guilt for small misconduct passes relatively quickly. This is not the same as positive thinking. It is better to replace negative phrases in a conversation with yourself not with positive statements, but with neutral and “applied” ones. For example, pronouncing immediate plans or instructions on how best to do this or that job.
Self-talk should not be avoided; on the contrary, it can be made into a good habit. They can become a kind of mindfulness technique if you chat with yourself after a stressful event or on the eve of an important day.

In summary: if you learn to talk to yourself correctly, this process does not distract you from business, but, on the contrary, stimulates cognitive activity and efficiency in general. The one who mumbles something under his breath is not necessarily a mad scientist: he may be a genius, using all resources to optimize the functioning of the brain.

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Schizophrenia self-talk. If a person talks to himself: signs of psychosis

According to research by psychologists, it turns out that people talk to themselves about 70% of the time. The conversation is conducted with an inner voice, that is, with oneself. We ask him questions, consult him, ask him to evaluate our actions...

At present, psychologists all over the world say that such a conversation is only for the benefit of a person. It helps to prevent many mistakes in actions, concentrates attention and frees us from excessive internal stress. Let's look at the reasons for this phenomenon. Why do we sometimes talk to ourselves and why is such an internal dialogue useful?

Reasons for talking to yourself

The first

People who are uncertain receive from such a conversation, first of all, the opportunity to concentrate. And this, in due time, gives them confidence in the correctness of the choice of their actions. It turns out that self-talk helps them plan and control their actions.

Second

People with predominantly auditory body language tend to talk to themselves more often. They learn information through sounds. Research by scientists has shown that about 25% of people belong to this type.

Audials can often talk to themselves a lot. They absorb information better by ear. For them, a verbal explanation of a particular action or process is of great importance. They listen more. Therefore, it is important for them to have such a dialogue with themselves.

Third

Talking to oneself (in other words, sounds) gives a person an emotional coloring to his thoughts. This helps him find the right justification for his actions and deeds. In silence, we do not experience such emotions. After all, sound (speech) is initially an emotional reaction of the human body, which prompts to perform certain actions.

Fourth

Talking to yourself, a person is freed from the emotions that are overwhelmed at the moment. They need to be discharged, to go outside. And in this case, it comes at the expense of self-talk. Thus, we get rid of excess emotions and significantly reduce our internal stress, otherwise it can happen.

Fifth

Self-talk has a significant impact on the structure of human thinking. A person begins to think and behave differently than when there would be no such conversation with himself. The process of thinking becomes much more efficient if our thoughts are spoken out loud. This has long been confirmed by psychologists in their studies. It is better remembered when we say something out loud.

Sixth

Psychologists have proven that dialogue with oneself, even mentally, helps a person avoid ill-considered actions and better control his own sometimes impulsive behavior. It has been experimentally revealed that the number of such actions decreases sharply if a person has spoken to himself before. The control over unpredictable human behavior also increases markedly. It has also been proven that if you say out loud the details of some new business, then it is better remembered and mastered faster.

What to do if you notice that you often talk to yourself?

If such a dialogue helps you make the right decisions and actions, then do not try to get rid of it. You can just make some adjustments to this situation.

First:

Try not to do it so loudly so as not to attract people around you. This will save you from embarrassing situations.

Second:

Get ready when you go anywhere.

When you go to the store, you can make a list of necessary items that you need to buy. When leaving - calculate the time of leaving the house. Think through every detail before leaving their home. Check the apartment again. So that everything is turned off and nothing is forgotten with you from things. Thus, you partially save yourself from talking to yourself. Thoughtful preparation will also give confidence in your further actions, and you will say less what you want to remember or doubt something.

Sometimes people talk to themselves. Most often, this is a sign of loneliness when you want to talk, but have no one to talk to. For such people, it is recommended to have a pet. You can calmly talk to him out loud, it's even funny. Sometimes children talk aloud, often during the game. In this case, they are trying to voice their role, they lack attention. Perhaps such a child needs to play with peers more often so that he does not get used to speaking for himself and for the doll.

If people talk to themselves out loud, then they often lack people's attention. In this situation, it is necessary to expand the circle of contacts, go out more often, communicate with people. Start a business, a hobby, you do not need to close in on yourself. You can try to look for friends on the Internet, this also helps.

Why else does a person talk to himself out loud?

Also, due to the abundance of information that the brain receives during work, many begin to pronounce numbers or words so as not to get confused. This speaks of the special attentiveness of a person, his fear of making a mistake. Of course, this cannot be called a pathology. It may look weird, but it's not scary. Some call such things still egocentric appeal, that is, words to themselves. It can also be like an overlay of loneliness.

Mental illnesses

However, in addition to the usual pronunciation of the text or dialogues in a voice, many have real disputes with the absent surrounding. Sometimes the conversation looks quite aggressive. This indicates a person's mental illness, some of them are congenital.

What pathologies are:

Psychopathy;
Schizophrenia;
Split personality and others.

Bifurcation of the human personality - a diagnosis, it can be obtained as a result of experienced mental traumas, often they come from childhood. Sexual or physical influences affect the behavior of an adult later. It seems to him that he develops several personalities, and of different sexes. There may be about a dozen of them. He can experience not only depression, but also try to harm himself. Many people suffer from schizophrenia. They are quite adequate until they start talking to themselves. Often creative people suffer from schizophrenia, it is like withdrawing into oneself from the stresses of the world around.

Do not make a diagnosis yourself, see a doctor

These diseases are already being treated by a psychiatrist, but in any case, you need to examine a person, and not make an unfounded diagnosis. If a person has experienced severe stress, has been in a state of loneliness for a long time, likes to think out loud, then he will often behave strangely. That is why the reasons why people talk to themselves can be different, and pathology is not always the case. However, if the family had schizophrenia, it must be borne in mind that the disease is often inherited and, under certain circumstances, may well recur.

Finding out why people talk to themselves is not difficult, you just need to contact a specialist, and he will name the reason in each case.

If a person talks to himself aloud, is the person diagnosed with a mental illness or is this behavior normal? It all depends on the characteristics of these "conversations", their frequency and the presence of other symptoms.

As you know, all people, without exception, conduct internal dialogues. This is completely normal, because the thought processes proceed in this way. Sometimes pieces of internal conversations “break out” and there is nothing wrong with that either. For example, a person thought about something for a long time, looked for answers to some questions, and finally found it. Joy on this occasion overwhelms him, and he shouts something like “hurray”, “well done”, etc. This happens to everyone from time to time.

Some people babble along with difficult work, saying certain things aloud so as not to "lose" sight or get confused. If at the same time they are aware that they are talking to themselves, then there can be no talk of any mental illness. Just a harmless personality trait.

But there are other cases. For example, a person in all seriousness talks with someone visible only to him - with some non-existent interlocutor. He asks questions and "hears" the answers to them, reacting accordingly. Or just monologue, addressing someone who is not really around.

Or a person, as it were, plays several

roles, changing his voice, intonation, facial expression. That is, it splits into two and arranges a “one-actor theater”, without realizing it, but sincerely believing that there are two or even three of them. This and the previous case is no longer the norm. Most likely we are talking about a mental illness called schizophrenia.

This term is of Greek origin and translates as division of the mind. "Shizo" - I split, "freno" - mind, soul. The disease is a loss of human contact with reality, the loss of harmony of thinking, which naturally affects behavior. Hallucinations are one of the main symptoms of schizophrenia. Here they are, in fact, become the cause of conversations with oneself.

The person may think that he sees someone or just hears voices. Often the latter are command and order the patient to do something. As a result, a person suffering from schizophrenia can commit the most terrible acts - up to murder or suicide. In order to recognize the disease in time and protect a person from danger, relatives should be attentive to the slightest manifestations of the disease. And regular self-talk is one of them.

Thus, thinking aloud can be both a variant of the norm and a symptom of mental pathology. If a person talks to himself sometimes and is aware of this, then there is no need to worry. If there are conversations with someone who is not actually around, you should consult a doctor.

Talking to oneself is an adequate phenomenon if it looks like a monologue inside oneself. In addition, the norm is a conversation with oneself out loud, if such a monologue helps to coordinate one's own actions, helps to cope with emotions. The inner voice is an important assistant, it gives a chance to put thoughts in order, plan actions, look for things.

Scientists are sure that a person talks to himself 70% of the time. If a person tells himself something out loud, then this is evidence of an encounter with an unusual task or a search for things.

Conducting an experiment. Helping the Inner Dialogue

The researchers set out to conduct an experiment to find out how a monologue helps to find lost things. Volunteers were divided into 2 parts. One group was looking for a thing, thinking aloud, and the other - silently.

The results were surprising. The first group found what was lost sooner than the second. This study proves that internal conversation helps to better perceive and understand the data of the brain.

Where does a systematic conversation with oneself come from, why does the voice inside us have such a voice? Like other factors in the formation of personality, it is formed at an early age. It is upbringing that influences our consciousness and internal dialogues. If you constantly hear insults addressed to you that characterize you as a lazy clumsy, then the voice inside will only express insults. Such children become pessimistic, aggressive or apathetic.

Talking to yourself will help you find a lost item, sort out a difficult problem, and make the right choice.

If such a mistake was made by the parents, do not fall into despair. Everyone can help themselves. If you work on yourself, then sooner or later you will hear an exclamation inside: "I'm done." Researchers express an opinion about the primary inner voice. In 70% of cases, the inner “person” is the one who brings criticism and negativity in life. For a positive result, try to change it, to subordinate it to yourself. Present all reproaches as a cute animal or an overly pretentious person. If you focus on the manner of speaking inside, then this will distract from the essence of the phrases, they will not offend your personality so much.

Then learn if he is a hindrance. It's hard, but training will make the task easier: focus on several points at once, try to keep 3 things in your field of vision, perceive 3 sounds around. Such workload will “muffle” the conversation inside.

If your inner "inhabitant" loves you, then he helps in the fulfillment of plans. And turning it off often helps not only in relationships (a voice talking about problems and past failures often spoils romance and intimacy), but also at work.

Remember, talking to yourself should support a person in everything, not induce panic, not distract from important thoughts and moments.

Talking to yourself. Signs of psychosis

If a person talks to himself and does not wait for an answer, then this often turns out to be an early sign of psychosis - schizophrenia. If you just mumble something - this is not always a sign of such a disease. But laughter and long conversations, combined with other deviations in behavior (isolation, hallucinations) require an immediate consultation with a doctor.

Self-talk as a mental disorder is easy to distinguish. A person in such a state is disconnected from everything, he is not interested in communication with other people.

The most typical symptom of psychoses is hallucinations. This is a misperception of reality in one of the sensory categories. In this case, there are no external stimuli in life, but a person hears, sees or feels something. Such phenomena appear in the moment between awakening and sleep, in an unconscious state, in delirium tremens, with severe exhaustion. Another reason is hypnosis. Most often, hallucinations are visual.

Clear hallucinations are a symptom of schizophrenia. With one of the varieties of this disease, people are sure that they hear orders from an inner voice or a voice from outside, they obey, defend themselves, or commit suicide.

But, contrary to popular opinion, one should not assume that schizophrenia is the same as personality disorders in the form of a split, when a person also talks to himself.

PHOTOS Getty Images

Every one of us talks to himself at some point. Strain your imagination and you will hear a muffled chorus of whisperers praising or scourging themselves. There is an opinion that thinking as such is a form of self-talk, says columnist Sarah Sloat. In short, we get to know ourselves the same way we get to know other people—through dialogue.

Self-talk is defined by self-talk psychologist James Hardy: ".

Some psychologists believe that our "I" consists of two parts: one of them controls our mind and perception, and the other simply acts. Self-talk can be a bridge between these two parts.

These conversations can be extremely helpful or harmful, depending on how you approach it. Everyone has these conversations in their own way, but here are three tricks that can turn them into a useful exercise.

You, not me

Whether you refer to yourself as "you" or as "I" matters. It is better to refer to yourself using the pronoun not of the first, but of the second person, that is, to call yourself “you” and, moreover, by name. By changing how we refer to ourselves in this way, we can better regulate our behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Saying “you” to ourselves or calling ourselves by name, we create the necessary psychological distance that allows us to talk about what is happening to us, as if a little from the outside. It can also reduce stress in people with social anxiety and help you calm down when you're thinking about things after the fact.

Be gentle with yourself

Dialogue with yourself creates space for reflection, but it is not always good for us. The best option is to cheer yourself up. Trying to motivate yourself, for example, has been proven to help athletes maintain their energy levels and improve endurance. Positive self-talk improves our mood and emotionally supports us. Conversely, talking to yourself in a critical way has been shown to lower self-esteem and increase the likelihood of repeating the same conversations in the future. Psychologists say that a person is able to choose how to think, and this largely depends on how we talk to ourselves. Therefore, it is important for your well-being that you at least talk kindly to yourself.

Use in emergency situations

The inner voice helps us control our impulsive behavior. For example, when we say to ourselves: “Just go and do it!” or "Don't even look at that piece of cake!" Participants in the experiment were asked to press a button if they saw a certain symbol.

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