How Talking to Yourself in 3rd Person Can Help You Through Tough Times

Admit it or not, we all talk to ourselves, why not do it with purpose?

Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels

The world can be a tough place sometimes. We get a lot of influence in each and every moment, and truth be told, a lot of what we take in and sometimes believe, isn’t always what’s best for us. We compare ourselves to others, we let fear govern our decisions, and we internalize all this negativity and sometimes turn it into negative self-talk, which becomes negative thinking.

“The official term for talking in the third person about yourself is illeism.” (Shayla Love, Why You Should Talk to Yourself in the Third Person)

The simple truth is, we don’t have to be governed by these things. We can instead choose to become our own personal champions, rooting ourselves upwards and onwards. Learning to talk to ourselves in a positive third-person perspective can help us do that.

Let’s take a closer look.

Most of us have conversations with ourselves, don’t worry about it if you’re part of the crowd either, it’s normal and healthy. But, most of us might also be going about these internal conversations completely wrong. Or, not using their full potential anyway.

“Many people have an internal monologue that crops up, when we’re figuring out what to do, reflecting on the past, or guiding ourselves through day-to-day situations, but we frequently use the pronouns I, me, mine, and my.” (Shayla Love, Why You Should Talk to Yourself in the Third Person)

You see, things change altogether when we begin to create a little separation with ourselves and our situations and we do this simply enough by changing how we speak to ourselves, and in what sense.

“By talking to yourself in the third person, or even second person (the pronoun “you”) he found that people bypassed a lot of the effort that’s usually put into trying to change your perspective to a more distanced one.” (Shayla Love, Why You Should Talk to Yourself in the Third Person)

Here’s the important part though, what you do after you create the distance and…