How Third-Person Self-Talk Can Help You Overcome Nerves and Perform Under Pressure

The Voice Inside Your Head: Why How You Talk to Yourself Matters

Most of us spend more time talking to ourselves than we do talking to anyone else.

And this running commentary follows us into boardrooms, onto playing fields, through difficult conversations, and into moments of self-doubt. Yet despite the power of this internal dialogue, most people pay surprisingly little attention to how they speak to themselves and pay the price when it works against them.

When people think about self-talk, they often focus on whether their thoughts are positive or negative. While the content of our self-talk matters (an important topic we'll explore in a future post—research suggests there may be an even more important question:

What perspective are you speaking from?

The Difference Between First-Person and Third-Person Self-Talk

Imagine you are preparing for an important presentation or game.

Let’s compare:

"I'm nervous. What if I mess this up? I need to calm down."

vs.

"Erin, you’re nervous and you've prepared for this. You know your material. Just focus on delivering the message."

Notice that the content is similar, but the perspective changes. A lot.

Rather than speaking from within the experience, third-person self-talk involves using your own name or the pronoun "you" when talking to yourself. At first glance, this can feel strange. However, a growing body of research suggests that this small linguistic shift can have surprisingly powerful effects. First-Person self talk tends to keep us immersed in our current state. Stated simply, we are less effective at managing anything when we don’t have sufficient space to evaluate and respond.

Why Third-Person Self-Talk Works

Psychologist Ethan Kross and colleagues have spent years studying what they call distanced self-talk. (Dr. Kross’ book Chatter is a great way to dive deeper on this topic). Kross’ research suggests that using your own name rather than saying “I'“ creates psychological distance from an emotional situation. Instead of becoming immersed in anxiety, frustration, an impulse, or self-doubt, you begin to view the situation more like an observer—or like a coach speaking to an athlete.

This distance matters because most of us are far better at giving advice to others than we are at giving advice to ourselves. When a friend is struggling, we tend to be thoughtful, compassionate, and rational. When we are struggling, we often become critical, emotional, and reactive. Distanced self-talk helps bridge that gap.

the Research

In a series of studies, participants were asked to reflect on stressful experiences using either first-person language ("I") or their own name.

Researchers found that third-person self-talk reduced emotional reactivity while requiring very little additional mental effort. Brain imaging studies showed reduced activity in regions associated with self-focused emotional processing, without increased activation of areas associated with effortful cognitive control. In other words, people appeared to regulate their emotions more effectively without having to work harder to do so.

Other studies have found that non-first-person self-talk can improve performance under pressure, reduce distress before stressful tasks, and decrease unhelpful rumination after challenging experiences. Participants preparing for public speaking tasks performed better and experienced less anxiety when they used non-first-person language compared with traditional first-person self-talk.

More recent research suggests that distanced self-talk may be particularly useful in preparatory situations—moments when we are getting ready for a difficult conversation, competition, presentation, or performance challenge.

Imagine an athlete standing on the starting line of an important race.

First-person self-talk might sound like:

"I'm so nervous. What if I don't perform well?"

Distanced self-talk might sound like:

"You've trained for this. Stay focused. Trust the process."

It’s counterproductive to focus on eliminating nerves. Feelings of nervousness are there to tell us that the thing matters to us. And it’s important to do things that matter to us, but we want to make sure we are able to stay connected to the importance without being swept up by anxiety. Rather than elimination (incredibly difficult to do), aiming to create enough psychological distance to respond to those nerves effectively is a more effective use of our mental efforts (because it can be readily achieved with a bit of practice).

The same principle applies to executives preparing for presentations, students writing exams, talking to your crush, families navigating difficult conversations, or anyone facing a meaningful challenge.

The Takeaway

Many people assume that confidence comes from eliminating doubt.

In reality, confidence often comes from changing our relationship with doubt.

The next time you find yourself overwhelmed by anxiety, frustration, or self-criticism, try a simple experiment. Speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you care about. Use your own name. Take the perspective of a coach rather than a critic. Even better, be a mentor.

It may feel unusual at first. But the research suggests that a small shift in language can create enough distance to help you think more clearly, regulate emotions more effectively, and perform at your best when it matters most.

Everyone who knows me has heard some version of “practice under low pressure so we can execute when pressure is high”.

Self talk is a tool. And we use tools we know more effectively than those we don’t. Practice using distanced self talk in situations where you find yourself a bit elevated so you can get a sense of what it’s like to do so. That way, when the stakes are high, you'll be ready to giver.

References

Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., et al. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324.

Moser, J. S., Dougherty, A. E., Mattson, W. I., Katz, B., & Moran, T. P. (2017). Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI. Scientific Reports, 7, 4519.

Gainsburg, I., & Kross, E. (2022). Distanced self-talk increases rational self-interest. Scientific Reports, 12, 119.

New Year New You? Common Challenges in New Year’s Goals and How to Keep Momentum

New Years tends to draw our attention toward renewal and this is often expressed as an increased focus on the things we want to change. Perhaps you and your friends have been talking about the changes you’re going to commit to? Maybe you’ve already been working towards them as the first month of 2025 comes to a close. It’s exciting and motivating to feel like we’ve got an opportunity to start fresh and almost half of us will have set a goal for 2025. However, though enthusiasm is high initially, it quickly declines. In fact, 90% of us “fail” our resolution by mid-February.

Given that we are rapidly approaching that mid-February date, here are 5 tips and reminders for those of you who have set a goal or intention for the 2025.

 1.    First, I’d like to gently remind you that you don’t have to change anything. For those of you that are just trying to get through your day or have finally found stability and aren’t ready to shake things up yet, that is perfectly okay. Readiness is a key ingredient for success.

2.    Break your goal into parts. If you are looking to increase your physical activity, instead of trying to go from 0 to 60, increase your activity only by half of the ultimate goal (e.g., start with working out once or twice a week if your audacious goal is to work out 5 days/week). You want to make your goal achievable and slowly build up the frequency. This allows you to adapt to the increased workload associated with the goal in a manageable way. This approach also gives you flexibility if you need to adjust something without feeling like you’ve already failed your goals for the week. Confidence tends to come after accomplishment, so set yourself up for success by building milestones into your goals.

3.    Be flexible! Building new habits and routines takes time, effort, and it is not going to go perfectly. There will be times that you miss a day or a week of your goal, times you fall back into old habits, and when unexpected interruptions such as illness or travel result in temporary disruptions. Planning for this and normalizing it for yourself will help you stay on track long term. If missing a work out is part of the plan, it doesn’t derail us when it inevitably happens. Remember, goals are intended to be a guide and can be changed or adjusted at any time!

4.    Focus on the process, not the outcome. Change takes time. When we don’t see big changes after a week or two into our resolution, we tend to get discouraged. So, what you want to focus on instead is the committed action. Take a step back and focus on the growth that is occurring. This helps us see the progress we are making, which is motivating and helps us feel accomplished. Both of these are important to creating sustainable habits and routines. This will help you stay motivated!

5.    Do not steal your joy through comparison. Everyone’s journey is different, and it isn’t going to feel good if you are new to spin classes and are comparing yourself to the instructor or a seasoned rider. Focus on YOUR progress and YOUR success! One really simple way to maintain self-focus and stay out of the toilet of comparison is to maintain a record that documents our personal development. Information like, heart rate, pacing, or weight/reps are a nice way to track YOUR progress.

These tools should help you stay in that 10% of people who stick with it so you can accomplish your goals and maintain awareness of the progress you are making every day. And, if you’ve recognized that you could use more support in shifting the underlying patterns that are interfering with your ability to meet your goals, contact me so we can work together so you can reach those audacious goals!

Written by Meghan Ingstrup, R.Psych