how to talk to yourself

with a flip phone

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

A few weeks after Frank turned three he asked me a troubling philosophical question.

Mummy, why are we always in this day, not the nuther day?

My mealy mouthed attempt to explain the concept of time in toddlerspeak, enraged Frank to tears. The tantrum that ensued proved to be the first in a series of meltdowns over the slippery concept — and more precisely, my inability as a mother to help him fully grasp it. Sadly for Frank, I am a writer, not a physicist. And he has refused to be comforted by me in his many moments of time-related anxiety since.

Frank’s now seven, a funny, kind and fastidious boy. The sort of kid who wants to know exactly what’s going to happen when. He likes his room to be tidy and organised. He wants to know what’s for dinner on Friday by Monday. Last term, after failing a spelling test he was understandably dejected, but when I told him not to sweat it, he’d ace the next one, he was plunged into despair. You don’t understand — I feel like my school career is going nowhere!

He’s academically dead average and not particularly competitive, by the way. But if melodramatic catastrophising was an Olympic sport, Frank would win a gold medal.

It’s difficult to tell how much of Frank’s neuroses is real and how much is comic schtick self-styled to get a laugh (he’s the youngest, a natural class clown), but if I had to venture a guess I’d say it’s say it’s an even 50-50 split. Being his mother is an entertaining and exasperating endeavour, a bit like trying to raise a tiny Woody Allen clone trapped in the body of Harry Potter. I often find myself laying awake at night wondering if he needs is an audience, a shrink or both.

Last fall, however, Frank’s rumination took a turn for the worse. After a leak in the roof of our Victorian house caused the bedroom ceiling to collapse at 3 am during a storm, he became terrified of rain. Ever since then, he frets constantly over the weather, becomes tearful at the sight of drizzle, and incessantly asks to check the “the weathercast” app on my phone.

Rain-phobia would be a problem almost anywhere apart from Dubai, but given we live in London, England, I knew I needed to somehow nip Frank’s in the bud. On the advice of a child psychologist friend, I sat him down and calmly explained he needs to learn to live with inclement weather because he’s probably going to encounter it every foreseeable day of his life as an Englishman. Frank listened carefully, then became fixated on the idea of moving to Spain.

Then last week, something remarkable happened. Frank found an old flip phone on the playground. He smuggled it home in his school bag and has barely let go of it since. He’s been sending and receiving pretend texts and posting prank videos of his brother to a make-believe TikTok account, all of which, he informs me, have “instantly gone viral.” Mostly though, he’s been having long meandering conversations with imaginary versions of his real life schoolmates.

Just after dawn on Saturday morning, Frank strolled into my bedroom as usual and drew the curtains to wake me up “like the Queen’s servant.” But instead of then standing over me and rattling off the day’s schedule while demanding French toast, he ignored me and gazed out the window chatting into his flip phone.

Morning James! Yeah, super-psyched about your birthday party later, just trying to figure out what to wear… So I’m thinking maybe black jeans and my Adidas hoodie...? You think so? Really? Cool, cool… that’s sick. Wait, sorry gotta jump, another call…Yo, Thomas what’s up? Yeah, yeah, no worries. I’ll be there early for warm up. Yeah, defo, already in my shinguards, Mum’s just getting up, she’s driving me… Okay, catch you later.

All weekend long, Frank nattered away to his imaginary real life friends, fretting over his diary like a busy 37-year-old bachelor in hot demand. Whenever I interrupted, he’d raise his eyebrows and point to the flip phone with an extravagant circular motion, then mouth the words, I’m on a call.

Amusing as it was, I was also mildly disturbed by this game. Frank’s years away from getting a real smartphone. How does he even know TikTok?! (From his older brother, I guess.) But eventually I realised there was something else going on. Frank was voicing his anxiety-monologue as usual, but something about him had changed. When he ended a call, he seemed calmer and more in control of his emotions. The flip phone was consoling him in a way that I’d never been able to as his mother — but how?

I knew it must have something to do with whatever Frank’s imaginary real-life friends were saying to him on the other end. Whatever the advice was, it was landing in a way that my own attempts to soothe him had not. When I asked him thought, he just repeated all the stuff Phoebe his au pair and I had relayed to him endlessly to zero effect — anodyne truisms like, Relax buddy, chill out, it’ll be fine, stuff happens, don’t sweat it, no biggie, we’ll figure it out, etc. What did the flip phone know that I did not?

Then it hit me: Frank had finally figured out how to talk himself.

It’s no secret that talking to yourself gently (a.k.a. self-soothing) is an invaluable coping tool, one that every sentient human should acquire. The trick is in grasping how to use this skill as a matter of course. Soothing yourself can be especially hard in moments of panic and despair.

I recently qualified hypnotherapist, and I still struggle to talk to myself gently and calmly on bad days. In truth, I think everyone must. Luckily as an adult, we have other coping tools to help re-establish a connection and get a comforting message through to our panicking right brains when needed. Meditation, yoga, talk therapy, hypnosis, EMDR, religious faith rituals like prayer, fasting, creative work— all these practices, treatments and activities are really just ways of having a consoling chit-chat with the unconscious mind, a way of whispering to ourselves, Relax, you’re safe, and have that message actually be absorbed and understood.

If we know how to talk ourselves down, we can survive almost anything life throws at us. So much of our anguish and struggle falls away when we self-soothe. It doesn’t matter how we learn to do talk to ourselves, but if we don’t, life is bound to be hard. No amount of money, talent, beauty, success or privilege can give a person the same kind of comfort that being able to talk to yourself provides.

Talking to ourselves doesn’t just calm us down, it give us the ability to see the world clearly and in perspective so we can in turn be in service to others. It’s the opposite of solipsism and myopia, the key to opening oneself up to the world and to love.

Frank’s dead flip phone accidentally provided him with something I couldn’t give him as a mother, something a real smartphone never would: A direct line to his own anxious unconscious.

So next time you find yourself in turmoil, don’t go looking in your smartphone. Do yoga or meditate or try hypnotherapy instead. And if none of these appeal just follow Frank’s example: Find a dead flip phone instead and talk to yourself.

Let me know how it goes.