An old professor of mine once demonstrated to me that if I described a headache out loud—its color and shape, what substance it was made of, what it would say if it were a 6-year-old—it would often diminish in intensity, and sometimes evaporate altogether. In other words, if I could concretize and get it outside of me by translating it into spoken words instead of silent suffering and formless feelings, it didn’t hurt as much. My professor told me that people who process their feelings verbally, rather than silently, experience shorter emotional episodes and faster recovery because the voice turns chaos into narrative, the narrative creates understanding, and understanding has a soothing effect. Maybe this is partly what people are after who talk out loud to themselves. As long as you don’t turn self-talk into a headache by judging it as weird or neurotic, thinking out loud is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning, problem-solving, memory, and even self-control. It isn’t a glitch; it’s an upgrade. Neuroscience researcher Kyle Cox, for instance, has found that people …