Ever find yourself talking out loud while deciding what groceries to buy or before walking into a party you have been avoiding? While talking to yourself may seem odd, it's actually a very common behavior.

One study found that 96% of adults report having an inner dialogue. So if you have been wondering, "Is it normal to talk to yourself?"—it definitely is.

"Talking to yourself is the act of verbalizing your thoughts out loud rather than keeping them to yourself," Sarah Panzer, a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist at The Loom Wellness, tells Upworthy. "It can include narrating what you're doing, rehearsing conversations, working through problems, or expressing feelings."

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Panzer adds that talking to yourself is essentially how many people work through how to do something.

"For most of us, it's a natural extension of our internal dialogue and thought processing," she shares. "It may become more noticeable during problem-solving, planning, or heightened emotional states. Like most coping behaviors, talking to yourself exists on a spectrum. It may signal a trauma response when it's paired with other dissociative experiences, such as feeling profoundly disconnected from your body or reality."

While there may be many reasons people talk to themselves, Panzer explains that it is usually completely healthy and functional.

"It can be a way to organize thoughts, regulate emotions, or focus attention, especially for verbal processors who think best by hearing ideas out loud," she adds. "Talking to yourself can also serve as a grounding or self-soothing strategy, as it mimics the kind of support we might seek from someone else."

And no, you're not crazy for talking to yourself.

"From a psychological perspective, self-talk is not a sign of instability—it is a core feature of human cognition and emotional regulation," Jen Loong-Goodwin, therapist and founder of LifeLoong Therapy, tells Upworthy . "How we speak to ourselves plays a powerful role in shaping our sense of self, our emotional well-being, and the way we relate to others."

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If you talk to yourself, you may have certain personality traits. Here are six things it might mean:

"Some people simply find verbalizing their thoughts helpful, the same way someone might prefer an audiobook over reading," says Panzer. "If you're a verbal processor, talking out loud can help you make sense of your feelings, work through a problem, or organize your thoughts."

Talking to yourself reflects self-awareness and cognitive organization.

"People who talk to themselves often have higher levels of self-reflection and mental organization," explains Loong-Goodwin. "Studies have shown that self-directed speech can improve focus, problem-solving, and emotional clarity. This kind of self-talk helps individuals slow down and respond more intentionally rather than react impulsively."

If you are a self-talker, you likely have a personality that has many "parts."

"Talking to yourself can reflect different 'parts' of the self communicating with one another," adds Panzer. "For example, a protective part may speak up in response to vulnerability or stress, offering guidance, warnings, or criticism in an effort to maintain safety. Your inner critic may speak up when your ego or sense of belonging feels threatened, such as pushing you towards perfectionism or control to help avoid rejection, failure, or harm."

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According to Chloë Bean, a somatic trauma therapist, self-talk can be a sign that your nervous system is under stress and working to adapt.

"Self-talk often increases during overwhelm and stress," Bean tells Upworthy. "Have you ever heard someone say 'nooo!' as an expression of how they are feeling or 'what was I thinking?', expressing disappointment or frustration with themselves or the situation. Rather than indicating pathology of some kind, it can reflect a system trying to ground itself, make sense of a situation, stay organized, or push through demand."

Talking to yourself may also reflect underlying mental health struggles.

"It is not whether someone talks to themselves that predicts mental health outcomes, but how they do it," says Loong-Goodwin. "Research in cognitive behavioral therapy shows that harsh, critical self-talk is associated with anxiety, depression, and burnout. In contrast, compassionate and supportive self-talk is linked to resilience, emotional regulation, and lower stress levels."

Loong-Goodwin notes that positive self-talk can serve as a form of "reparenting" for people who grew up with emotional neglect or high levels of criticism.

"Positive self-talk can function as a corrective experience," she explains. "This process is often described as reparenting, where adults learn to provide themselves with the validation, reassurance, and guidance they did not consistently receive growing up. Recent research in self-compassion and attachment theory shows that learning to speak to oneself with care can reduce shame, improve emotional safety, and strengthen psychological well-being."

It's one of the most iconic and haunting photos of all time, up there with the likes of Hindenburg, The Falling Soldier, Burning Monk, Napalm Girl, and many others. It's called simply Migrant Mother, and it paints a better picture of the time in which it was taken than any book or interview possibly could.

Nearly everyone across the globe knows Florence Owens Thompson's face from newspapers, magazines, and history books. The young, destitute mother was the face of The Great Depression, her worried, suntanned face looking absolutely defeated as several of her children took comfort by resting on her thin frame. Thompson put a human face and emotion behind the very real struggle of the era, but she wasn't even aware of her role in helping to bring awareness to the effects of the Great Depression on families.

It turns out that Dorothea Lange, the photographer responsible for capturing the worry-stricken mother in the now-famous photo, told Thompson that the photos wouldn't be published.

Of course, they subsequently were published in the San Francisco News. At the time the photo was taken, Thompson was supposedly only taking respite at the migrant campsite with her seven children after the family car broke down near the campsite. The photo was taken in March 1936 in Nipomo, California when Lange was concluding a month's long photography excursion documenting migrant farm labor.

Worried mother and children during the Great Depression era. Photo by Dorthea Lange via Library of Congress

"Migrant worker" was a term that meant something quite different than it does today. It was primarily used in the 30s to describe poverty-stricken Americans who moved from town to town harvesting the crops for farmers.

The pay was abysmal and not enough to sustain a family, but harvesting was what Thompson knew as she was born and raised in "Indian Territory," (now Oklahoma) on a farm. Her father was Choctaw and her mother was white. After the death of her husband, Thompson supported her children the best way she knew how: working long hours in the field.

"I'd hit that cotton field before daylight and stay out there until it got so dark I couldn't see," Thompson told NBC in 1979 a few years before her death.

A mother reflects with her children during the Great Depression. Photo by Dorthea Lange via Library of Congress

When talking about meeting Thompson, Lange wrote in her article titled "The Assignment........

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