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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#601

Post by baddox »

username90 wrote: post #559
baddox wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thoughts are so much richer than any language can possibly express. I'm not sure about that. Couldn't it just be that we sometimes don't understand our own thoughts? If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that you must not understand that thought. And of course we sometimes have thoughts which we don't understand. I think that understanding our own thoughts is something that needs to…

> If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that you must not understand that thought. I've heard that before and it is definitely bullshit, thinking like that will just hold you and others back. It is true that if I can't describe it in words then I can't prove to others that I understand it, but it isn't true that I can't prove to myself that I understand it using my own minds language.…

I’m not sure how it would hold you back. On the contrary, it should motivate you to seek further understanding of your thoughts.

To me, it just doesn’t make sense definitionally to say you understand anything if you can not describe it in language. It would be like saying you understand an algorithm but you can’t express it as a computer program.

But this isn’t to say that you cannot act in accordance with your thoughts even if you don’t understand them! It can be useful to make decisions based on intuition even if you can’t describe in words what motivated the decision. Surely we all do that quite often. But it’s even better to be able to understand those thoughts and account for them using words!

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#603

Post by zackbloom »

40acres wrote: post #105

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…

The book "The Untethered Soul" is very good if you're ever interested in breaking free of that.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#604

Post by ianai »

n00b123 wrote: post #164

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’m grateful someone put to words the layers thing. The sublayers seem to move much faster than the top most layer. I try to get my monologue out of its way, but it’s almost prohibitive against it. Like I have to have the same thought twice - once low level and again top. Only then may I move onward.

I do try to “step aside” sometimes though. I think meditation has helped me hone that technique.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#605

Post by mirimir »

Some of this, I suspect, is about differences in how people understand "speak" and "hear". I mean, I have an internal monologue, and sometimes even dialogs or arguments. But I would never confuse them with something I actually heard. Even what I might whisper or subvocalize.

I also occasionally hear voices or whatever, usually just before I fall asleep, or when I'm very tired, or stoned. But that's a very different experience. That actually seems like hearing, and not at all like my monologue.

One of the Landmark distinctions is about internal dialogue. That is, distinguishing it from who we are. As a subsystem, as it were. Very automatic, and based on our programming.

So there's the practice of hearing yourself, thanking yourself for sharing, and then choosing how to be. Just as you might respond to an upset child.

I admit, though, that I'm often harder on myself than I'd ever be with children. But it's all in good fun.

And I do vaguely recall that some participants denied having internal dialogues.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#606

Post by im_down_w_otp »

The concept of this conundrum occurred to me years ago when I developed a friendship with a woman who had been deaf since birth. I don't remember what triggered it exactly, but I remember thinking exactly this, "If she's never heard herself speak, then what does her internal monologue sound like? Oh, wait... she's never heard anyone speak, so... ".

Similar to the author of the piece, I just have to stop thinking about it every time it pops back into my brain. It's like I get into some recursive loop and eventually blow the stack, unwind the stack trace, abort, and resume my regularly scheduled processes.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#607

Post by FullKirby »

I swear, a few years ago, I never verbalized thoughts in my head. It wasn't a thing to me. Then, I remember very much when I started "speaking" in my head with words, and since I started having these monologues, I haven't been able able to stop...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#608

Post by bArray »

40acres wrote: post #105

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…

I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I can switch between the two modes, narrated and silent. Most of the time when reading I'll narrate in my head, otherwise I rarely narrate when performing more complex tasks (such as programming - I program much faster than I can speak).

I always find myself thinking out different scenarios, different responses, etc. I too listen to a lot of music and podcasts to drain out that voice - it often helps me work harder.

Also my internal voice is very different from my spoken voice. My internal voice is upper class English and my spoken voice is a rough, course English voice.

Another thing, possibly related, is that my ability to multitask is quite high. Right now for example I am watching a video whilst typing. I can often talk and type at the same time as well, whilst I find colleagues unable to do so.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#609

Post by PascLeRasc »

For those with an internal monologue, what person do you hear it in? For example, I always think in 2nd person, as in "we should eat eggs for breakfast", but almost no one else I've asked about this has had that. I'm curious if thinking as "I should do X" vs "You should do X" correlates with other personality traits.
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