Talking is good for you.....

 

"Let's talk", she says.

"What about?", he answers.

"I don't know, anything," she replies.

"Um, so what did you do today?" he asks hesitantly.

"Oh, forget it", she returns with a sigh.

The man picks up a newspaper on a nearby table and begin to read. The woman sighs as both of them return into their own bubbles of existence.

 

At the University of Maryland a team of researches set about to discover if there is a biological reason why women tend to find talking easier than men.

So what this team of neuroscientists and psychologists, led by Margaret McCarthy, did was to study rats and identify a protein called Foxp2 which was found to be associated with vocalisation. Male rats tended to have more of this protein than females so they reduced the protein's rate of production in baby males and discovered that the baby males became less squeaky. So they tried it on humans; 10 children aged three to five had their Foxp2 levels checked.

What they found was that the girls had 30 percent more of Foxp2 protein in the key area of the brain related to language in humans. In rats, males are more talkative and have more of the "talking" protein, but with humans, girls have more of the Foxp2 protein and so are more talkative.

Professor Mark Lieberman, professor of Phonetics at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that "women speak more than men" is an urban myth. It is factually untrue, but mythically resonant, he says. He thinks that there is an element of misogyny in the belief that women talk more than men, and rather than being a fact it is based on pop-psychology and self-help books.

What about you? Do you think women speak more than men? Is there a difference in topics? Are women better at chit-chat than men? Do men speak more of facts and women more of emotions; feelings?

As far as I can ascertain, the jury is out on that one, but it seem to me that one thing most agree on: it depends on a persons upbringing more than the gender.

Kid comes home from school, throw his/her bag on the floor and goes straight to his/her room and slams the door.

Husband/wife comes home from work and goes straight for the stiff drink.

 The parent/partner may ask: "What's going on, you wanna talk about it?"

For those of us who grew up in an environment in which talking about our thoughts, feelings, activities were encouraged, talking is a "natural" thing to do. Talking with others in such situation is not viewed so much as  "spilling ones guts", but rather as a sharing, interactive undertaking. Some of us perhaps grew up in an environment in which talking is more to do with sharing information of a more factual nature. Some of us perhaps in homes where there is a mix of both, and unfortunately( I think) there are some of us who grew up in environments where we were never encouraged to talk at all about ourselves, our thoughts, our beliefs, or our emotions.

Through talking we exchange ideas, information, feelings, thoughts, fears, beliefs, directions, et cetera. In other words, talking offers us the opportunity to give others a glimpse of how we view ourselves and our view of the world, as well as vice verse.

Sometimes we may prefer to not talk about "it", but in general, most agree that talking is an important part of our relationships. Being listened to and listening to what others have to say, not only help us feel cared for, but it also let others know we care for them.

Some suggest that women are better at talking about their feelings than men, that men prefer to talk about facts and figures; "feelingless" topics, but could that not also just be urban myth?

In 1895 "Studies on Hysteria" by Josef Breuer was published, and in it the term "The Talking Cure". He used it for the verbal therapy given his patient Bertha Pappenheim (under the alias Anna O.)  Ernest Jones put it, "On one occasion she related the details of the first appearance of a particular symptom and, to Breuer's great astonishment, this resulted in its complete disappearance". (Ernest Jones was a British neurologist/psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud's official biographer.) The term "talking cure" was later adopted by Sigmund Freud to describe the fundamental work of psychoanalysis.

Although talking to each other is essential for us humans there are a number of stereotypical terms we frequently use that may prevent us from feeling at ease with talking to others; blabber mouth, bleeding heart, chatterbox, rumour mill, verbal diarrhoea, spilling ones guts, talkative, gabby, to mention a few. What are some more positive definitions?

Hmmmm.  A good talker(but this can be used sarcastically), a good communicator(communication includes body language, facial expressions as well), conversation, dialogue, verbal interaction.

Talking about what is alive in us strengthen our relationships with others, it may also help us to understand ourselves as well as others.

"Thinking: the talking of the soul within". (Plato)

While searching for quotes on talking, I am perplexed by how often the term has negative undertones attached.
"Talking Therapy", such as Cognitive behavioural therapies, CBT, Dialectic behaviour therapy, DBT, Psychoanalysis, Counselling, are all based on scientific method and thousands of lives have improved as a direct result of treatment through such, which makes me wonder why "talking" gets such a bad rap? Is not the first thing we want to do when we get that job, win the lottery, buy that longed for item, find a lost friend, win a game, find that soul mate, get a hole-in-one, et cetera; to tell someone about it?
If we trust people with our good news, why not with the bad?
"A book that is never opened cannot be enjoyed.
Music that is never performed, cannot be heard."

"If no one knows of the burden we are carrying, they cannot help us carry it.
If no one knows when we soar on wings of joy, they cannot soar with us."