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LAST UPDATE | 23 Jul 2025
DR DOOLITTLE SPOKE to the animals. Fern chatted to a spider and a pig in the delightful children’s book Charlotte’s Web by EB White. Haley Joel Osment talked to dead people in the movie The Sixth Sense.
I talk to myself. All the time. Always have done and for several reasons. Sometimes I need an expert opinion. Other times I like to sound out ideas and plans. But mostly, I talk to myself simply because I enjoy it. I have always been very comfortable in my own company, and talking to myself is just an extension of that.
It doesn’t embarrass me. I do not feel awkward about having one-sided conversations with myself. It has now become second nature to mutter under my breath as I peruse the contents in the specials aisle.
Everything is fair game. I also chat to inanimate objects and have full-blown conversations with the presenters on the radio. I have a captive audience, and they are going nowhere. They are also less likely to laugh at me, and I never run the risk of having them inform me in an unkind or scathing way that my opinions are rubbish. It is very pleasing to me.
One of my favourite things to do is wander through the garden, cup of tea in hand, checking on how things are coming along. I often pause to examine new growth or welcome flowers that have started to bloom. “It’s so lovely to see you. I hope you’ll be very happy here.”
It has just occurred to me that maybe the reason I find it difficult to get a response from my kids is because they assume I am deep in conversation with myself and not, in actual fact, speaking to them.
A bit different to the reactions I have gotten from people when they’ve overheard me in full flow. Like the time I was marching down Grafton Street on my way home from work. Navigating the busy throngs of fellow pedestrians like a hot knife through butter. I was in a hurry. Buffy was on. My cousin was calling over with wine, and we were going to watch it together. And as this was our usual Friday night routine, we would most likely head to the pub afterwards.
A woman striding past gave me an odd look, and I realised my internal monologue about Buffy and wine had been spoken aloud, albeit quietly.
Hey ho. What can you do?
First of all, I suppose, you could take comfort in the fact that talking to yourself is not as unusual or as odd as you might have originally thought. In fact, experts say it is very common and even go so far as to say, an intrinsic part of human behaviour. Also known as self-talk or internal dialogue, rather than fearing having the chats with yourself is a sign of poor mental health, on the contrary, it can have a positive effect on cognitive abilities.
It helps us to focus on the job at hand, improves our concentration and enhances our attention span. In general, it allows us to get our ducks lined up and prioritise what is important.
Gifted with a problematic aversion to using the phone in my late teens and 20s, I would rehearse out loud what I wanted to say before making the dreaded call.
We all need a pep talk every now and then, so talking to ourselves is a good way to corral any off-leash thoughts going crazy in our heads. It calms our nerves and encourages our brains to work more efficiently. No admonishment allowed if you omit the sweet corn when doing the shopping. You remembered to get everything else. Every other time. And no one went hungry.
Everyone has something they would like to achieve, but when faced with a lengthy How-To bullet list, they find themselves completely disheartened by the task at hand. Sounding it out step by step helps reduce the overwhelm, making it seem much more approachable, thus more doable.
I like this one. Talking to yourself is also a way of letting off some steam. But you have to do it a particular way. By audibly swearing. Something else I indulge in. Who hasn’t let rip when they stubbed their toe or banged their elbow? The thinking behind this one is that cursing out loud acts as a release.
If you’re ever stuck for some fine examples of celebrities who also partake in this quirky practice, look no further than Mel Robbins. An American motivational speaker and author of The Let Them Theory, she likes to begin her day by high-fiving herself in the mirror and telling herself she’s got this.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V7W7kWDDOJc
Barack Obama is another advocate of practising positive self-talk. Even Albert Einstein, who didn’t speak until he was four and read until the age of seven, talked to himself. According to Einstein.org he would repeat his own sentences very slowly, as if he were relaying his own message back to himself.
Perhaps the most interesting truth behind talking to ourselves is that everyone does it. Endearingly, kids are the most common offenders, but sadly, as they grow up, they tend to stop. Popular belief holds that small children are encouraged not to talk to themselves and are therefore conditioned out of the habit.
So the next time you see a little kid chatting to their stuffed toy or waving a stick around casting magic spells, let them on. They are playing and learning.
And maybe go easy on the grown woman conversing with the parking meter or arguing out loud with the trolley coin when it refuses to go into the slot.
Last word goes to the wise anonymous person on the Internet who said, “You find out what you think by talking to yourself.”
Gwen Loughman is gatekeeper of four boys, one husband and watcher over two dogs.
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