Is it okay to talk to yourself? The enemy is inside: what is the danger of dialogue with oneself.

In psychology, internal dialogue is one of the forms of thinking, the process of a person communicating with himself. It becomes the result of the interaction of different ego states: "child", "adult" and "parent". The inner voice often criticizes us, gives advice, appeals to common sense. But is he right? T&P asked several people from different fields what their inner voices sound like and asked a psychologist to comment on this.

Internal dialogue has nothing to do with schizophrenia. Everyone has voices in their heads: we ourselves (our personality, character, experience) are talking to ourselves, because our Self consists of several parts, and the psyche is very complex. Thinking and reflection are impossible without internal dialogue. Not always, however, it is framed as a conversation, and not always some of the remarks seem to be uttered by the voices of other people - as a rule, relatives. The “voice in the head” can also sound like one’s own, or it can “belong” to a completely stranger: a classic of literature, a favorite singer.

From the point of view of psychology, internal dialogue is a problem only if it develops so actively that it begins to interfere with a person in everyday life: it distracts him, knocks him out of his thoughts. But more often this silent conversation “with oneself” becomes material for analysis, a field for finding sore spots and a testing ground for developing a rare and valuable ability to understand and support oneself.

Novel

sociologist, marketer

It is difficult for me to single out any characteristics of the inner voice: shades, timbre, intonations. I understand that this is my voice, but I hear it in a completely different way, not like the rest: it is more booming, low, rough. Usually in the internal dialogue, I imagine the acting role model of a situation, hidden direct speech. For example, - what would I say to this or that public (despite the fact that the public can be very different: from casual passers-by to clients of my company). I need to convince them, to convey my idea to them. Usually I also play intonation, emotion and expression.

At the same time, there is no discussion as such: there is an internal monologue with reflections like: “What if?”. Does it happen that I myself call myself an idiot? It happens. But this is not a condemnation, but rather a cross between annoyance and a statement of fact.

If I need a third-party opinion, I change the prism: for example, I try to imagine what one of the classics of sociology would say. The sound of the voices of the classics is no different from mine: I remember exactly the logic and "optics". I distinguish clearly other people's voices only in a dream, and they are accurately modeled by real analogues.

Anastasia

prepress specialist

In my case, the inner voice sounds like my own. Basically, he says: “Nastya, stop it”, “Nastya, don’t be stupid” and “Nastya, you are a fool!”. This voice appears infrequently: when I feel uncollected, when my own actions cause me dissatisfaction. The voice is not angry - rather irritated.

I have never heard in my thoughts either my mother's, or my grandmother's, or anyone else's voice: only my own. He can scold me, but within certain limits: without humiliation. This voice is more like my coach: pushing buttons that motivate me to take action.

Ivan

screenwriter

What I hear mentally is not framed as a voice, but I recognize this person by the train of thought: she looks like my mother. And even more precisely: it is an “internal editor” that explains how to make the mother like it. For me, as for a hereditary filmmaker, this is an unflattering name, because in the Soviet years for a creative person (director, writer, playwright) an editor is a stupid protege of the regime, a not very educated censor who revels in his own power. It is unpleasant to realize that this type in you censors thoughts and clips the wings of creativity in all areas.

The “internal editor” gives many of his comments on the case. However, the question lies in the purpose of this "case". To summarize, he says: "Be like everyone else and don't stick your head out." He feeds the inner coward. “You need to be an excellent student,” because it eliminates problems. Everyone likes it. He makes it difficult to understand what I myself want, whispers that comfort is good, and the rest later. This editor doesn't really let me be an adult in a good way. Not in the sense of dullness and lack of space for the game, but in the sense of the maturity of the individual.

I hear my inner voice mostly in situations that remind me of my childhood, or when a direct expression of creativity and fantasy is needed. Sometimes I succumb to the "editor" and sometimes I don't. The most important thing is to recognize his intervention in time. Because he disguises himself well, hiding behind pseudo-logical conclusions that do not really make sense. If I recognized him, then I try to understand what the problem is, what I myself want and where the truth really is. When this voice, for example, interferes with my creativity, I try to stop and go into the space of "complete emptiness", starting all over again. The difficulty lies in the fact that the "editor" can be difficult to distinguish from simple common sense. To do this, you need to listen to intuition, move away from the meaning of words and concepts. Often this helps.

Irina

interpreter

My internal dialogue is designed as the voices of my grandmother and Masha's friend. These are people whom I considered close and important: I lived with my grandmother as a child, and Masha was there at a difficult time for me. Grandma's voice says that I have crooked hands and that I'm clumsy. And Masha's voice repeats different things: that I again got in touch with the wrong people, I lead the wrong lifestyle and do the wrong things. They both always judge me. At the same time, voices appear at different moments: when something doesn’t work out for me, my grandmother “says”, and when everything works out for me and I feel good, Masha.

I react aggressively to the appearance of these voices: I try to silence them, mentally argue with them. I tell them in response that I know better what and how to do with my life. More often than not, I can argue with my inner voice. But if not, I feel guilty, and I feel bad.

Kira

prose editor

Mentally, I sometimes hear the voice of my mother, who condemns me and devalues ​​my achievements, doubts me. This voice is always dissatisfied with me and says: “What are you doing! Are you out of your mind? Do better profitable business: you have to earn. Or: "You must live like everyone else." Or: "You will not succeed: you are nobody." It appears if I have to take a bold step or take a risk. In such situations, the inner voice, as it were, tries to manipulate me (“mom is upset”) to persuade me to the safest and most unremarkable course of action. To make him happy, I have to be inconspicuous, diligent, and everyone likes me.

I also hear my own voice: he calls me not by my name, but by a nickname that my friends came up with. He usually sounds a bit annoyed but friendly and says, “So. Stop”, “Well, what are you, baby” or “Everything, come on.” It encourages me to focus or take action.

Ilya Shabshin

psychologist-consultant, leading specialist of the "Psychological Center on Volkhonka"

This whole compilation speaks to what psychologists are well aware of: most of us have a very strong inner critic. We communicate with ourselves mainly in the language of negativity and rude words, using the whip method, and we have practically no self-support skills.

In Roman's commentary, I liked the technique, which I would even call psychotechnics: "If I need a third-party opinion, I try to imagine what one of the classics of sociology would say." This technique can be used by people of different professions. In Eastern practices, there is even the concept of an "inner teacher" - a deep wise inner knowledge that you can turn to when it's hard for you. A professional usually has one or another school or authoritative figures behind him. Imagine one of them and ask what he would say or do is a productive approach.

A clear illustration of the general theme is Anastasia's commentary. A voice that sounds like your own and says: “Nastya, you are a fool! Don't be dumb. Stop,” is, of course, according to Eric Berne, the Critical Parent. It is especially bad that the voice appears when she feels "uncollected", if her own actions cause dissatisfaction - that is, when, in theory, the person just needs to be supported. And instead, the voice tramples into the ground ... And although Anastasia writes that he acts without humiliation, this is a small consolation. Maybe, as a “coach”, he presses the wrong buttons, and it’s not worth kicking, not reproaching, not insulting him to encourage himself to action? But, I repeat, such interaction with oneself is, unfortunately, typical.

You can encourage yourself to act by first removing fears by saying to yourself: “Nastya, everything is in order. It's okay, we'll figure it out." Or: "Here, look: it turned out well." "Yes, well done, you can do it!". “Do you remember how well you did everything then?” This method is suitable for any person who tends to criticize himself.

The last paragraph in Ivan's text is important: it describes a psychological algorithm for dealing with an internal critic. Point one: "Recognize interference." Such a problem often arises: something negative is disguised, hiding behind useful statements, penetrates a person’s soul and establishes its own rules there. Then the analyst turns on, trying to understand what the problem is. According to Eric Berne, this is the adult part of the psyche, the rational one. Ivan even has his own tricks: “go out into the space of complete emptiness”, “listen to intuition”, “depart from the meaning of words and understand everything”. Great, that's what you need! On the basis of general rules and a common understanding of what is happening, it is necessary to find your own approach to what is happening. As a psychologist, I applaud Ivan: he has learned to talk to himself well. Well, what he fights is a classic: the internal editor is still the same critic.

“At school, we are taught to extract square roots and carry out chemical reactions, but they don’t teach us to communicate normally with ourselves anywhere”

Ivan has another interesting observation: "You need to keep a low profile and be an excellent student." Kira does the same. Her inner voice also says that she should be invisible and everyone should like her. But this voice introduces its own, alternative logic, because you can either be the best, or keep a low profile. However, such statements are not taken from reality: these are all internal programs, psychological attitudes from various sources.

The “keep your head down” attitude (like most others) is taken from upbringing: in childhood and adolescence, a person draws conclusions about how to live, gives himself instructions based on what he hears from parents, educators, and teachers.

In this regard, the example of Irina looks sad. Close and important people - a grandmother and a friend - tell her: "You have crooked hands, and you are clumsy", "you live wrong." There is a vicious circle: the grandmother condemns her when something does not work out, and her friend - when everything is fine. Total criticism! Neither when it is good, nor when it is bad, there is no support and consolation. Always a minus, always a negative: either you are clumsy, or something else is wrong with you.

But Irina is good, she behaves like a fighter: she silences the voices or argues with them. This is how it should be done: the power of the critic, whoever he may be, must be weakened. Irina says that most often she gets votes over an argument - this phrase suggests that the opponent is strong. And in this regard, I would suggest that she try other ways: firstly (since she hears it as a voice), imagine that it comes from the radio, and she turns the volume knob to the minimum, so that the voice fades, it gets worse heard. Then, perhaps, his power will weaken, and it will become easier to outguess him - or even just brush him off. After all, such an internal struggle creates quite a lot of tension. Moreover, Irina writes at the end that she feels guilty if she cannot argue.

Negative ideas penetrate deeply into our psyche in the early stages of its development, especially easily - in childhood, when they come from big authority figures with whom, in fact, it is impossible to argue. The child is small, and around him are huge, important, strong masters of this world - adults on whom his life depends. You can't really argue here.

In adolescence, we also solve complex problems: we want to show ourselves and others that you are already an adult, and not a small one, although in fact, deep down you understand that this is not entirely true. Many teenagers become vulnerable, although outwardly they look prickly. At this time, statements about yourself, about your appearance, about who you are and what you are, sink into the soul and later become dissatisfied with inner voices that scold and criticize. We talk to ourselves so badly, so nastily, in a way that we would never talk to other people. You would never say anything like that to a friend - and in your head your voices towards you easily allow themselves this.

To correct them, first of all, you need to realize: “What sounds in my head is not always sensible thoughts. There may be opinions and judgments, simply assimilated once. They do not help me, it is not useful to me, and their advice does not lead to anything good. You need to learn to recognize them and deal with them: to refute, muffle or otherwise remove the inner critic from yourself, replacing it with an inner friend who provides support, especially when it’s bad or difficult.

At school, we are taught to extract square roots and carry out chemical reactions, but they don’t teach us to communicate normally with ourselves anywhere. And you need to cultivate healthy self-support instead of self-criticism. Of course, you do not need to draw a halo of holiness around your own head. It is necessary, when it is difficult, to be able to cheer yourself up, support, praise, remind yourself of successes, achievements and strengths. Do not humiliate yourself as a person. Say to yourself: “In a particular area, at a particular moment, I can make a mistake. But it has nothing to do with my human dignity. My dignity, my positive attitude towards myself as a person is an unshakable foundation. And mistakes are normal and even good: I will learn from them, I will develop and move on.

Icons: Justin Alexander from the Noun Project

A PHOTO Getty Images

We all talk to ourselves at some point. Strain your imagination and you will hear a muffled chorus of whisperers praising or scourging themselves. There is an opinion that thinking as such is a form of self-talk, says columnist Sarah Sloat. In short, we get to know ourselves the same way we get to know other people—through dialogue.

Psychologist James Hardy defines self-talk as follows: “Dialogue by which an individual interprets his feelings and ideas, regulates and modifies value judgments and beliefs, instructs himself and encourages himself.”

Some psychologists believe that our "I" consists of two parts: one of them controls our mind and perception, and the other simply acts. Self-talk can be a bridge between these two parts.

These conversations can be extremely helpful or harmful, depending on how you approach it. Everyone has these conversations in their own way, but here are three tricks that can turn them into a useful exercise.

You, not me

It matters whether you refer to yourself as "you" or as "I". It is better to refer to yourself using the pronoun not of the first, but of the second person, that is, to call yourself “you” and, moreover, by name. By changing how we refer to ourselves in this way, we can better regulate our behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Saying “you” to ourselves or calling ourselves by name, we create the necessary psychological distance that allows us to talk about what is happening to us, as if a little from the outside. It can also reduce stress in people with social anxiety and help you calm down when you're thinking about things after the fact.

Be gentle with yourself

Dialogue with oneself creates space for reflection, but it is not always to our advantage. The best option is to cheer yourself up. Trying to motivate yourself, for example, has been proven to help athletes maintain their energy levels and improve endurance. Positive self-talk improves our mood and emotionally supports us. Conversely, talking to yourself in a critical way has been shown to lower self-esteem and increase the likelihood of repeating the same conversations in the future. Psychologists say that a person is able to choose how to think, and this largely depends on how we talk to ourselves. Therefore, it is important for your well-being that you at least talk kindly to yourself.

Use in emergency situations

The inner voice helps us control our impulsive behavior. For example, when we say to ourselves: “Just go and do it!” or "Don't even look at that piece of cake!" Participants in the experiment were asked to press a button if they saw a certain symbol. At the same time, they had to repeat the same word all the time, which made internal dialogue impossible. In this case, they behaved much more impulsively and less controlled than in the other part of the experiment, where nothing prevented their inner voice from sounding.

It is also believed that self-talk helps when you are learning something new. The key to success here is to keep your statements short, to the point, and not contradictory. Psychologist Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis, who studies this issue, explains: “By talking to yourself, you stimulate and direct your actions, and then evaluate the results.”

But perhaps most valuable, self-talk builds the self-control and motivation needed to succeed. If we tell ourselves that we can be successful, the chances of success are greatly increased.

See the Inverse website for more details.

Have you ever noticed that you are talking to yourself out loud? This happens when a person is very tense, focused, or his emotions are overflowing.

Surely, catching yourself on this, you will think: “Horror, I'm talking to myself! Am I sick? Everything ... schizophrenia on the threshold! Is it true? Let's see if talking to yourself always means a mental disorder and whether you need to see a doctor in this case.

I'm talking to myself, so I'm crazy?

Any disease related to the object of psychiatry has not one, but several symptoms. If, apart from the rare occasions when you have noticed that you are talking to yourself, nothing else suspicious has happened to you, there is nothing to worry about. But still, knowing these signs will not be superfluous:

• hallucinations (auditory and visual);
• a recurring feeling of deja vu;
• obsessions, as if someone is following you, wishing you harm, spying on you, constantly mocking you;
• a feeling of unreality of what is happening;
• complete apathy, unwillingness and / or inability to do anything;
• strong unreasonable fear, it is not clear where the extreme anxiety came from and similar sensations.

In sick people, they are greatly exaggerated, they are in the nature of obsessive delirium, importunate and painful. Often these symptoms can be combined with purely physiological reactions. For example, during a panic attack (strong fear), a person begins to choke, his hands sweat, and other intense sensations arise. If something like this happens to you, you need to contact a psychotherapist. There is nothing terrible or shameful in this. Perhaps you have experienced some kind of tragedy and cannot cope with it on your own.

In addition, it is necessary to distinguish between mental illness proper and neuroses. The latter are temporary and are usually caused by some kind of strong shock. Mental illness often accompanies the patient throughout his life (for example, schizophrenia). He is accompanied by a whole "bouquet" of extremely severe symptoms.

Self-talk as a children's learning method

Have you noticed that children often talk to themselves during games? So they play some situations, play roles (matter or her daughter, scary bear, etc.). For toddlers, talking to yourself out loud is absolutely normal and even useful. That's how they learn. This is a very good way to focus. As soon as a person grows up, he tries to avoid talking to himself out loud, just so as not to seem strange to others.

Why do people talk to themselves as adults?

Have you ever wondered why people talk to themselves as adults? We are talking about mentally healthy citizens. Our thinking is arranged as follows: millions of nerve cells constantly interact and send each other nerve impulses. We literally find ourselves "attacked" by various thoughts, memories, questions and suspicions.

A kind of "hellish brew" seems to be seething in the human head. Moreover, this process does not stop for a minute. It is especially pronounced in women, whose thinking is not linear by nature. It is like having multiple tabs open in a browser that are active at the same time.

Often people talk to themselves in order to focus on one thing, how to isolate this thought and completely direct their thought flow to it. Especially if the question concerns something very important and urgent. Often emotional people use this method in a tense situation. In this case, talking to yourself is normal and has nothing to do with mental disorders.

Talking to yourself is normal and sometimes even helpful.

At various times, studies have been conducted on why people talk to themselves. It was found that in some situations this way of self-organization helps to better cope with the task. When people talk to themselves, it is as if they are programming themselves verbally for a certain result. In other words, they lead themselves.

For example, if you lost a key in an apartment, then commenting on your actions will help you quickly build a logical chain and find the loss. After all, why does a person talk to himself? Using this simple method, he forces the brain to concentrate as much as possible on one thing, to gather all the resources to solve the problem. And it works well. In addition, talking to yourself, you can, for example, from the same lost key.

A bitter feeling of loneliness

But it also happens that a person starts a dialogue with himself solely from a lack of communication. Every person has a need for communication, and if he does not find interlocutors, it does not disappear anywhere. This is the saddest reason why a person talks to himself. In such a situation, we can recommend that you start correcting the situation as soon as possible: sign up for a club, master classes, start going to the gym or any other public place. Do not get sucked into this state of loneliness, otherwise the habit of communicating with yourself will grow into a painful weirdness.

Guys, we put our soul into the site. Thanks for that
for discovering this beauty. Thanks for the inspiration and goosebumps.
Join us at Facebook and In contact with

Thinking out loud is by no means a sign of insanity and can bring much more benefits than it might seem at first glance.

website talk about why it is possible and important to talk to yourself at least occasionally.

The first thing to say is that talking to yourself out loud is a sure sign of a genius. The smartest people on our planet often talked to themselves. This is reflected in scientific works, poetry, painting, and history confirms this.

For example, Albert Einstein liked to think aloud about mathematical formulas and complex theories, and sometimes even consulted with himself. Besides, in there have been many studies confirming that thinking aloud speeds up and structures the thought process.

“Keys, keys, keys. Where did I put them? And here they are, right on the table!” Experimentally, it was found that a person quickly found the desired object by repeating its name aloud. Saying the name of what we are looking for at the moment stimulates the memory, and we concentrate faster, and therefore find the desired item much faster.

True, it is worth understanding that this only works if you know exactly what what you need looks like.

Children often learn by saying and repeating what they are doing. And at the same time they remember for the future how they solved the problem that arose. And, probably, everyone knows that when you are trying to remember something, it is better to say it out loud. Due to the fact that we hear the information we need in the most native voice for our brain, it is remembered much faster and for a long time.

Almost every one of us has a complete mess in our head, and thoughts are rushing from side to side. But saying what is bothering you out loud allows you to put everything on the shelves and calm your nerves. Renowned psychologist Linda Sapadin believes that by speaking out loud, we are strengthened in important and difficult decisions: “It allows you to clear your thoughts, decide what is important, and strengthen your decision.”

“That's it, I'm starting to run from Monday, learn a foreign language and I will definitely sign up for painting courses,” we often say to ourselves. But we all know how difficult it is to make a list of goals and start moving towards achieving them. By pronouncing each step, you can make this task much easier for yourself, make everything less difficult and more specific. This allows you to put things in perspective and move forward more confidently.

And finally, the person who knows absolutely everything about you is yourself. Don't be afraid to listen to your inner voice and confidently, loudly answer it out loud.