We all conduct internal dialogues with ourselves, as in the famous song: “Quietly with myself, quietly with myself I am having a conversation.” And such “conversations” do not surprise any of the people around them, because no one hears them. But sometimes you have to deal with someone who is very enthusiastically talking out loud to an invisible interlocutor. It is clearly evident that such a person does not even understand that he is not just thinking about some serious issue, as we all do, “talking” to ourselves in our minds, but is conducting a dialogue, responding to the words that seem to come from from outside. Why do people talk to themselves and why don’t they notice that in fact they don’t have any interlocutor?
Talking to yourself is a sign of psychosis
When a person talks to himself without expecting an answer, this may be an early symptom of schizophrenia. Of course, if he mutters something under his breath for just a day or two, then this is not necessarily a sign of pathology. But if someone laughs for no reason, or if they talk out loud for quite a long period of time, and all this along with other behavioral abnormalities - such as hallucinations, social withdrawal, emotional disturbances, strange behavior - then this person , without a doubt, needs urgent consultation with a psychiatrist.
The most characteristic manifestation of psychosis is the presence of hallucinations. A hallucination is a false perception of reality in any of the five sensory modalities, when an external stimulus does not actually exist, but people subject to hallucinations see, hear or feel a non-existent object. Hallucinations may occur in the twilight state between sleep and awakening, in delirium, delirium tremens, or exhaustion; they can also be induced under hypnosis. Most often, hallucinations are visual.
Persistent hallucinations are characteristic of schizophrenia. In one type of this disease, sick people believe that they hear an accusing commanding voice, to which they react in complete panic, with complete obedience, or with an attempt at self-defense or even suicide. Illusions are somewhat different from hallucinations - if hallucinations occur without any external stimulus, then illusions are characterized by a false perception of the actual stimulus.
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness characterized by a variety of symptoms. These include loss of contact with reality, the aforementioned strange behavior, disorganized thinking and speech, decreased emotional expressiveness, and social isolation. Usually, one patient does not experience all, but only some of the symptoms, and each person may have an individual combination of these symptoms.
The term "schizophrenia" comes from the Greek words "schizo" (meaning "split") and "phreno" ("mind, soul"), and can be translated as "division of the soul." However, contrary to quite common belief, schizophrenia cannot be attributed to a person with a split personality or multiple personality syndrome.
What is the difference between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder?
Schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are often confused, and some people believe they are the same thing. In fact, these are two completely different diseases. Schizophrenia is a disorder of brain functioning; some people are already born with this disorder because it can be inherited. But symptoms of the disease usually do not develop for many years. In men, symptoms begin to appear in their late teens or early twenties; Women typically experience symptoms between the ages of twenty and thirty. It happens, of course, that symptoms of schizophrenia appear in childhood, but this happens extremely rarely.
When a person suffers from schizophrenia, he experiences hallucinations and delusions, sees things that do not exist, talks to someone whom he sees quite clearly, believes things that are in no way true. For example, he can see demons who sit at the table with him during lunch; or may quite sincerely believe that he is God's son. People with these disorders also suffer from disordered thinking, decreased concentration, and difficulty focusing. They also lose the ability to take initiative and make and implement plans. As a rule, such people cannot be socially adapted.
Often, a person with schizophrenia believes that the voices they hear are there to control them or cause harm. He probably gets very scared when he hears them. He can sit for hours without moving and talk, talk... A sane person, observing a patient with schizophrenia, will not catch a single drop of meaning in his speech. Some people with this disorder appear quite normal; but this is only until they start talking, and most often - talking to themselves. Schizophrenia is also marked by clumsy, uncoordinated movements and an inability to take care of oneself sufficiently.
The main difference between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder is that the latter disorder is not congenital. This mental state is caused by certain events that occur in a person’s life, and they are usually associated with some psychological trauma received in childhood. This could be, for example, physical or sexual violence. People with this disorder seem to develop additional personalities as a way of coping with the traumatic event. To be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, a person must have at least one alternate personality that significantly controls their behavior.
In total, one patient can develop up to one hundred personalities, but on average their number is ten. These may be “additional” individuals of the same sex, the other sex, or both sexes at the same time. Sometimes different personalities of the same person will even take on different physical characteristics, such as a certain mode of movement or different levels of health and stamina. But depression and attempts at self-harm can become common to all facets of the personality of the same person.
There are several signs that are the same for both schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Patients with schizophrenia may have hallucinations; While people with multiple personality disorder do not always experience them, about a third of patients do experience hallucinations. Multiple personality disorder can cause behavior problems and difficulty concentrating during school at a young age; This can confuse specialists, who sometimes confuse this disorder with schizophrenia, since it also develops and manifests itself most often in adolescence.
As you can see, if a person is talking out loud to an invisible interlocutor, this can be a sign of a very serious condition. Therefore, you must do everything possible to ensure that the person close to you receives the necessary help as soon as possible - otherwise he may cause irreparable harm to himself!
“It’s like I’m writing subtitles for my life,” admits 37-year-old Alexandra. – Everything I’m going to do, I comment out loud: “It’s warm today, I’ll wear a blue skirt”; “I’ll withdraw a couple of thousand from the card, that should be enough.” If my friend hears it, it’s not scary - he’s used to it. But in a public place people start looking at me sideways, and I feel stupid.”
It helps me concentrate. By saying our actions out loud, we are not at all striving for communication - so why don’t we just remain silent? “The need for comments appears when the task facing us requires concentration,” notes psychotherapist Andrei Korneev, a specialist in somatic psychology. – There was a period in the lives of each of us when we described out loud everything that we did or were going to do. Although we may not remember it: it happened at the age of about three years. Such speech, addressed to no one, is a natural stage of development; it helps the child to navigate the objective world, move from spontaneous reactions to conscious actions and learn to manage them. Then external speech “collapses”, turns into internal speech, and we stop noticing it.” But it can “unfold” again and sound out loud if we perform some complex sequence of operations, for example, assembling an electronic circuit or preparing a dish according to a new recipe. Its function is the same: it makes it easier for us to manipulate objects and helps us plan them.
Elena, 41 years old, Norwegian language teacher
“Criticizing myself out loud, or even scolding, was a habit for me. I never thought about it and somehow involuntarily made a remark to myself in the psychotherapist’s office. And he asked: “Who told little Lena that she was a klutz?” It was like an epiphany: I remembered that this is exactly how my school teacher scolded me. And I stopped saying that - because I don’t think so, these words are not mine!”
I'm letting out my emotions. Exclamations that have no addressee can be a manifestation of strong feelings: indignation, delight. One day, Pushkin, alone, “clapping his hands and shouting, “Oh yes Pushkin! what a son of a bitch!” - I was so pleased with my work. Replies: “At least it’s gone!” student before an exam, “so what to do about it?” the accountant over the quarterly report and the things we say while looking after the train we missed - they all have the same reason. “A statement in such a situation serves as an emotional release and is often accompanied by an energetic gesture,” explains Andrei Korneev. “Strong is a surge of energy, and it requires some kind of manifestation outside so that we can get rid of excess tension.” I continue to have an internal dialogue. Sometimes we seem to look at ourselves from the outside - and evaluate, scold, and lecture. “If these are monotonous statements in which the same assessments are made, little dependent on changes in circumstances, this is a consequence of emotional trauma, most likely received in childhood,” says Andrei Korneev. “An unresolved conflict turns into an internal one: one part of us conflicts with another.” Strong feelings that we experienced in the past did not find an outlet (for example, we could not express anger towards our parents) and remained locked inside. And we relive it, repeating out loud the words that were once addressed to us.
What to do?
Separate your thoughts from others
Who speaks to us during such monologues? Are we really expressing our own thoughts and opinions or are we repeating what our parents, relatives or close friends once told us? “Try to remember who it was. Imagine that this person is now in front of you, suggests Andrei Korneev. - Listen to his words. Find an answer that you can give now, as an adult, taking into account your life experience and knowledge. As a child, you may have been confused or scared, unsure of how to respond, or afraid. Today you have something to say, and you will be able to defend yourself.” This exercise helps complete the experience.
Try to speak more quietly
“If talking through actions helps you, you don’t need to try to get rid of it,” reassures Andrey Korneev. – And if disapproving glances or comments from others who do not want to be aware of your plans interfere with this, then try to avoid them. What should I do for this? Speak more quietly, in a whisper. This is just that rare case when the more illegible, the better. Then those around you will not suspect for a second that you are addressing them, and there will be fewer awkward situations. Gradually you can switch to silent pronunciation, it’s a matter of training.” Look closely and you will notice other people moving their lips near a store shelf with twenty types of cereals. But this doesn't bother anyone.
Prepare in advance
Make a grocery list when going to the store. Calculate your time when getting ready for the train. Learn all exam papers. Planning and careful preparation will eliminate the need to think on your feet and worry out loud. Of course, there are emergencies that are beyond our control and that cannot be foreseen. But, hand on heart, we admit that they happen rarely.
Many people probably have a colleague who gets up and says, as if to himself: “I’ll go eat” or “It’s time to go home.” This information has no value for others, so why do absolutely normal people comment out loud on their actions? The Village asked a psychiatrist and a city dweller who sometimes talks to himself about it.
Timur Enaliev
psychiatrist, psychotherapist, narcologist
The human mind is constantly in a stream of thoughts. There is more and more information - most of it absolutely useless - and our minds are overloaded. A significant part of live verbal communication is stolen by social networks - which is perhaps why there are more and more people who talk to themselves. This is a kind of obsessive amulet so as not to forget how to speak. Joke.
Seriously, the spoken word has a special power. This is vibration. It’s a pity that many people treat words superficially. How a person speaks is, to some extent, more important than what he says. People are very focused on form, everyone has to choose the right, “right” words in order to be understood. However, in order to be felt, it is enough to be in a relatively relaxed and friendly mood, to voice your thoughts, and not to use templates and blanks, which makes our communication bland and formal.
No matter how strange a person may look from the outside, commenting out loud on his actions, voicing his intentions, this is, rather, of a defensive nature. This is protection from feelings of loneliness, self-doubt, a kind of self-strengthening and reinforcement. More often than not, this is not realized, and therefore it is not hidden.
And a little about the other side of the phenomenon - a condition well known in psychiatry. With obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is quite diverse in its manifestations, a person, figuratively speaking, becomes a hostage to his thoughts. He experiences a painful experience, and is unable to resist pronouncing certain words and phrases out loud. Fear and apprehension are so strong that they provoke the performance of various protective rituals, including verbal ones.
With personality disharmony (psychopathy), there are cases of uncontrolled negative speech. And finally, the deepest and most difficult to reach is the psychotic level. A person in such states can be in dialogue with hallucinations.
Yulia Kalinina
talking to herself
This is called egocentric speech - that is, speech addressed to oneself. It happens to me from time to time. When my head begins to feel like a mess due to a large number of simultaneous tasks, or fatigue has accumulated, or I need to concentrate heavily on details, I pronounce my actions out loud in order to sort of control myself. I paid attention to it several years ago, when I began to live alone - that is, in a situation where, except for me, no one makes sounds in the apartment. Personally, egocentric speech helps me a lot: the feeling that you are not doing something alone. It’s as if two people are controlling each other: me and me. For example, today I filled out a tax return, there are a lot of numbers that I don’t understand anything about. I said each number out loud so as not to get confused.
Illustration: Nastya Yarovaya
Why do people talk to themselves? To understand the reasons for this, you must first highlight how people speak:
- They silently conduct an internal dialogue with themselves.
- They talk to themselves out loud.
- They talk with a non-existent interlocutor from outside or inside themselves.
Internal silent dialogue with yourself.
This phenomenon is completely normal for any person, and especially for an introvert who is closed and silent by nature. A closed introvert is reluctant to contact the outside world and does not allow anyone outside to interfere in his personal life. Therefore, living in his own inner world, the introvert silently conducts dialogues with himself.
But internal dialogues are not conducted. Conversation with oneself begins in childhood, when the child is already able to pay attention to his internal psychological processes, and continues until the end of his life. According to S. Freud, inner speech is a conversation between the three components of the human psyche - the Ego (the conscious and comprehended part), the Id (the forbidden and repressed part of the consciousness) and the Super-Ego (all manifestations of the Super-I). Therefore, the essence of internal dialogue is a dialogue between our meaningful consciousness and its unconscious part, the censor of which is the Super-I. In the process of internal dialogue, an agreement occurs between these three structures of the psyche, contributing to the process of continuous development of the individual.
In difficult life moments, internal dialogue helps a person make the right decision to get out of the current situation.
Talking to yourself out loud.
You can also talk to yourself out loud. Sometimes people do this out of a feeling of loneliness, melancholy and hopelessness. Talking out loud replaces real communication with people, so when real interlocutors appear, the need to talk to oneself out loud goes away.
As a result of numerous studies by psychologists, it has been found that in other situations, talking to yourself out loud is useful for improving brain activity. By speaking a problem out loud, a person stimulates the brain and copes with the task assigned to him faster. Scientists explain this by the fact that speech can significantly enhance brain activity and improve the processes of perception and assimilation of information. This is especially true for this type of person, the auditory learner, who perceives the surrounding reality by ear.
Thus, talking to yourself in any form - silently or out loud - is very helpful in solving problems of varying content and complexity.
Talking out loud with an invisible interlocutor.
The sight of such a conversation in public, as well as among the people around us, causes at least great surprise. It is strange to see a person enthusiastically talking with some invisible interlocutor. Moreover, the words of an imaginary interlocutor can come to him not only from the outside. Listening to an outside voice within himself, a person answers out loud... listens - and answers again. How to explain this strange behavior?
PHOTO Getty Images
Each of us sometimes talks to ourselves. Stretch your imagination and you will hear a muffled chorus of people whispering - praising or castigating 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.
Here's how psychologist James Hardy, who studies the topic, defines self-talk: “Dialogue through which an individual interprets his feelings and ideas, regulates and changes value judgments and beliefs, gives instructions to himself and encourages himself.”
Some psychologists believe that our "I" consists of two parts: one of which 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 them. Everyone has their own way of having these conversations, but here are three techniques that can make them a useful exercise.
You, not me
It matters whether you address yourself as “you” or say “I”. It is better to address yourself using not the first, but the second person pronoun, that is, call yourself “you” and also by name. By changing how we address ourselves in this way, we can better regulate our behavior, thoughts, and feelings. By 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. This technique can also reduce stress in people with social anxiety and help calm you down when you process events after the fact.
Be gentle with yourself
Dialogue with oneself creates space for reflection, but it is not always to our benefit. The best option is to encourage yourself. Trying to motivate yourself, for example, has been shown to help athletes maintain energy levels and improve endurance. Positive self-talk improves our mood and supports us emotionally. Conversely, talking to yourself in a critical manner, research shows, lowers self-esteem and increases 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 to yourself kindly.
Use in emergency situations
The inner voice helps us control our impulsive behavior. For example, when we tell ourselves: “Just do it!” or, “Don’t even look at that piece of pie!” 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 had less control over themselves than in the other part of the experiment, where nothing prevented their inner voice from sounding.
Self-talk is also thought to help when you're learning something new. The key to success here is to keep your statements short, clear, 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 importantly, self-talk builds the self-control and motivation necessary for success. If we tell ourselves that we can be successful, our chances of being successful increase significantly.
For more details, see the Inverse service website.