SPENDING THE PANDEMIC TALKING TO YOURSELF? YOU’RE NOT ALONE ZACHARY PINCUS-ROTH
ONE bleak pandemic day, Aisha Tyler caught herself vacuuming the inside of her freezer. Then she scolded herself. Yes, out loud. “You’re insane,” she recalls saying. “What are you doing? You have to stop this right now.” Sometimes the Los Angelesbased actress will shout an expletive and tell herself to “snap out of it”. On brighter days, she’ll congratulate herself on what a good job she’s doing and call for a celebration. “I have definitely announced happy hour in my apartment several times to no one in particular,” she says, “and then I’ll tell myself what a cute martini it is, and I’ll tell myself it was delicious.” Humans leave little unspoken, and this past year, as many of us have avoided social events and worked from home alone, we’ve been forced to talk out loud to the only person still around to listen: ourselves. Sure, it may take the form of bantering with our pets, scolding the politicians on TV or cajoling our malfunctioning printers, but that’s really just another way of hearing our own voice, helping us discern what exactly is going on inside that head of ours. Many self-talkers worry others would think they’re crazy. But no one is there to know.
Living alone, I’ve noticed my own tendency to talk to household objects, calling them “thing” or “man”. I scolded the toppling bottles in the fridge for “making trouble”. What’s going on here? Charles Fernyhough, a psychology professor at Durham University and author of The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves, says research shows people talk out loud more when under stress or facing cognitive challenges – and that it can be helpful for children when solving puzzles or other tasks. He likens it to writing something down on paper. “If you’re putting words in the air,” he says, “it might be easier to hang onto them.” That’s the approach of Danielle Lupton, a political science professor in her 30s at Colgate University who’s been working from home and rousing herself from the couch with vocalised orders like, “After this episode, you’re going to get up and wash the dishes”. “It’s a public commitment you say to yourself,” she says. Not all self-talkers are quite so comfortable with their new habit. “What’s the point? The sound doesn’t need to come out. You’re already in there,“ says Mike Carrozza, a 29-yearold standup comedian. To him, it feels like “the pandemic won another bit of my normalcy”. Some self-talkers amuse themselves by deploying
personas and accents. While binge-watching The Crown, Elisabeth Rivette, a law student at St. Louis University, started to speak to herself as Margaret Thatcher. “I’d be cracking myself up about how to pronounce pillow or lamp or something,” she says. Gary Mansfield, 63, pretends he’s talking to his two adult
