There, I said it.
This morning, I looked out my kitchen window and announced, to the empty room, “There’s something wrong with that squirrel — his tail seems extra twitchy.” Then I pulled out my air fryer, wondering aloud if 10:30 a.m. was too early for French fries. (“It’s not,” I said. Again, out loud.)
I never used to talk to myself. Now I do it constantly. When I asked my middle-aged friends if they did it, too, the confessions flooded in. One said that when she texts people, she says the message out loud when she’s typing, even in public.
“I just looked in my cabinet and said aloud, ‘Please, god, let there be vanilla extract,’” said another.
Do middle-aged people talk to themselves all day, every day? And is this a problem? I consulted some experts.
Talking about self-talk
I couldn’t find any research on middle-aged muttering, so I asked Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and the author of “Chatter,” if I had missed it. He told me I hadn’t. Talking to yourself in midlife is an “understudied phenomenon,” he said, adding that it was pretty common.
When people have conversations in their own heads, it is known as “inner speech.” When they do it aloud, it’s called private speech or external self-talk. Studies suggest that private speech peaks in early childhood, said Charles Fernyhough, a professor of psychology at Durham University in England and the author of “The Voices Within.” But in midlife, many of us pick up the habit again, he said.