Speaking Alone, A Sign Of Good Psychological Health

Talking alone is something that we have mistakenly associated with madness and abnormality. We have the idea that language is used to communicate with others, and that when speech is not directed at anyone, it is a sign of suffering from a mental disorder.

However, almost all of us do, at least when we are alone and there are no other people around to hear us.

Talking alone is normal

In psychology, speaking only is called self-directed speech, private speech, or self-centered speech in children.

According to Lev Vygotsky (1962), a specialist in developmental psychology, this type of speech is part of a natural process. One of the aspects that perhaps distinguish children and adults is not the presence or absence of this type of speech, but that with the passage of time, private speech normally decreases and becomes internalized to constitute internal speech or verbal thought. which tends to include whispering and whispering rather than loud speech.

Private speech improves our understanding

One of the positive effects of speaking alone is that the action of speaking requires transforming information and organizing it in a form of monologue or dialogue, and therefore inner language is an instrument that allows us to process information in such a way that we make it more tangible and manageable for ourselves.

By placing the information in our context and our thoughts at a level that is accessible to our possibilities, it allows us a greater understanding and a better control and performance in our actions.

Helps us organize our thinking

Alexander Luria (1980), an influential physician and neuropsychologist, argued for the important role of language beyond its social function. According to him, it also fulfills the function of directing our cognitive processing, that is, of controlling and monitoring our thoughts, and of guiding our behavior.

Vygotski pointed out that in younger children it occurs by accompanying the actions that are being done, so it has a rather descriptive role. But over the years, language anticipates action, saying what to do before doing it, and it also acquires the ability to plan.

Increase our awareness

This process of directive speech begins when we are approximately two years old, but then we are only able to respond to the language of others, who are the ones who direct our actions. Little by little it continues to develop until when we are five years old we are also able to respond to our own verbalizations, being able to begin to self-regulate ourselves.

Because of this role that it plays in our capacity for self-regulation, it is that it affects another level: that of consciousness. By better understanding the information we process mentally and having more control over how we plan our behavior, we become more aware of what our thoughts are. In fact, a technique in therapy is the use of self-instructions, which consists of repeating different messages to ourselves internally in order to self-regulate our behavior, reducing our anxiety or motivating us.

Improve our attention

These verbalizations that we make to ourselves, therefore, help us to consciously direct our behavior, and improve our attention and working memory performance. This type of memory is short-term and is one that helps us to perform tasks and retain the necessary information during this process.

This is based on the directive role of language on cognition and behavior, and its function as external reinforcement that helps us maintain inhibitory control, that is, managing distractions and irrelevant stimuli, and therefore helping us to maintain our attention. Therefore, when we have to remember a phone number, we tend to repeat it out loud several times, thus keeping our attention on what we are trying to learn.

Facilitates learning

In addition, the fact of verbalizing what we want to learn makes it easier to remember it, by providing our brain with a new sensory pathway that is added to the memory. For example, we read a phrase and say it out loud, we are more likely to remember it.

In fact, it is said that there is no better way to learn something than by trying to explain it to someone else, and in this case it is by explaining it to ourselves. This is because it favors understanding and memory, and also allows us to detect what strategies we carry out successfully and what difficulties we find in solving certain problems.

Help in troubleshooting

Sometimes we catch ourselves speaking out loud when we are performing a complex task or when we encounter difficulties in what we are doing. In fact, several studies have shown that the more difficulties we find in what we have to solve, the more we resort to the use of language as a strategy to facilitate its resolution.

This is because spoken discourse is a tool for planning, guiding and directing problem-solving activity, and it has the ability to organize, execute, and evaluate our behavior and cognitive functioning.

When the problems we face are personal, we can make use of self-directed speech, in particular in these cases it can help us to speak in the third person to adopt another perspective and reduce the feeling of blockage.

So when is it bad to talk to yourself?

When what you verbalize to yourself is not serving as a resource to improve in your day-to-day tasks, how much you continuously transmit negative messages to yourself, when your internal speech interferes with social speech in communication with others and this isolates you, or when you are incapable to control it, whether in the presence of others or not.

It is possible that in certain cases, you consider that speech is having more negative impact on your life than the positive effects mentioned above, and that this may be associated with other types of problems. In that case, it would be necessary to explore with a professional why it is. But generally speaking alone is totally normal and even healthy.

Bibliographic references:

• Frauenglass, MH and Díaz, RM (1987). The Self-Regulatory Function of Children’s Private Speech: A Critical Analysis of Recent Discussions of Vygotsky’s Theory. Childhood and Learning, 37, 103-114.
• Ramos, C., Pérez, C. and Lepe, N. (2016). Inhibitory control, monitoring and self-directed speech in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Wimblu, 11 (1), 73-97.
• San Martín, C. and Torres, E. (2004). Study of the emergence of private speech in a child’s communicative game situation and its relationships with the communicative conflict. Yearbook of Psychology, 35 (1), 71-85.