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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, these sound like typical intrusive thoughts. The most common intrusive thoughts are, I believe, the "call of the void" ones (also known as "high place phenomenon"). You might be driving down the freeway and think "What if I drove into oncoming traffic?" or standing on a cliff at the end of a hike and think "What if I just walked off the ledge?" There's also some common less-morbid ones, like "Wha…

Thank you, I feel more normal now

Same here. I never knew that "Intrusive thoughts" were a thing, and that they were a mostly normal thing. Mine don't seem like such a big deal now.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#372

On the topic of internal speech, I've recently developed a weird quirk, if you can call it that. Basically I'll hear fragments of speech in an internal voice distinctly different from my own, about random things that have nothing to do with anything I was thinking or doing. And sometimes, rarely, the fragments will contain information that I wasn't consciously aware of. For a while I actually thought I was hearing ot…

Interesting, about how old are you? Distinct voices that make orders or comments is symptomatic of schizophrenia, which typically is onset from late teens to mid twenties.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#373

Interesting topic (and comments). 1. I do inner monologue. And I have to say, sometimes I get scared from what I "hear". I don't mean sometjing like "I hear voices telling me to kill everyone", but nasty, brutally cynical, sometimes outright violent thoughts. They feel alien to me, because on general level I consider myself "the good guy", but one the other hand they don't feel like someone else whispering me evil th…

I get really annoyed with people who twitter about crap old people say (example old Clint Eastwood). Have always believed they’re just losing control over their internal monologues, because you just -know- a lot of people think that way sometimes but aren’t bad people.

On layers, it’s like there is a second contrarian thread that pops up during controversial topics. Like some safety or auditing function.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine the answer would be; the same way you would talk about the concepts out loud to someone else.

So how do you think about something that you can't describe to someone else? There are many things I can deeply understand, but turning that understanding into natural language takes considerable effort. Are people with internal monologues incapable of understanding things they can't verbalize? Or is it that their brain just instantly verbalizes thoughts after the thoughts have already been formed? The latter seems a…

At least for me, part of the internal monologue is internal visualization too. Those things you don't understand but you "see" how it should work.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#375
post #262

This isn't so hard to understand if you've ever meditated. It becomes clearer that the internal monologue is a process that just runs on its own almost endlessly, and the feeling that we control it is mostly just an illusion. You can test this for yourself by trying to find out what your next thought is going to be. You never know until you have it, which indicates that the process is spontaneous and involuntary. I h…

I never knew that people actually thought verbally ! I always thought it was a figure of speech. I mean, I can "think verbally" if I try really hard... even then, it's more like me imagining myself saying something rather than actually thinking verbally. Wow. I don't know what to think.

Similarly until last year I never knew that people actually could visualize things when they closed their eyes. I thought it was more of a metaphor. But alas when I close my eyes it's darkness. Thankfully I have my internal monologue to describe things to me in that darkness.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#376

Unfathomable to me. My mind is constantly racing, playing out different conversations, interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things (one day I'm the president of the US talking about foreign policy, another day I'm a big tech CEO navigating the diversity questions). I constantly have something in my ears to tune myself out, podcasts or music. After being diagnosed w/ ADHD I realize I'm…

"interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things"

I used to from time to time imagine my half of a conversation in which I was showing around someone notable who had traveled through time to get to the present day. Maybe someone from 1,000 years ago or maybe from 50. That is, for entertainment, not to cope with anything. I never felt like my imagination was quite good enough to turn it into fiction.

In general though, I don't have a monologue in a continuous sense. I frequently imagine saying things, imagine other people saying things, occasionally imagine saying something to myself, but I would never say that's how I think exclusively. When I am having trouble with a concept or problem though, I tend to return to verbal analysis - a narrative or verbal description helps me figure out things that I otherwise struggle with.

If I am writing, I might be hearing the words in my mind, or I might not. If not, I might reread what I wrote and then feel like editing it, probably because I wasn't conscious enough of how it sounded. So, really, I don't exactly relate to having or not having an "internal monologue". Thinking one type of thought all the time seems weird to me.

As far as this post goes, I didn't know what it would look like until I was done, so I'm not necessarily conscious of how I organize things at all.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#379
Perhaps the same thing with day dreaming. I get the feeling there are vastly different experiences.

I once read about someone who said something like 'After taking the medicine [or something like that], when I stared at a clouds to daydream, nothing happened'. And I thought; what do you mean, what should have happened..?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#380
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you think less you may be open to more possibilities, be more spontaneous and even have some childlike fun. However, others can be taken aback and even suspect ulterior motives, until you harmonize better with others.

I am surprised that you said others can suspect ulterior motives, because that started happening to me but I can't figure out what the connection is. Can you expand on that?

Book I found enjoyable and valuable, especially given today's environment of deteriorating social trust: https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-About-People...

Gist: don't think too much, it's gonna be okay.

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