Is it normal to talk to yourself? What the research says

Yes. Talking to yourself, in your head or out loud, is normal, common, and often useful. Lots of people narrate what they’re doing, rehearse conversations in the shower, or mutter “keys, phone, wallet” on the way out the door. Here’s why we do it, what the research says it’s good for, and how to do it on purpose.

Why we talk to ourselves

Inner speech is part of how people think. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky noticed that young children talk out loud to guide themselves through play (“this one goes here, now the red one”), and that as they grow, this private speech moves inward and becomes the silent inner voice most adults know. Researchers still study that idea today (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015). When a task gets hard or stressful, many adults bring the voice back out loud.

How much people do it varies a lot. Some have a near-constant inner monologue; others think more in pictures or feelings and rarely hear words at all. Both are normal. People most often talk to themselves to:

• plan and get organized (“first the email, then the call”)
• stay on track during a tricky task
• calm down (“okay, breathe”)
• rehearse or replay conversations
• motivate themselves
• keep themselves company when they’re alone

What the research says it helps with

Finding things, and staying focused

In a set of experiments, people searching for a picture of an object found it faster when they said its name out loud as they looked (“banana, banana”), at least for familiar objects (Lupyan & Swingley, 2012). Saying the word seems to keep what you’re looking for active in your mind.

Doing hard things well

Sports psychologists have studied self-talk for decades. A review that pooled 32 studies found that training people in self-talk improved their performance, with bigger effects for tasks that need precision and for skills people were still learning (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011). Short instructions, such as “eyes on the ball” or “smooth and steady”, worked especially well for precise tasks.

Staying steady under stress

How you talk to yourself matters. In one series of studies, people preparing to give a stressful speech either reflected on their feelings using “I” or using their own name and “you” (“Why is Sam nervous?”). Those who used their name or “you” felt less anxious and ashamed, saw the speech more as a challenge than a threat, and were rated as giving better speeches (Kross et al., 2014). Later brain-recording studies found that talking to yourself in the third person lowered emotional reactions quickly, without seeming to take extra mental effort (Moser et al., 2017).

Following through

People who gave themselves advice as “you” (“You can do this”) solved more word puzzles, and said they were more likely to exercise, than people who used “I” (Dolcos & Albarracín, 2014).

Is talking to yourself a sign of intelligence?

There’s no good evidence that people who talk to themselves are smarter. What the research does show is that self-talk is a tool, and using it well can help you think and perform better on some tasks. So it’s less a sign of intelligence than a way of putting yours to work.

When talking to yourself isn’t helping

Self-talk can turn unhelpful when it becomes rumination, replaying the same worry or mistake again and again without getting anywhere, or when it’s mostly harsh criticism. If that sounds familiar, our guide to stopping negative self-talk walks through what to do about it.

How to talk to yourself on purpose

You already talk to yourself. These five habits make it work harder for you.

1. Use your name, or “you”. Instead of “I can’t do this,” try “Okay, Priya, you’ve done harder things. What’s the first step?” The small distance makes it easier to think clearly.
2. Give instructions, not just pep talks. For anything that takes skill, tell yourself what to do: “Slow down. Breathe out. One sentence at a time.”
3. Be a coach, not a critic. Ask whether you’d say it to a friend. After a failure, people who were kind to themselves were more motivated to improve, not less (Breines & Chen, 2012).
4. Say it out loud when it matters. Speaking slows you down and makes the words harder to skim past. With other people around, a whisper works.
5. Name what you’re looking for. Lost your keys? Say “keys” as you look.

Put together, a pep talk in the second person sounds something like this:

MindLoops turns this into a habit: you talk through what you’re facing, and it writes a short loop like this in your own words, then plays it back on repeat. That’s deliberate self-talk you can listen to.

Questions people ask

Is it normal to talk to yourself out loud?

Yes. It’s especially common when people are alone, concentrating hard, or under stress. Saying things out loud can help you focus and remember.

Why do I talk to myself so much?

You might think mostly in words, spend a lot of time alone, or have a lot going on that you’re working through. That’s usually harmless. If most of it is worry or criticism, the habits above can help you change the tone.

Is talking to yourself a sign of mental illness?

Not on its own. Nearly everyone does it. The box above lists the signs that are worth checking with a doctor.

Is talking to yourself a sign of ADHD?

Not by itself. People with and without ADHD talk to themselves, and some people with ADHD find that saying the steps out loud helps them stay on task. If you’re wondering about ADHD, a doctor is the person to ask.

Sources

1. Alderson-Day, B., & Fernyhough, C. (2015). Inner speech: Development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and neurobiology. Psychological Bulletin, 141(5), 931–965. doi.org/10.1037/bul0000021
2. Breines, J. G., & Chen, S. (2012). Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1133–1143. doi.org/10.1177/0146167212445599
3. Dolcos, S., & Albarracín, D. (2014). The inner speech of behavioral regulation: Intentions and task performance strengthen when you talk to yourself as a You. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(6), 636–642. doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2048
4. Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011). Self-talk and sports performance: A meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(4), 348–356. doi.org/10.1177/1745691611413136
5. Kross, E., et al. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324. doi.org/10.1037/a0035173
6. Lupyan, G., & Swingley, D. (2012). Self-directed speech affects visual search performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(6), 1068–1085. doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2011.647039
7. Moser, J. S., et al. (2017). Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI. Scientific Reports, 7, 4519. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04047-3