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The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

nytimes.com

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Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#41

Post by lhuser123 »

Baeocystin wrote: post #32
MichaelGG wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you shut off your inner voice? I went on a multi-day, complete-silence (no talking, reading, etc.) retreat to meditate and found I wasn't much closer to shutting off the internal voice or flood of random thoughts.

Not the person you asked, but I do have practice at this skill. And it is a skill. I also have a highly-active internal thoughtstream, and it can cause me significant stress if I don't control it. In my case, it isn't a verbal dialogue, but rather the thoughts that swim around one level below. Busy nonetheless. The only thing that works for me is to not fight it. If I attempt to resist the flow, it only amplifies the…

Agreed. Sometimes fighting it, is like trying to stop a bull stampede. I find useful the strategy of simply engaging the mind in something else. Preferably something innovative or meaningful to you.

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#43

Post by hliyan »

gregmac wrote: post #5

This made me think of rubber duck problem solving [1][2], though it didn't mention it specifically. Talking through a problem out loud forces you to structure your thoughts in a logical way, and sometimes doing that you'll realize an obvious connection or step you missed. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging [2] http://hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com/148664.html

I do this with writing. Even if the problem has 3 points, I write down a list on the whiteboard. Even if the part of the system I'm concerned about has two components, I draw two boxes with a connecting line. Then I stare at the board. It's surprising how effective this can be.

Edit: I suspect Sherlock Holmes was the first fictional character to employ rubber-ducking (albeit with Watson as the duck). Greg House would be a more recent example (who uses his entire team).

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#44

Post by lhuser123 »

Eyght wrote: post #17

If I say something out loud I usually realize much quicker if it makes sense or not. The act of vocalizing a thought triggers a second check whether or not I'm making a fool of myself, and quite often it turns out that I am!

So true. I need to remember to do that more often.

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#45

Post by sofal »

voidhorse wrote: post #42

Yup. Be careful though--when you're around other people who are also trying to focus and do their own work talking to yourself can be a very irritating distraction to others.

This is a downside of open office plans. If I'm working on something particularly tricky it is often better for me to work from home so that I can wander around talking myself through the problem like some kind of insane person.

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#46

Post by davidjnelson »

Baeocystin wrote: post #32
MichaelGG wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you shut off your inner voice? I went on a multi-day, complete-silence (no talking, reading, etc.) retreat to meditate and found I wasn't much closer to shutting off the internal voice or flood of random thoughts.

Not the person you asked, but I do have practice at this skill. And it is a skill. I also have a highly-active internal thoughtstream, and it can cause me significant stress if I don't control it. In my case, it isn't a verbal dialogue, but rather the thoughts that swim around one level below. Busy nonetheless. The only thing that works for me is to not fight it. If I attempt to resist the flow, it only amplifies the…

Fantastic meditation synopsis! Another similar one that I like is visualizing the thoughts scrolling by like the text at the beginning of Star Wars movies :-)

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#47

Post by BadassFractal »

I remember Sam Harris pointing out in his book on consciousness and meditation just how absurd it is that we regularly have conversations with ourselves. "Hmm, I wonder where I left the keys, they must be on the kitchen table, nope, man I'm going to be late to work again..". Who is the interlocutor? Does the thing we're talking to already not have all of the information the speaker has? If we saw someone have this conversation out loud we would think that person is nuts, but we are all having that internal conversation all the time, and think of it as perfectly normal.

For the sake of experiment I tried to avoid having an internal monologue / dialogue but it's surprisingly difficult. I'd be curious to hear if people have succeeded here and what that does to you. Are you still able to function and grow as a person and a thinker without that inner chatterbox? Can you think without vocalizing it in your head?

And yeah, interesting fact, I'm an introvert and an only child too, like some of the other posters. I've been the only person I could regularly talk to my entire life. I'm sure that has a huge impact on this.

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#48

Post by i336_ »

JasonSage wrote: post #39
wjdp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When writing SO questions I tend to only press the submit button 5–10% of the time before realising my error (typically something mundane). The act of putting the problem into words, along with writing up a good background of the problem (as you should for a good question) often forces an objective viewpoint/reevaluation of the problem.

This makes me wonder what the bounce rate for Stack Overflow questions is and what percent of visitors actually make it through the submission process.

This would actually be an answerable question, because of SO's draft mechanism.

Opens new tab

Sound of typing

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/296990/what-are-the...

I've been thinking along the same lines for a very long time. Thanks for the inspiration to finally ask!

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#49

Post by nitemice »

rosstex wrote: post #16

Even when I'm not actually speaking out loud, I find that my thoughts often act very similarly: I'm usually having a conversation with myself. And I'll try to crack myself up, or reference movie quotes, or break into a song or dramatic monologue. (Anyone who's upvoting this, does that mean I'm not alone or I'm insane?)

You are not alone.

It's much easier to be your uncool self, when you're only talking to yourself.

In fact, when I was younger, I use to sometimes talk to myself like I was monologuing to an unseen audience, like characters always seem to do on kids shows[1].

[1](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsideComment)

Re: The Benefits of Talking to Yourself

#50

Post by suneilp »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #21

I grew up an only child and so in absence of anyone else, I learned to talk to myself instead. I naturally have a busy mind and over the years I've found that getting a thought out of my head is the quickest way to get it out of the way. I've had anxiety issues over the years. One day I was feeling a bit anxious and suddenly the idea came over me to just try to shut off my inner voice - completely. I focused on tryin…

When I started meditating more often, I kept getting distracted by miscellaneous thoughts. At first I fought it to get back to the "quiet mind" but that was frustrating. And I would angrily judge myself for the distraction. I got tired of beating myself up and then I recognized that these distractions were the short and long term problems such as conflicts at work within the last few days, or deep seated trauma, like experiencing ongoing racism and violence as a kid during school.

I stopped resisting the distractions and just allowed myself to think about them while at the same time trying to focus on my breath. As the distraction faded my focus on my breath returned.

I've gotten better at this and I feel like I've rewired my mind into being able to maintain a "quiet mind" and self-awareness, at the same as talking to myself either in my mind or out loud. And so when I get anxiety I can stay grounded and now I just think about what is giving me anxiety instead of letting it go or forgetting it. It's helped me to get rid of generalized anxiety that I've been stuck with for a long time.

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