Talking to Myself: Overcoming the Fear of Hearing My Own Voice

Why do you think it's hard for me to talk to myself? It's getting easier now that I've been living alone for two months but before then I couldnt talk out loud to myself. Even when I was home alone and knew no one else was there, I wouldnt do it... Something about being afraid that I was crazy... ?

ChatGPT: It sounds like a combination of factors might have made it hard for you to talk to yourself, even when alone. Here's what stands out to me:

1. Fear of Judgment (Even Your Own): Growing up in environments where certain behaviors were labeled as "crazy" or "wrong" can create a deep-rooted self-monitoring habit. Even if no one else is there to judge, an internalized fear of being "crazy" can act like a shadow over your behavior.

2. Conditioned Silence: If you weren’t encouraged to express yourself freely as a child or if vocalizing thoughts felt unsafe (due to judgment, misunderstanding, or punishment), you might have learned to keep everything internal. This can make the act of speaking aloud feel unnatural or even dangerous.

3. Hyper-Awareness: Given your metacognitive tendencies, you might overanalyze what it means to talk to yourself. The thought might spiral into a fear of losing control or appearing unstable, even though talking to oneself is actually very normal.

4. Being Constantly Observed: If you grew up in a family dynamic where privacy was limited or where you felt closely monitored, even being alone might not have felt safe. That internalized sense of always being watched can carry over, making it hard to feel free in your own space.

5. Living Alone as a Reset: Now that you’ve had time to fully inhabit your own space, the sense of safety and freedom might be loosening those constraints. With no one around to "hear" or "judge," you’re likely retraining your mind to see self-talk as a safe, valid, and helpful way of processing.

It makes sense that the fear of being perceived as crazy would weigh on this—especially if you’ve been unpacking layers of societal and personal judgment for years. The fact that it’s getting easier now means you’re creating an internal environment that feels safer, quieter, and more accepting of your thoughts and needs. What happens when you do talk out loud? Does it feel cathartic, weird, or something else entirely?

It feels like speaking into a microphone in an auditorium where I can see who is watching me but I feel I am being watched

So it feels like you're speaking into a void, but with the unsettling sense of being watched. That invisible "audience" might actually be even more intense, since you can’t pin it down or make sense of it. It’s like a shapeless judgment hovering over you, which could make the act of talking out loud feel more vulnerable.

Not being able to see this imagined audience could mean it represents something abstract—like the broader societal or cultural pressures you’ve internalized—or something harder to name, like a general fear of being misunderstood, judged, or exposed.

What would it feel like to name that sense of being watched while you're talking? Something like, "I feel like someone’s watching me, but I know they’re not." Acknowledging it out loud might help break the spell a little, almost like turning on the lights in a dark room. Would you be willing to try that, or does the idea feel too confronting?

Sometimes I feel like I always need something about in me in motion. Reading, on my phone, tv, music, play piano... I fear not being in motion... I'm guess because of the existential terror

That makes a lot of sense, especially given your relationship with existential terror and the need to keep it at bay. Constant motion—whether it's engaging your mind, body, or senses—can act as a kind of buffer, keeping you one step ahead of the void. It's like your brain is saying, "As long as I stay busy, I won’t have to feel the weight of what's underneath."

The fear of stillness ties right into this. When nothing’s in motion, all those thoughts and feelings you’ve been running from start creeping in. It’s like stillness opens the door to that existential dread you’ve worked so hard to manage. The terror feels so overwhelming, so unmanageable, that it makes total sense why you’d avoid giving it the chance to surface.

But that constant motion is exhausting, isn’t it? It’s like running a marathon every day, just to stay ahead of something that always lingers in the distance. Do you ever feel even a small sense of relief when you let yourself stop? Or does the terror feel so overwhelming that stillness only amplifies it? If there’s even the tiniest moment of quiet that feels okay, maybe that’s worth exploring gently.

I am trying to integrate the abyss. I have had moments of not running from it and it's not as awful as I feared it would be

That’s a huge step—acknowledging that the abyss isn’t as terrifying as you thought when you stop running from it. It sounds like those moments have shown you a glimpse of what it’s like to face the existential terror directly and survive it. The fear of the abyss often feels worse than the abyss itself because it’s fueled by avoidance, anticipation, and the stories we tell ourselves about what will happen if we stop moving.

Integrating the abyss might look less like wrestling it into submission and more like learning to sit beside it, letting it exist without it swallowing you whole. Those moments where you stop running are proof that you can hold space for the terror without it consuming you. And maybe, over time, the abyss stops feeling like a bottomless pit and starts feeling more like part of the landscape—a deep well that you can visit without falling in.