Paloma Mari-Beffa, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Bangor says that most of us talk to ourselves, silently, all the time and by ‘all the time’ she means even when we sleep. Come to think of it, when one has paid attention to their resting thoughts they realise that they cannot claim authorship over any of them. Words, sounds, and images just appear from nowhere, then dissolve into nothingness like a shooting star there and then gone.

Is Talking to yourself a good antidote to loneliness or the sign of a real problem?

Mari-Beffa says “The brain is always active”. “It is always generating images or words.” If we are always in conversation with ourselves, why don’t we all talk out loud? The answer, says Mari-Beffa, is down to the two sides of the brain: one that is chaotic and random and one that is orderly and in control. “When you talk out loud, it’s not random you organise it, you control it, you give it shape. When people are under extreme stress, or suffering from mental illness, both networks can be active at the same time.” This phenomenon could explain conditions such as Tourette syndrome and schizophrenia, where the subconscious chaotic mind is encroaching on the more ordered conscious mind.

Controlled self-talk, however, can have enormous benefits. In 2012, Mari-Beffa conducted an experiment that asked 28 participants to read a series of instructions either silently or out loud. The group that read out loud showed higher levels of concentration and performance on the tasks they were given. Another study, from the University of Michigan, found that self-talk can increase self-esteem, improve confidence and help us overcome difficult challenges. The paper, published in 2014, said that those who referred to themselves with second-and third-person pronouns managed their thoughts better than those who spoke in the first person.

Chris Gilham, a 23-year-old IT student from Washington DC, began talking to himself out loud when the pandemic hit. Before lockdown, he used to socialize in coffee shops with his friends from college; now he spends most of his time alone. He says face masks have helped: on the rare occasions he visits his local grocery store, he can talk to himself under his breath and nobody can see his lips moving. Gilham suffers from anxiety and says the self-talk helps him slow down his “constant train of thought … It helps with processing something,” he says. “If I’m reading a textbook, rephrasing it out loud really helps.” Still, Gilham isn’t having full-blown shouting matches with himself in front of a mirror.

“Do you have a partner who can be on the opposite side of you when you’re having an argument?” asks the clinical psychologist Dr. Carla Manly over the phone from her office in California.

We watch kids at home “talking to the Tonka truck or at the Barbie doll and we call it child’s play,” she says. “But somehow we are supposed to lose that as adults. I don’t believe that we need to.” She explains that self-talk can become a problem if you do it so much that it disturbs someone you’re living with, but otherwise it really depends on what you’re saying to yourself. “It’s really about: is it appropriate for the situation? Is it disrupting any relationships, be it at home, work, or otherwise? Is it within your control? Does what you’re saying make sense?”