[zackattack]

Talking to yourself is a symptom of stress. Because your working memory is too populated by stressors in order to keep the entire "conversation" inside your head, you externalize it. Think of it as paging out. The only inconvenience is that it can bother people. Well, maybe there are other inconveniences, too, but I'm not aware of any studies that suggest externalized verbal problem solving creates worse results than internalized problem solving, though I suspect it actually might be the case.

[jazzyb]

> Talking to yourself is a symptom of stress.

Not always. I talk to myself all the time whether I'm happy, sad, stressed, relaxed, whatever. I just seem to solve problems better when I explain them to myself out loud -- see "rubber ducking": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking

[zackattack]

I agree that rubber ducking is a great technique. I also think that you can "have" both stress and the subjective affective state of happiness simultaneously.