I talk to the cats a lot more than I talk to myself, but when they're not around, I'll settle for a conversation with myself .
Talking to myself out loud does help me to get my thoughts clear when I am having a situation that I am going back and forth over something I do not want to share with someone else.
I don't think I talk to myself a lot except when I'm mad at myself for doing something stupid, but in between that I often talk to my bonsai trees and I also sometimes talk back to the radio or television. It can get rather weird when my Mom hears me talking and doesn't catch what I said and I have to tell her that I wasn't talking to her, even though there's nobody else around.
I mutter things at computers when they (and particularly Microsoft) do things that are illogical for machines that are built on logic. I had one boss - who was a prize idiot - that observed that I was talking to myself. My response - "it's the only way I can have an intelligent conversation" - produced precisely the response I'd hoped for. He went into a huff for about two weeks and didn't speak to me at all. Bliss.
Oh, I was talking to my niece's GPS app on her iPhone yesterday on the way to the the airport. We wanted to take the scenic back-roads vs the highway and she did not fail us. So, there I was praising her aloud the GPS lady with thank-yous and oh, okay. At the same time, I do talk to myself all day long. Sometimes out loud and other times just in my mind. For me, I think, it is all good, unless it is a stranger talking back to me. So far, that has not happened. At least, that is what I tell my adult children! No, seriously, I agree, it is important to listen to our voice within.
Just last night, while the wife was at bingo, I found myself giving a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, holy heck for not getting a simple word. I had to laugh at myself when I thought of this thread and how loud I was commenting to the TV.
I do that when I am watching the all-too-familiar movie where a crazed killer is chasing a woman through the woods at night (or a dark house, same thing), and she's making noises the whole time. "Just shut the... up for a few minutes and he'll never find you!"
A number of years ago I experienced something akin to a UFO sighting. It was more of a sudden occurance, rather than casual or at least, so it seemed to me. People all around me were doing and saying very strange things and for the life of me I could not figure the rights or wrongs of it all. Was it threatening or just an odd accumulation of circumstances in a very localized area? It all became clearer one day while I went to the grocery store. There was a very large truck of watermelons outside the over crowded market. People were clammering toward the truck and unloading the green ovals and paying their money for them, 5 dollars at a time. It seemed no one was talking to one another, but, to themselves. The revelation that maybe the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" might have been a real foretelling of an alien invasion. I avoided the truck and hurried into the store just to find several more people going up and down the isles, questioning themselves, answering themselves and sometimes laughing out loud at nothing I could discern. I decided to get a little closer to one of the "talkers" so I might be able to detect a small difference. Just enough of a difference from real humans, so I could make a report to NASA, NSA, or Hillary Clinton. I found one of the talkers who was muttering very loudly and walking slowly, soI got behind him and walked closer and closer until ........I SAW IT! A giant slug hanging out of his ear! Think Bobby, Think! Maybe I should whack it with the carton of orange juice I picked up or just risk becoming one of them by grabbing the thing and yanking it out of his ear with no less than half of his brains tied to the monster's ganglian hook. No, get out of here. Protect yourself from becoming one of the "talkers." Go home, grab your wife and head for the mountains thought I to myself. But, when I got home, there was my step daughter, talking to her mother and with one of those slugs in her ear. I was too late. I knew all was lost and my lovely stepdaughter was now......a talker. I stood there, aghast and openly upset, for Robin had even named her slug...........she called it "Blue Tooth."