6 Conversations I Liked To Have With Myself!

“I talk to myself. Constantly,” Sarah Jessica Parker admitted in a recent interview with People. She claims her audible self-convos are not a sign of insanity, but a coping mechanism for keeping her life together.

I’m not a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker, at least not since Square Pegs, but her admission that she talks to herself all the time placed us in a communal boat.

I talk to myself all the time as well.

My habit formed early in childhood. Being an only child and left alone far more than is healthy (I see now), I was the only one I had to talk to. Also, I was a very intelligent kid and often talking to kids my age was just plain boring.

So, I only had me to converse with.

I never thought anything of the activity when I was in the throws of a conversation. I was simply enjoying the discussion, mostly trying to figure out something the best way I knew how. Alone is not a good thing for a kid. And alone, surrounded by adults is even worse. A kid in an adult world loses the ability to converse at a child’s level and is further ostracized by those groups for that inability, or in my case, my complete disgust at having to augment my speaking patterns so that my occasional playmates could understand what I was talking about. In the end, I just found smarter friends.

I still talk to myself just as much as I did when I was a child. My roommate and best friend has just learned to listen for her name when she hears me speaking. It’s a very good rule as I have never found that I could stop myself from holding the one-sided conversations even if I tried. And since becoming a full-fledged novelist, my conversations have morphed into dialog for my characters. Often I hold interviews with my characters to figure out more about them and I have discovered some of the most enjoyable surprises in my books because of this habit.

People always say it’s okay to talk to yourself as long as you don’t answer back. But I say that’s bullshit. You have to answer yourself; it is called a conversation for a reason.

Find yourself a safe place (bathrooms are particularly good) and start talking. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll discover and you might even find clarity through a good conversation.

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