It tells us sweet words and harsh words, words that are meant only for us. A mutual understanding that deserves to be listened to. Because we surely have things to say to each other.
There is even a learned name, endophasia (from the Greek endon, or “inside”, and phasis, “speech”), to denote this habit we have of talking to each other in our heads. Our “little inner voice” is sometimes voluntary: we urge ourselves to concentrate, to project ourselves into a task ahead, we encourage ourselves …
But scientists have also identified a more abstract “little voice” – called spontaneous or wandering. – which invites itself out of the blue and sometimes leads us into negative ruminations. Our inner language (inner speech) would accompany us for 23% of our day, or about a quarter of our waking life. In short, a true traveling companion, which deserves a close attention.
The art of speech … internal!
When we were playing as children, we often talked to ourselves aloud, role-playing our toys, chatting with imaginary friends … With age, we internalized this language. Once an adult, our “intimate discourse” allows us to forge a “self-awareness”: we tell each other memories, we comment in petto what happens to us and take a little distance from everyday life.
It is a way of withdrawing from the course of the world to access that psychic interiority that characterizes us as human beings.
On the way … of intuition!
Our little inner voice can also pop out out of the blue, as if trying to tell us something that we don’t always want to hear. According to a recent American study in neuroimaging, our involuntary internal language mobilizes more regions of the auditory cortex (the Heschl gyrus in particular), while deliberate speech activates the left interior frontal gyrus, more in relation to the speech production.
This little voice in us is sometimes that of our intuition, this kind of instinct directly linked to our subconscious and our emotions, which we can neglect for years before deigning to pay attention to it.
While it is quite rare to have such dazzling intuitions, we can nonetheless be more attentive to this irrational intelligence that lies dormant within us … and awakens from time to time.
Take and leave!
Who speaks in me? Be careful, what comes to us sometimes has nothing to do with our voice, especially when it is a negative monologue. All these “I am not up to the task”, “I will never change”, “I am too old (old) to learn” … these negative sentences often come from far away, from our parents or even from teachers and educators who have formatted our minds with false beliefs. Sometimes transient, these can also set in and cause us to self-sabotage without our realizing it.
The mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy was thus brought to light in the 1970s thanks to an experiment by the American psychologist Robert Rosenthal. Two groups of students were to test the performance of rats in a maze. The rodents had been randomly divided between the two groups, but the students of the first group were assured that theirs were particularly intelligent, while those of the second were told that they were nothing exceptional.
Conclusion: the animals of the first group, more coaxed and accompanied by the students, had proved to be much more efficient. In the same way, our prejudices about ourselves sometimes end up being realized: persuaded (e) that we will not succeed, we ultimately do not give ourselves the means and fail. So in the future, let’s have a more selective ear and see who we give the floor to. Because when it comes to our well-being, not everyone has an equal voice!
Reference: https://www.joinonelove.org/learn/yes-trust-gut-heres/#
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