Why is it we’re all so afraid to admit we talk to ourselves when we’re alone? I’m not referring to the absent-minded chant one repeats to themselves when looking for a lost pair of keys, but rather the habit of engaging in detailed discussions of thoughts and emotions aloud to ourselves. I know I’m not the only one who does this, yet why do I feel so nervous to admit this intimate habit to others in fear of accidentally revealing myself as an absolute whackjob?

By this point, I’ve come to accept that, as my family have definitely heard me talk to myself, they are well acquainted with my insanity. Yet, talking to myself feels as natural as putting clothes on in the morning, or googling every slightly obscure word I attempt to use in conversation to make sure I’m using it right – it’s all part of my normal routine. I don’t really remember the first time I talked to myself, although anecdotes from my parents suggest I’ve been babbling away to myself since my days in the crib. Despite this, the thought of being overheard talking to myself by my peers is enough to make me want to enter witness protection and live as a Russian babushka for the rest of my days.

“And yet, talking to myself feels as natural as putting clothes on in the morning”

In an attempt to redeem somewhat my now charred reputation as a normal human being, I should probably explain what I mean by ‘talking’. I don’t literally hold a back-and-forth conversation with myself and nor do I hear an actual response during the conversation. A better way of describing it would be more like ‘monologuing’; perhaps akin to the camera room style confessions of celebrities on Love Island, or a character in a show over-explaining what’s going on to keep the audience in the loop. Then again, they’re not necessarily always perfectly coherent, seamless sentences either. Sometimes I’ll begin with a thought out-loud, then switch it back inside for a while, then take it out again once I’ve managed to find the right words to explain it.

I’m aware that I could just keep all the thoughts inside my head, but sometimes when I’m overwhelmed and my thoughts begin to tangle, it helps having a tool simply to slow them down. It also gives me time to unpick them by having to articulate them aloud. In this way, I find talking to myself allows me to understand better what I’m feeling and why I behave the way I do. While there is often a delicate balance between healthy introspection and addictive overthinking, this problem is just as persistent in the world of silent internal dialogue as well.

Perhaps the whole stigma about ‘self-talk’ is really just based on that old, outdated adage that talking to yourself is one of the first signs of madness. However, there have been a multitude of experiments in the past few decades which highlight the value of talking to ourselves. For example, a recent study conducted by Bangor University demonstrated that talking out loud actually improves control over a task. Participants were given the opportunity to read a set of written instructions either silently or out loud and overall, the audible reader’s concentration and performance were notably better.

“Perhaps the whole stigma about ‘self-talk’ is really just based on that old, outdated adage that talking to yourself is one of the first signs of madness”

The idea of articulating our thoughts aloud is frequently encouraged of Cambridge students, albeit in the form of academic rather than personal introspection – and also in front of academic advisors rather than the houseplants. However, regardless of whether my self-talk actually helps me articulate my intimate feelings about the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction, ‘El Niño’, I certainly wouldn’t have learnt to drive without it. It wasn’t until my second attempt at learning to drive when my new driving instructor encouraged me to walk through every step vocally, for each lane-change, or bay-parking manoeuvre that the theory really began to click into action.

As in the study by Bangor University, it wasn’t until I allowed myself to explain my thoughts and processes aloud and engage in a discussion about the techniques of driving that I could begin to understand why I was making the same mistakes, and how to overcome them. It’s in this same vein that talking aloud to myself allows me to inspect consciously – and thus take me a step closer to understanding and controlling my thoughts and emotions – in an effort to navigate the stresses of everyday life.

Despite the benefits of talking to myself, I also have the fear that perhaps the extent to which I talk to myself is indicative of feelings of loneliness in my life. This was certainly of some truth in the deep of the first national lockdown, when I found myself engaging in particularly long late-night discussions that led me to delusions of experiencing ‘enlightenment’. I convinced myself that cutting a too-short fringe was actually a sign of character development, and was worth the years it would take to grow out (it’s been 10 months and it’s barely down to the bridge of my nose). I can probably admit I was actually acting a bit mad at that point. Regardless, it seems that the perceived social taboo of talking to yourself is probably outweighed by the benefits. So maybe we should all stop worrying about what everyone else expects of us all the time and experiment with how we communicate with ourselves.

I might sound a bit crazy to my neighbours, but I’m having an interesting conversation – so please kindly let me be.