August 31, 2026 • 13 mins
You've probably noticed people talking to themselves and had some thought or comment about that. Perhaps something along the lines of: "That person might be crazy." Well, turns out it is much more normal than you might think. What do you talk to yourself about?
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Join our amazing fan club
Links and References:
- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/talking-to-yourself
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5986836/
- https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-news/is-it-normal-to-talk-to-yourself--what-it-could-really-mean.html
- https://elemental.medium.com/why-talking-to-yourself-is-a-secret-superpower-5eff091b896c
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/defining-memories/202502/7-benefits-of-talking-to-ourselves-aloud
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-22647-2
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11274574/
- https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/62246/chapter-abstract/550947980?redirectedFrom=fulltext#550947980
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/17470218.2011.647039
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
to Why We Do What We Do Mini. I'm your host, Abraham.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And I'm your host, Shane.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about humans and
non-human animals and all the things that they do. And
we do that in a very short discussion on Mondays.
And we call it a mini because it's short. And
so we're going to try and get in there and
talk about this and then get out of there and
you can go about your day. And that's the goal here,
15 minutes or less, what we're shooting for. Yes, yes,
(00:42):
and we will do it. Yeah, we're committed to this. Okay,
before we jump in, if you are joining us for
the first time, welcome. I hope that you enjoy what
you hear in this discussion. And if you do and
you'd like to support us, you can head over to Patreon.
You can leave us a rating and review, like, subscribe,
or tell a friend. And if you're a person who's
coming back, then welcome back. If you haven't supported us,
you can do that in the ways that I just mentioned.
(01:02):
And just thank you for listening either way. We appreciate
you being here. And so I think that's what we
have to say. We'll jump right into it. Are you ready? Yeah,
let's do it. Okay, I'm going to tell a short story.
I go to the fridge. I open it. Look inside.
I mutter under my breath. What was I looking for?
Why did I come over here? A quick scan of
the contents of the fridge do nothing to expose whatever
(01:23):
enigmatic motivation sent me on this futile quest. But more importantly,
who was my question for? I said, what was I
looking for? Why did I come over here? There's no
one here to hear it or answer, but myself. And
nor would they have been able to answer even if
they'd been able to hear it because I'm asking myself.
So what's going on here? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Once we learn to talk, we talk a lot, like
a whole lot, like so much. We talk to each other.
We record our talking for other people to listen to later. Like,
I don't know, I would picture that being like some
type of radio format or I don't know, whatever this
thing is called. Podcast, I guess. We talk to our pets.
We even talk to ourselves. But what is the point
of talking to ourselves? Why do we do it? And
what does it even mean?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So we're going to talk to you about talking to
yourself or ourselves and other people talking to themselves. And
we're going to try and answer those very questions. Why
do we do it? What does it mean?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. So self-talk, as we might call it, is any
verbal behavior directed towards ourselves as the audience. So we
are the speaker and we are also the audience to
our own speaking behavior. And it can impressively span a
pretty large range of possible forms. So for instance, if
I stub my toe and I shout out in pain,
that could count as talking to myself. Obviously, speaking in
(02:37):
full sentences when no one is around is talking to myself.
But thinking in a monologue can count as talking to
myself as well. So reciting a list, commenting on a
situation without an audience, an outward audience or an external audience,
I should say.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
And then even writing in a diary can all be
counted as talking to myself.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You're doing language that's just for you. That's it.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's all for you. So if there is any question
about whether or not this is normal, and I got
to say that when I was looking into the research
on this, that was a question a lot of people
seem to have. Sure. In response, first, there is no
such thing as normal. So there's that. But if by normal,
you mean that do most people do it? Those with language, yes,
(03:20):
that is the case. Once you have language, there will
almost inevitably be an opportunity to use verbal behavior and
self-talk In one way or another, like it's just, it
is just a thing that we do that we talk.
And sometimes we don't have an audience besides ourselves to
talk to. And again, that can even be like, if
(03:41):
you're writing down a list to remember things, that's kind
of like talking to yourself, right? Like that is you
are your own audience there. Right, right.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Exactly. So what does it mean? It mostly means that
you have an intact verbal repertoire. It also means that
experiences with self-talk have been useful, productive, or at least
feel comfortable or familiar enough to persist in the absence
of social engagement. So it's worth noting that self-talk may
also happen during times where people who are experiencing a
psychotic episode or other mental health issues, such as hallucinations,
(04:10):
might show up there. So in these cases, self-talk may
indicate a need for a specific mental health support service,
and it should be administered quickly. But that's not as
common as kind of your day-to-day self-talk.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, just like... Everybody does self-talk. It can also happen
during a psychotic episode, but it doesn't mean you're having
a psychotic episode, right? Right. Exactly. So that's an important
thing to understand is like hallucinations that are happening as
part of mental health disorders that are happening. There could
be self-talk happening, but most of us do it a
(04:41):
lot of the time. Right. Now- There are people out
there who find great joy in taxonomizing things. And by that,
I mean coming up with categories to call one thing
different from another. And they have delineated three types of self-talk.
Negative self-talk, positive self-talk, and neutral self-talk. Very quickly, negative meaning,
(05:04):
in this case, critical or cruel, saying something mean about yourself.
Positive in this case, meaning affirming and kind, something nice
about yourself. And neutral meaning having no evaluation of valence
about yourself. It's just a thing that is said. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Now, briefly, some experimental arrangements find that negative self-talk can
improve performance in some very narrow circumstances, like motivation in sports,
sometimes inconsistently. Positive self-talk generally has useful outcomes and helps
people focus, relax, and manage their emotions. And neutral self-talk
often occurs when narrative or listing or looking for things,
(05:43):
and it can be helpful in those situations. That's usually
when we see that.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. And so sometimes we just talk about things that
we're selling, and those are ads talk.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Negative self-ad talk.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
All right, we're back. So those who have looked into
this from an experimental perspective report that generally speaking, self-talk
has many benefits. People who self-talk while engaged in a
task will usually stay more focused on the task and
complete it more quickly and more accurately. There's some actual
specific studies that have done this. Some evidence suggests that
people with anxiety who talk to themselves when they do this,
(06:24):
they sometimes create a distance from their anxious feelings and
that helps them process their emotions in a way that
can help them reduce their anxiety. And it's not like
you'll go from a 10 to a zero, but it
might help you bring you down from like a 10
to maybe an eight or a seven. And so if
you can just help bring the thermometer down a little bit,
that can potentially help. And again, doesn't work for everyone
all of the time, but some evidence has found that
(06:47):
people who are anxious, who self-talk, maybe sometimes feel less anxious.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, yeah. Now, a popularly cited 2012 study by Lupien
and friends in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology demonstrated
that people who engage in self-talk were able to more
quickly locate things that they were looking for, like in
a specific task in which they were asked to find
things relative to people who only talk to themselves in
their minds or not at all. So this like open
(07:12):
vocal self-talking seemed to be most helpful in that situation.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah. So it was like, find this thing. People found
it more quickly if they were engaging in self-talk while
looking for it. I think they speculated, if I recall correctly,
that people were sort of reminding themselves of what they
were doing. It helped them stay on task more. And
so they were therefore more quick at finding the thing
they were looking for. So this thing. Now there is
this weird rabbit hole. Some sources we found went down
(07:38):
in which they point out that the purpose of talking
is communication and the exchange of information. And so what
is to be gained from talking to oneself? There is
no exchange of information. Then there's not really communication. So
I'm gonna do a quick rebuttal to this silliness that
these people decided they needed to spend time writing an
article about. The purpose of verbal behavior is not necessarily
(08:00):
an exchange of information or communication. So, no.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
No. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
We disagree. Yeah, your premise is flawed. Like, you're arguing
if the purpose of it is information exchange, then what
are we doing with self-talk? And I'm going to say
it's not information exchange. There are a lot of reasons
we engage in verbal behavior. It is a way we
interact with the world. It is our language, our verbal behavior.
Sometimes that means it's an audience and sometimes it doesn't.
(08:26):
It's just a thing that we do. So if you
understand that that's the point, that's the purpose, that the
purpose is not necessarily exchange of information, then your question
becomes null and void.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, exactly. Now, overt self-talk has two features that contribute
to how it works and its uniqueness. One is that
it is a form that is overt. So for those
of us who hear, the sound of our own voices
carries with it more impactful stimulus features than internal talk.
The sounds are overt, they're audible, and they carry with
them those stimulus functions of heard language. So basically, it's
(08:55):
speaking out loud.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah. And again, I'll just go back to the easy
example of making a list. If you say that list
out loud, it is often easier to remember than if
you are just reciting it in your mind. Right. Again,
when you hear things out loud, they are out loud.
They're more salient. They are clearer. They are more present.
They have more stimulus functions. And of course, those without
(09:18):
hearing might even sign to themselves. So those who use
sign language or assisted hearing devices, for example, they might
sign to themselves with a similar effect, which is related
to the second aspect of talking to ourselves, which is
that it requires deliberate, effortful behavior. The fact that we
are moving our mouths or our hands or both for
(09:38):
writing or signing or whatever to produce language requires coordination
and direct motor interactions with our environment. So again, when
we talk to ourselves, the sounds that we hear from
our own voices are more powerful and more salient than
simply reciting things in our mind, which still has an effect.
Like you can still do internal self-dialogue or monologue, that
(09:58):
can work. And when we actually say it, when we're
actually writing it, when we're actually signing it, whatever it is,
when we're producing that language, we have to move. We
have to like move our bodies to do it, right?
Like to do a thing. And that has a salient
and powerful stimulus function as well, because it is overt,
because we have to do something to make it happen.
(10:20):
It has those two features of it. It has salient,
detectable sensory stimulus features, and it requires motor coordination and movement. Therefore,
doing things out loud can affect our behavior in more
powerful ways in many instances than simply doing them in
our minds. Writing things down can be more effective and
more powerful than just reciting it. Saying it loud has
a similar effect. So that's part of why you have
(10:42):
people who say things like, write it down, to write
down an affirming statement or something. But anyway, I'll end
my part there. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I mean, that's fair, though. And we have to talk
about all that, right? So why do we talk to ourselves?
It's because language is a way that we interact with
the world. It is shaped by social community, and so
are many of our behaviors. Once we have verbal behavior
or language in our repertoire, we can use it in
a variety of ways. And that's true for any behavior, too.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
But this specifically verbal behavior, we can use it in
a variety of ways, including directing or focusing our own behavior.
And that's a nice, simple way to look at it.
So you're not crazy if you're talking to yourself. Actually,
it could be helping you. Other people talking to themselves,
it could be helping them. It is not a thing
that you should try and suppress. If kids talk to themselves,
that could, again, be just a really good thing that
(11:30):
they're developing and using their language in that way. There
are ways that we do it. There are some times
that it is related to pathological things, but not inherently. Right.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Perfect. All right. That's what we have to say about
talking to yourself. If you'd like to share your thoughts
about talking to yourselves, you can talk to ourselves instead
by emailing us directly at info at WWD, WWD podcast.com
or reaching us on the social media platforms. And we
do look forward to hearing from you. If you'd like
to support us, you can leave us a rating and review.
Just click however many stars, click that thumbs up, whatever. Like,
(12:02):
subscribe so that you never miss any episodes. And if
you're feeling particularly generous, you can leave a review where
you say all the nice things about us. And that's
helpful too. You can even take the further leap by
joining us on Patreon. You get early episodes, ad-free episodes,
bonus content, and I'll read your name in the list
of supporters at the end of our full-length discussions. So
when you hear a full length, you might hear your
name there if you have joined us on Patreon. And
(12:22):
we do appreciate those people so much.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Of course. Thank you so much to my team of
people without whom I could not make this. You all
know who you are. I'm going to keep this short
so we can keep this mini, but thank you for
recording with me today, Shane. Hey, thanks for having me.
All right. Is there anything you'd like to add or
anything that I forgot before we wrap up this mini? Nope.
Not today. All right, everybody go talk to yourselves today.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
This is Abraham.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is Shane.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Why we do what we do. Mini is out. Bye.
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to www.wwdpodcast.com.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.
You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
to Why We Do What We Do Mini. I'm your host, Abraham.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And I'm your host, Shane.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about humans and
non-human animals and all the things that they do. And
we do that in a very short discussion on Mondays.
And we call it a mini because it's short. And
so we're going to try and get in there and
talk about this and then get out of there and
you can go about your day. And that's the goal here,
15 minutes or less, what we're shooting for. Yes, yes,
(00:42):
and we will do it. Yeah, we're committed to this. Okay,
before we jump in, if you are joining us for
the first time, welcome. I hope that you enjoy what
you hear in this discussion. And if you do and
you'd like to support us, you can head over to Patreon.
You can leave us a rating and review, like, subscribe,
or tell a friend. And if you're a person who's
coming back, then welcome back. If you haven't supported us,
you can do that in the ways that I just mentioned.
(01:02):
And just thank you for listening either way. We appreciate
you being here. And so I think that's what we
have to say. We'll jump right into it. Are you ready? Yeah,
let's do it. Okay, I'm going to tell a short story.
I go to the fridge. I open it. Look inside.
I mutter under my breath. What was I looking for?
Why did I come over here? A quick scan of
the contents of the fridge do nothing to expose whatever
(01:23):
enigmatic motivation sent me on this futile quest. But more importantly,
who was my question for? I said, what was I
looking for? Why did I come over here? There's no
one here to hear it or answer, but myself. And
nor would they have been able to answer even if
they'd been able to hear it because I'm asking myself.
So what's going on here? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Once we learn to talk, we talk a lot, like
a whole lot, like so much. We talk to each other.
We record our talking for other people to listen to later. Like,
I don't know, I would picture that being like some
type of radio format or I don't know, whatever this
thing is called. Podcast, I guess. We talk to our pets.
We even talk to ourselves. But what is the point
of talking to ourselves? Why do we do it? And
what does it even mean?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So we're going to talk to you about talking to
yourself or ourselves and other people talking to themselves. And
we're going to try and answer those very questions. Why
do we do it? What does it mean?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. So self-talk, as we might call it, is any
verbal behavior directed towards ourselves as the audience. So we
are the speaker and we are also the audience to
our own speaking behavior. And it can impressively span a
pretty large range of possible forms. So for instance, if
I stub my toe and I shout out in pain,
that could count as talking to myself. Obviously, speaking in
(02:37):
full sentences when no one is around is talking to myself.
But thinking in a monologue can count as talking to
myself as well. So reciting a list, commenting on a
situation without an audience, an outward audience or an external audience,
I should say.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
And then even writing in a diary can all be
counted as talking to myself.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You're doing language that's just for you. That's it.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's all for you. So if there is any question
about whether or not this is normal, and I got
to say that when I was looking into the research
on this, that was a question a lot of people
seem to have. Sure. In response, first, there is no
such thing as normal. So there's that. But if by normal,
you mean that do most people do it? Those with language, yes,
(03:20):
that is the case. Once you have language, there will
almost inevitably be an opportunity to use verbal behavior and
self-talk In one way or another, like it's just, it
is just a thing that we do that we talk.
And sometimes we don't have an audience besides ourselves to
talk to. And again, that can even be like, if
(03:41):
you're writing down a list to remember things, that's kind
of like talking to yourself, right? Like that is you
are your own audience there. Right, right.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Exactly. So what does it mean? It mostly means that
you have an intact verbal repertoire. It also means that
experiences with self-talk have been useful, productive, or at least
feel comfortable or familiar enough to persist in the absence
of social engagement. So it's worth noting that self-talk may
also happen during times where people who are experiencing a
psychotic episode or other mental health issues, such as hallucinations,
(04:10):
might show up there. So in these cases, self-talk may
indicate a need for a specific mental health support service,
and it should be administered quickly. But that's not as
common as kind of your day-to-day self-talk.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, just like... Everybody does self-talk. It can also happen
during a psychotic episode, but it doesn't mean you're having
a psychotic episode, right? Right. Exactly. So that's an important
thing to understand is like hallucinations that are happening as
part of mental health disorders that are happening. There could
be self-talk happening, but most of us do it a
(04:41):
lot of the time. Right. Now- There are people out
there who find great joy in taxonomizing things. And by that,
I mean coming up with categories to call one thing
different from another. And they have delineated three types of self-talk.
Negative self-talk, positive self-talk, and neutral self-talk. Very quickly, negative meaning,
(05:04):
in this case, critical or cruel, saying something mean about yourself.
Positive in this case, meaning affirming and kind, something nice
about yourself. And neutral meaning having no evaluation of valence
about yourself. It's just a thing that is said. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Now, briefly, some experimental arrangements find that negative self-talk can
improve performance in some very narrow circumstances, like motivation in sports,
sometimes inconsistently. Positive self-talk generally has useful outcomes and helps
people focus, relax, and manage their emotions. And neutral self-talk
often occurs when narrative or listing or looking for things,
(05:43):
and it can be helpful in those situations. That's usually
when we see that.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. And so sometimes we just talk about things that
we're selling, and those are ads talk.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Negative self-ad talk.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
All right, we're back. So those who have looked into
this from an experimental perspective report that generally speaking, self-talk
has many benefits. People who self-talk while engaged in a
task will usually stay more focused on the task and
complete it more quickly and more accurately. There's some actual
specific studies that have done this. Some evidence suggests that
people with anxiety who talk to themselves when they do this,
(06:24):
they sometimes create a distance from their anxious feelings and
that helps them process their emotions in a way that
can help them reduce their anxiety. And it's not like
you'll go from a 10 to a zero, but it
might help you bring you down from like a 10
to maybe an eight or a seven. And so if
you can just help bring the thermometer down a little bit,
that can potentially help. And again, doesn't work for everyone
all of the time, but some evidence has found that
(06:47):
people who are anxious, who self-talk, maybe sometimes feel less anxious.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, yeah. Now, a popularly cited 2012 study by Lupien
and friends in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology demonstrated
that people who engage in self-talk were able to more
quickly locate things that they were looking for, like in
a specific task in which they were asked to find
things relative to people who only talk to themselves in
their minds or not at all. So this like open
(07:12):
vocal self-talking seemed to be most helpful in that situation.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah. So it was like, find this thing. People found
it more quickly if they were engaging in self-talk while
looking for it. I think they speculated, if I recall correctly,
that people were sort of reminding themselves of what they
were doing. It helped them stay on task more. And
so they were therefore more quick at finding the thing
they were looking for. So this thing. Now there is
this weird rabbit hole. Some sources we found went down
(07:38):
in which they point out that the purpose of talking
is communication and the exchange of information. And so what
is to be gained from talking to oneself? There is
no exchange of information. Then there's not really communication. So
I'm gonna do a quick rebuttal to this silliness that
these people decided they needed to spend time writing an
article about. The purpose of verbal behavior is not necessarily
(08:00):
an exchange of information or communication. So, no.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
No. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
We disagree. Yeah, your premise is flawed. Like, you're arguing
if the purpose of it is information exchange, then what
are we doing with self-talk? And I'm going to say
it's not information exchange. There are a lot of reasons
we engage in verbal behavior. It is a way we
interact with the world. It is our language, our verbal behavior.
Sometimes that means it's an audience and sometimes it doesn't.
(08:26):
It's just a thing that we do. So if you
understand that that's the point, that's the purpose, that the
purpose is not necessarily exchange of information, then your question
becomes null and void.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, exactly. Now, overt self-talk has two features that contribute
to how it works and its uniqueness. One is that
it is a form that is overt. So for those
of us who hear, the sound of our own voices
carries with it more impactful stimulus features than internal talk.
The sounds are overt, they're audible, and they carry with
them those stimulus functions of heard language. So basically, it's
(08:55):
speaking out loud.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah. And again, I'll just go back to the easy
example of making a list. If you say that list
out loud, it is often easier to remember than if
you are just reciting it in your mind. Right. Again,
when you hear things out loud, they are out loud.
They're more salient. They are clearer. They are more present.
They have more stimulus functions. And of course, those without
(09:18):
hearing might even sign to themselves. So those who use
sign language or assisted hearing devices, for example, they might
sign to themselves with a similar effect, which is related
to the second aspect of talking to ourselves, which is
that it requires deliberate, effortful behavior. The fact that we
are moving our mouths or our hands or both for
(09:38):
writing or signing or whatever to produce language requires coordination
and direct motor interactions with our environment. So again, when
we talk to ourselves, the sounds that we hear from
our own voices are more powerful and more salient than
simply reciting things in our mind, which still has an effect.
Like you can still do internal self-dialogue or monologue, that
(09:58):
can work. And when we actually say it, when we're
actually writing it, when we're actually signing it, whatever it is,
when we're producing that language, we have to move. We
have to like move our bodies to do it, right?
Like to do a thing. And that has a salient
and powerful stimulus function as well, because it is overt,
because we have to do something to make it happen.
(10:20):
It has those two features of it. It has salient,
detectable sensory stimulus features, and it requires motor coordination and movement. Therefore,
doing things out loud can affect our behavior in more
powerful ways in many instances than simply doing them in
our minds. Writing things down can be more effective and
more powerful than just reciting it. Saying it loud has
a similar effect. So that's part of why you have
(10:42):
people who say things like, write it down, to write
down an affirming statement or something. But anyway, I'll end
my part there. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I mean, that's fair, though. And we have to talk
about all that, right? So why do we talk to ourselves?
It's because language is a way that we interact with
the world. It is shaped by social community, and so
are many of our behaviors. Once we have verbal behavior
or language in our repertoire, we can use it in
a variety of ways. And that's true for any behavior, too.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
But this specifically verbal behavior, we can use it in
a variety of ways, including directing or focusing our own behavior.
And that's a nice, simple way to look at it.
So you're not crazy if you're talking to yourself. Actually,
it could be helping you. Other people talking to themselves,
it could be helping them. It is not a thing
that you should try and suppress. If kids talk to themselves,
that could, again, be just a really good thing that
(11:30):
they're developing and using their language in that way. There
are ways that we do it. There are some times
that it is related to pathological things, but not inherently. Right.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Perfect. All right. That's what we have to say about
talking to yourself. If you'd like to share your thoughts
about talking to yourselves, you can talk to ourselves instead
by emailing us directly at info at WWD, WWD podcast.com
or reaching us on the social media platforms. And we
do look forward to hearing from you. If you'd like
to support us, you can leave us a rating and review.
Just click however many stars, click that thumbs up, whatever. Like,
(12:02):
subscribe so that you never miss any episodes. And if
you're feeling particularly generous, you can leave a review where
you say all the nice things about us. And that's
helpful too. You can even take the further leap by
joining us on Patreon. You get early episodes, ad-free episodes,
bonus content, and I'll read your name in the list
of supporters at the end of our full-length discussions. So
when you hear a full length, you might hear your
name there if you have joined us on Patreon. And
(12:22):
we do appreciate those people so much.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Of course. Thank you so much to my team of
people without whom I could not make this. You all
know who you are. I'm going to keep this short
so we can keep this mini, but thank you for
recording with me today, Shane. Hey, thanks for having me.
All right. Is there anything you'd like to add or
anything that I forgot before we wrap up this mini? Nope.
Not today. All right, everybody go talk to yourselves today.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
This is Abraham.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is Shane.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Why we do what we do. Mini is out. Bye.
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to www.wwdpodcast.com.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.
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