Are You Talking To Yourself?

Psalm 42: 1 – 11

Are you talking to yourself?

To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation of the sons of Korah.

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, “Where is your God?” 4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. 5 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance. 6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore, I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, and from the heights of Hermon, from the Hill Mizar. 7 Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. 8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me—A prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” 10 As with a breaking of my bones, my enemies reproach me, while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” 11 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.

Come on now, fess up and shame the devil. Do you talk to yourself?

I talk to myself a lot. And I don’t mean only in the privacy of my own home. I talk to myself while I’m walking down the street, when I’m in my office or when I’m driving.

Thinking out loud helps me materialize what I’m thinking about. It helps me make sense of things.

It also makes me look insane. Crazy people talk to themselves, right? They’re conversing with the voices inside their heads. If you’re yammering on to nobody, everyone thinks you’re a mental patient.

I’m sure many people have seen me wandering down the streets of Philly and thought, “The crack addiction is strong with that one.”

Well, the joke is on the judgmental folk who give me a side-eye on the train.

Talking to yourself, it turns out, is a sign of genius.

The smartest people on earth talk to themselves. Look at the inner monologues of the greatest thinkers. Look at poetry! Look at history!

Albert Einstein talked to himself. He wasn’t an avid social butterfly when he was growing up, and he preferred to keep to himself.

There are reports on Einstein that he “used to repeat his sentences to himself softly.”

So, you see? I’m not alone, and I’m not completely bonkers. I’m just smart also.

In a Psychology Journal a study revealed that talking to yourself makes your brain work more efficiently.

According to the study, saying things out loud spark’s memory. It solidifies the end game and makes it tangible. If you want to find something, speaking the object's name out loud is helpful when you're familiar with its appearance. In other words, you can’t make sense of something without knowing what you’re dealing with. If you know what you need and verbalize its name, you will better your chances of finding it.

Babies learn to speak by listening to grownups and mimicking what they say. Talking is all about practice. Self-directed speech can help guide children's behavior, with kids often taking themselves step-by-step through tasks such as tying their shoelaces, as if reminding themselves to focus on the job at hand.”

Think about all the munchkins you know. Haven’t you seen them talking to themselves while they play with a toy car or favorite stuffed animal? If a small boy is playing with his toy cars, he might say, "The small car can fit through this garage door, but the big truck is too big.” At the same time, he'll test which of the cars fit inside the toy garage.

A child learns by talking th rough his actions. By doing so, he remembers for the future how he solved the problem. Talking through it helps him or her make sense of the world.

What helps me the most when I talk to myself is that I'm able to organize the countless wild thoughts running rampant through my brain. Hearing my issues vocalized calms my nerves. I'm being my own therapist: Outer-voice me is helping inner-brain me through my problems.