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 daughters as he embarks on his daily walks of up to 16km. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he’ll say. Or “wash your hands.”

He’ll also fantasize about winning the lottery, vocalizing how he would split up the prize: “$35-million for Avery, $35-million for Sydney ...” He knows it’s fake. But it makes him feel better, articulating how he could give his daughters a life they’d never expect. “I think it’s just a fantasy of everything being perfect.”

Our urge to talk reveals just how much covid-19 is a mental test as well as a physical one. When William Broyles Jr. was writing the screenplay for the 2000 film Cast Away, he stranded himself at a deserted Mexican beach, to research the tactics of survival. But one day he went to spear his morning stingray and met a volleyball that had washed ashore. He decorated it with seashells and seaweed, and started talking to it. Broyles recalls that eventually, “I stopped and said – to him but really to myself – ‘Idiot! This is the movie!’ It’s not about physical survival, it’s about connection. Talking is how we connect. It makes us human.”

It was praying aloud that also kept April Harris, 44, going during her 32 days in quarantine with a deep cough at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California – not just self-encouragements like “I can do this” and “You got this, April”, but repeated declarations like “by His stripes, I am healed”.

“I would pray for our country and for a cure to this virus,” she says in an email from the prison, where she has spent 24 years but had never previously talked out loud to herself. “Now I pray that I am covered by His blood, not wanting to endure that again. I pray for the women who are in isolation now.” | The Washington Post

DON’T worry if you talk to yourself. | ANDREA PIACQUADIO Pexels