A Talk on Self Talk: Is it Good or Bad?

Do you talk to yourself? Whether you’re a full-blown talk it out soloist, or you think that talking to yourself is for the “crazy” ones, we’ve got news. You talk to yourself, you’ve been doing it your whole life, and you’re likely doing it right now.

Listening to Our Inner Dialogue

A particular method of acting suggests that actors connect to their characters and use inner dialogue as a means to portray genuine reactions. The idea is to eliminate their own internal dialogue as much as possible and replace it with what the character might be thinking or feeling.

Our inner dialogue controls much of what we think and often propels thoughts and ideas into actions. Most of the time if we can recall this system operating, it’s because it was part of our conscious memory.

The Subconscious Memory

It’s our subconscious memory that complicates things. In this scenario, thoughts pass through a filtering system that stores them as part of your basis for understanding and reasoning throughout your life.

This is key to understanding how self-dialogue affects a person individually. Unconscious self-dialogue can be a breeding ground for suppressed trauma, unrecognized feelings, irrational thoughts, insecurities, and other toxic facets that have potential to be silently destructive.

Can All Self Talk Be Positive?

The focus of achieving positive self-talk is in consciousness. One must first become conscious of what their inner dialogue is, how it affects them, and where it comes from. This awareness is a catalyst to regulating the self-talk you engage in and allows for you to catch yourself and begin to cut back the layers and get to a place where you can recognize it and move on.

This is not to say that negative self-talk is not normal. Sometimes we’re not even aware of our negative self-talk behaviors.  It is well within logic to think that we may absorb negative thoughts from others, our surroundings, and countless other variables.

It is in response to this tendency that we can have some element of control and find peace of mind.