Third person self-talk may sound a little ridiculous at first, but I’m going to tell you why I use it and why I think it could help you, too.
When I was working on my novel, The Beached Ones, I soon figured out that my main character was a motorcycle stunt rider. Since I didn’t know how to ride motorcycles, I signed up for a motorcycle class.
Then, about a half hour before our final riding test, the instructors introduced something brand new: weaving through these cones set really close together at low speed.
I tried it, and I was terrible at it.
We did all the other skills tests, and I did well on those. But when it came to the cones, I was standing there in line thinking, I wasn’t able to do this right once. How am I going to do it right now?
That’s when I started talking to myself in a way that felt completely ridiculous.
What happened next is the reason I still use this method today.
Standing in Line With Third Person Self-Talk
There I was, standing in line, watching the other riders go through the cones ahead of me, and I was thinking, “I haven’t done this right once. Not once.”
And now I had to do it in front of the instructors and the other riders with my score on the line.
That’s when I did something that felt really strange.
I started talking to myself, but I didn’t do it the way we usually do it. I didn’t say, “Come on, you can do this.”
I used my name.
This is what I said out loud, softly: “Colleen, you can do this. You know what you need to do, so just do it. Colleen, you can get this right this time.”
And I kept repeating something like that while I waited.
Then here’s what happened.
I rode through every single cone perfectly without putting my foot down once.
I was so shocked I almost forgot to breathe because I hadn’t done it right once, not even close. And yet somehow, in that moment, I pulled it off.
I passed the test with flying colors and got my motorcycle endorsement on my license.
My first reaction was, “Wait a minute. What just happened?”
Because I’d never had anything happen like that before. It felt a little like magic, and most of us don’t really believe in magic. So it made me want to understand why something that felt so strange and silly could actually produce a result like that.
And that’s what I went looking for.
The Research Behind Third Person Self-Talk
Here’s what I found out.
This has actually been studied.
There’s real research behind why talking to yourself in the third person, using your own name instead of just saying “I” or “you,” can help you perform better under pressure, regulate your emotions more effectively, and think more clearly when everything in you wants to panic.
In a 2014 study, researchers found that small shifts in the language people use during self-talk can influence how they regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior under social stress.
It turns out the distance created by just that one small shift from “I” to “Colleen,” or whatever your name is, changes something in the brain.
So I started thinking about all the places in the writing life where this kind of shift could help because writers face pressure all the time.
Applying Distanced Self-Talk to the Writing Life
Let’s say you’ve just gotten an invitation to give a reading at your local bookstore, and it could be your first one ever.
The moment you say yes, your stomach drops.
You start feeling nervous because reading in front of people, even if it’s a small group of people, sounds absolutely terrifying. So you start imagining all the ways this could go wrong.
Your voice might start shaking. You might lose your place. People might look bored. Then you think, Why did I agree to this in the first place?
Here’s what you can do, and it’s going to sound strange at first.
It’s called third person self-talk, or what researchers call distanced self-talk.
The idea is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of saying to yourself, “I can do this. It’ll all be fine,” you use your own name.
So, let’s say your name is Deborah.
You say, “Deborah, you can do this. Deborah, you’ve got this.”
That tiny change, even though it feels weird, turns out to make a surprisingly big difference in how your brain handles pressure.
Where Does This Come From?
The main researcher behind this is psychologist Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan. He’s also the author of Chatter, which is all about the voices inside our heads and how to work with them instead of against them.
In one of Kross’s studies, volunteers had to give a speech with only five minutes to prepare.
Now, if that doesn’t make you sympathize with these poor people, I don’t know what will.
Most of us get nervous when it comes to public speaking. So, five minutes, no notes. They just had to get up there and go.
During those five minutes, some participants were told to talk to themselves using “I,” while others were told to use their names. Then the researchers measured what happened, both in how the people felt and in how they actually performed. Their performance was rated by objective observers who didn’t know which group each person was in.
The people using “I” said things like, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? I can’t prepare a speech in five minutes. It takes me days to prepare a speech.” They were anxious, and some of them were almost panicking.
The people using their names said things like, “Ethan, you can do this. You’ve given speeches before. You can manage this.”
They sounded calmer and more rational, more like a coach talking to an athlete than a person being scared by their own anxiety.
Then the objective observers said that the people who used their names actually performed better than the ones who just used “I.” They showed less distress during the speech and seemed to give better speeches. The study also found that people using non-first-person self-talk experienced less post-event rumination afterward.
Why Third Person Self-Talk Gives Writers Distance
So why does this work so well?
Imagine this.
Your friend calls you, and you can hear it in her voice before she even gets the words out. She just got her manuscript back from her editor, and it’s covered in comments.
She’s convinced she can’t fix this story. She tells you she doesn’t even know where to start.
“This whole writing thing was a mistake,” she says. And probably she just wasn’t cut out for it.
Now, here’s what happens when she calls you.
You don’t get all anxious and upset, right?
You don’t say, “Oh, no. That does sound really bad. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t do this, and maybe you should quit.”
You tend to stay calm because you know that’s what she needs from you in that moment.
So you might say something like, “Okay, let’s slow down. How many of the comments are actually big structural things, and how many are smaller things you can fix? Have you gone through all of them yet, or does it just feel overwhelming right now? Why don’t you read me the good comments the editor had to say?”
You can think clearly because of one big thing. You’re outside the experience. You have just enough distance from it to see the situation more rationally than your friend can at that moment.
That’s exactly what third person self-talk does for you when you use it on yourself. It gives your brain that same small but crucial step back.
Instead of being completely inside the fear or the worry or the anxiety, thinking, “I can’t do this. This is too much. I’m not good enough,” you become, just for a minute, your own calm friend on the other end of the phone.
Third Person Self-Talk and the Motorcycle Cones
Now you might be thinking, “Okay, feeling calmer makes sense, but how does feeling calmer explain doing something you literally couldn’t do minutes ago?”
Because that’s what happened to me at those motorcycle cones that day on the test.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
When you’re panicking before something difficult, like you’re standing in line for your riding test or you’re sitting down to write a scene that terrifies you, your brain is working against itself.
The fear center of the brain is firing. Danger, danger, danger.
And the more you try to talk yourself down with willpower, saying things like, “Just stop panicking. Just focus. You can do this,” the harder your brain has to work to fight that fear response.
It’s like a mental wrestling match, and it uses up energy and attention you need for the task itself.
Brain Scans Show This In Action
When researchers used both EEG and fMRI to watch what was happening in the brain during third person self-talk, they discovered something really cool. Using your name reduced emotional reactivity in the brain without triggering the extra mental effort usually needed to regulate emotions.
So think of it like this: When you’re in first person mode, saying, “I can’t do this,” or “I’m not ready,” you’re essentially trying to drive with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. The panic is pulling you in one direction, and your effort to deal with the panic or hush it up is pulling you in another. So there’s friction everywhere.
When you talk to yourself in the third person, you release the brake, and the fear has less to hold on to. And when that happens, your brain has more of its library of resources available again, and your body can access what it knows how to do.
I had practiced those cone weaves. Not well, and not for long, but my body had some memory of the motion. The panic was getting in the way of that.
So when I said, “Colleen, you can do this,” something shifted.
My brain didn’t have to work so hard to quiet my fear and anxiety. That fear dropped enough for my brain to concentrate on the task.
So it isn’t magic, really. But it feels like it.
It’s your brain finally getting out of its own way.
Using Third Person Self-Talk Before a Scary Writing Moment
Let’s go back to the bookstore.
You’ve said yes to the reading. Your stomach is in knots. The night before, instead of lying there telling yourself, “I’m going to mess this up. Why did I agree to do this?” you try something different.
You say, “Deborah, you have something worth sharing. You’ve worked hard on this. You know these pages. You can do this.”
Then the morning of the reading, standing outside the bookstore, you say it again: “Deborah, you can do this. You deserve to share this.”
It’s kind of like you’re coaching your best friend. And then you walk in and you do it.
Don’t be surprised if it goes great and you’re shocked because that’s how I felt when I tried this.
Now I use it often because it really does help.
I’d love to hear how it goes if you try this. Drop a comment below and tell me what you tried it on.
And if this kind of thing resonates with you, understanding why you get stuck and actually doing something about it, come join us in the Writer’s Brain Studio.
Featured image by ArthurHidden on Magnific.