Wholeness Healing Center

Talking to Yourself? It May Be Better for You Than You Think

Have you ever been walking around the house talking out loud to yourself and suddenly wondered what someone would think if they heard you? Or caught yourself having an entire conversation in the car, with no one else in it? We tend to joke that talking to ourselves might be a sign we’re “losing it.” So, I became curious: Is talking to yourself really something we should worry about?

For most of us, the answer is no. In fact, research suggests that talking out loud to ourselves can serve some surprisingly useful purposes. Putting our thoughts into spoken words may help us work through a problem, manage emotions, and remember information. In other words, we may talk to ourselves for some very good reasons.

Talking Aloud Can Help Us Think

A 2023 study by psychologists Xinqi Guo and Karen Dobkins examined what researchers call “private speech,” which essentially is talking out loud to yourself. Young adults completed a visual-spatial working-memory task while either talking themselves through it or remaining quiet. Participants performed better when they were allowed to use private speech, and more task-focused self-talk was associated with greater benefit (Guo & Dobkins, 2023).

That makes sense when you think about everyday life. Have you ever explained a problem to someone and suddenly figured out the answer before the other person even responded? Sometimes the process of putting our thoughts into words helps us organize what is going on in our heads.

As we hear ourselves explain a situation, we may recognize something we hadn’t noticed before: a gap in our thinking, an assumption we were making, or another possibility we hadn’t considered. This is something I frequently see as a therapist. I don’t necessarily have to provide an answer. Sometimes, as people talk through a problem, they begin discovering their own answers.

Putting Feelings Into Words Can Help With Big Emotions

Talking can also be helpful when what is swirling around in our heads isn’t a problem to solve but an emotion to understand.

In a well-known brain-imaging study, UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman and his colleagues examined what happens when people put feelings into words, a process called affect labeling. They found that labeling emotions was associated with decreased activity in the amygdala and other limbic areas involved in emotional reactivity, along with increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, an area involved in regulation (Lieberman et al., 2007).

This research particularly interests me because I have taught clients a simple mindfulness practice for years: Notice it. Label it. Let it go. When our thoughts are racing or emotions feel overwhelming, instead of immediately becoming swept up in them, we can pause and notice what is happening.

“I’m noticing anxiety.”

“I’m feeling hurt.”

“I’m having the thought that I can’t handle this.”

Naming our experience creates a little space between having a thought or feeling and becoming completely caught up in it. We move from simply reacting to also observing what is happening inside us. “Letting it go” doesn’t mean denying the feeling or making it disappear. It means recognizing that we don’t have to grab onto every thought and follow it wherever it wants to take us.

Perhaps talking out loud isn’t as strange as we’ve made it out to be. Sometimes giving our internal experience a voice can help us gain a little distance from it.

Saying It Aloud Can Help Us Remember It

There is also interesting research about speaking and memory. Psychologists call it the production effect: under certain learning conditions, we remember information better when we say it aloud than when we simply read it silently.

MacLeod and colleagues demonstrated this effect across a series of eight experiments, finding that words spoken aloud during learning were remembered better than words read silently (MacLeod et al., 2010).

Later research found that the effect wasn’t limited to individual words. Researchers found benefits for word pairs and sentences and even for information contained in essays. In one experiment, the memory advantage from speaking information aloud was still evident after a week (Ozubko, Hourihan, & MacLeod, 2012).

So perhaps when you’re trying to remember where you put something important, there is some wisdom in actually saying:
“I’m putting my passport in the top drawer.” And for students, reading important information aloud may be worth trying as one tool for learning and remembering.

Some of Us Think by Talking

This research makes intuitive sense to me because I am a verbal processor.

Sometimes I don’t fully know what I think until I hear myself say it. I may begin talking about a problem without knowing where I’m going to land, and somewhere in the process, things start becoming clearer.

Talking doesn’t simply communicate a thought I’ve already formed. Sometimes talking is part of how I form the thought.
Some people process things more internally. They want time to think quietly before they’re ready to talk. Others seem to find clarity through conversation. Neither is better. What matters is understanding what helps you process your own experiences.

And being a verbal processor doesn’t necessarily mean you need another person in the room. Sometimes talking to yourself while driving, taking a walk, or working around the house may be enough to help organize what is happening inside your head.

Pay Attention to How You Talk to Yourself

Of course, if we’re going to talk to ourself, what we say matters too.

Think about how you would respond to a close friend who was struggling. You probably wouldn’t say:
“You’re an idiot. You should have known better.”

Yet we can be remarkably harsh when the person we’re talking to is ourselves. What if instead we became our own calm, compassionate coach?

“This is really hard right now.”

“You don’t have to figure everything out today.”

“You’ve handled difficult things before.”

“Let’s figure out the next step.”

Self-talk can help us organize our thinking, but it can also become an opportunity to practice self-compassion.

So the next time you catch yourself having a conversation in an empty car, you may not need to worry quite so much about what the person in the car next to you thinks.

You may simply be thinking out loud.

And apparently, there are some pretty good reasons to do it.

Works Cited:

Guo, X., & Dobkins, K. (2023). Private speech improves cognitive performance in young adults. Consciousness and Cognition, 116, 103585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103585

Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x

MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 671–685. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018785

Ozubko, J. D., Hourihan, K. L., & MacLeod, C. M. (2012). Production benefits learning: the production effect endures and improves memory for text. Memory, 20(7), 717–727. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2012.699070