You find yourself commenting on your day out loud in the kitchen or in the street, and a little worry arises: “Am I going crazy?” Don’t panic, many French people are affected.
For contemporary psychology, this behavior is called self-talk, or self-directed language: the habitual internal dialogue that simply “escapes” out loud. Far from being an automatic sign of illness, it is often used to sort out one’s ideas, manage stress and get to know oneself better, as long as this remains flexible and adapted to the context.
Speaking out loud alone, a real boost for the brain
Work in neurocognition shows that speaking out loud alone helps the brain concentrate better. Researcher Hélène Loevenbruck, from the Psychology and Neurocognition Laboratory in Grenoble, explains that when we put our thoughts into words, “different sensory areas are activated, which promotes a deeper understanding and greater awareness of what we think or feel.”
The cognitive psychologist Gary Lupyan showed in 2012 that naming out loud the object you are looking for, for example “banana”, better activates the visual and conceptual networks of the brain and allows you to find it more quickly. This self-directed language supports working memory, executive functions and everyday problem solving.
What talking to ourselves reveals about our psychological development
The psychologist Lev Vygotsky already described “egocentric language” in children: these sentences muttered while playing or solving a problem. With age, this language transforms into an inner voice, but in some adults part of it remains external, simply because it helps them. Psychotherapist Anne Wilson Schaef sums it up: “We all need someone who understands us, who listens to us and is on our side, and very often that person is ourselves.”
The figures point in the same direction: Top Santé reports that more than one in two French people talk to themselves out loud, and TF1 Info mentions up to 96% of people affected at least occasionally. When this self-talk takes the form of “you” or the third person, it creates a psychological distance that often calms intense emotions.
Speaking alone: when it is no longer a simple regulation tool
For mental health specialists, the question is not so much whether we talk alone, but how. When the comments become very negative, threatening or confusing, when they occupy a large part of the day or arise in public without connection with the situation, they can announce what psychiatrists call soliloquy associated with anxiety or psychotic disorders.
Clinicians then emphasize four simple benchmarks: the frequency of the monologue, its content, the context in which it occurs and the impact on social or professional life. If speaking alone no longer relieves you but increases your suffering or isolates you from reality, an exchange with a psychologist or psychiatrist allows you to clarify the situation without judgment.