651–660 of 904 posts
I begin to understand why other people (such as the ms) might not be happy that I have a podcast on while reading, and able to listen and talk to her at the same time. She might have an internal monologue but it's something nice never thought to ask. From her perspective it's a cacophony, for me it is almost soothing.
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…
fwiw I also have ADHD, and certainly daydream a lot, and often imagine myself in situations or doing interesting things, but I would say that I don't have much of an 'internal monologue'. I imagine being in situations, but very rarely speaking is conciously involved. For example, I also sometimes imagine being the leader of my country, but I'm more thinking about issues that might arise and how I might decide to act…
I also have an extremely weak minds eye. I don't get visual thinking at all. If I have a blank page in front of me I simply cannot imagine a user interface. I would have to physically or digitally start drawing something in order to even be able to visualize further changes to the UI. I also have an extremely weak grasp on local geography. I suspect places form a network in most people's heads. For me they are mostly isolated locations which don't connect to anywhere else. I have an ok sense of direction. I can certainly go back the way I've come. But in regular conversations about locations in my city I have been stumped 1000x when certain place names are mentioned. I always ask where those places are. Everyone around me can tell me how to get there by what is close by or what describe the route. I usually don't know where the things the mention are either. Someone else usually chimes in to help me understand where something is by giving another example. Unless I pull up Google maps I almost always still end up not knowing where they are talking about even though I know the name of the place and roughly what type of place it is. I'm talking about the major suburbs anyone would know in their city. I worked out my ability in this area was sorely lacking when even my little brother who was 5 years younger than me would always be the 3rd person to attempt to explain where something was after my two older sisters had had a go.
But when it comes to peoples voices I can recall their accent, language patterns and mannerisms perfectly. So I wind up doing a lot of impersonations of people.
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 have found that in Southern Africa, if you take the time to understand many of the fusion and native cultures, you can learn a lot about stressing less. In my personal case, I do have an internal monologue, but it gets worse with stress.
My one Mozambican friend for example (notwithstanding his amusing "selfishness" with money) has made me realise that not all people handle progress (esp. technological) with underlying anxiety. Sometimes you really are allowed to suck in and enjoy life, appreciate the progress that has been made, and look to our challenges with grace.
I would say I don't have an internal monologue. But that doesn't mean my mind isn't wandering all over the place. I don't talk to myself, I don't play out conversations in my head. Instead it's more like a collection of "thoughts", or "images", or visualizing myself "doing". I can get extremely caught up in this. There's also an awful lot of contemplating objects, observing features, visualizing how they interact. Ve…
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…
I would say that my internal monologue is kinda a summary, and is a bit lossy.
> I often have thoughts that take only an instant, but would take many sentences to verbalize.
I would not say that my internal monologue happens at speech-speed either, it can be much faster, and the actual idea or thought is still instantaneous. The monologue is more about rationalizing or understanding your thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for answering. Makes sense to me.
I've also noticed that people who over invest in their ability to prepare tend to be people who struggle under pressure or to adapt in the moment. Everything in moderation I guess
She is very good at planning because she needs to feel in control all the time. You are right that when things don't go as planned and the pressure ramps up she loses her control and makes poor decisions or no decision at all.
It's interesting to me as I am on the opposite side for most of the time.
This topic (comments here, the OP, and comments in threads elsewhere) exposes some conflicting definitions of what an "internal monologue" is or means. - Some people describe hearing their internal monologue, which I take to mean something like: they have an internal monologue, and it manifests as a voice that only they hear. These people are analogous to those who see things they picture in their mind's eye . - Some…
For people who experience having an internal monologue: Suppose you see a bagel on the kitchen table in the morning and decide whether or not you're hungry enough to eat it. Does that process involve an internally experienced stream of words (whether "audible in your mind's ear" or not) like "I'm pretty hungry" or "I bet that bagel would taste good"? Is this what it would be mean to have an internal monologue? Becaus…
My personal experience (in the non-audible group) is that the "role" this voice is playing is a bit more supervisory/executive. It thinks about what I need to do tomorrow, or the next three steps on my current project, or that I really need to carve out time to go to the cleaners some morning.
This voice might think about getting food, but mostly when hunger is getting in the way of other priorities. Or when I need to game out how to fit food into a tight schedule.
For myself personally, it depends on what I'm thinking about. Thinking about writing this sentence, I hear each of the words I'm going to type in my head before I type them. However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do. I have to imagine that's the case for at least most people. Thinking out complicated abstract co…
> However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do. This is funny. I can't imagine anyone doing that. There is no end to that. Like imagine someone thinking while walking down a lane "I am walking down the lane, and now I am going to turn left ... " this is endless ...
I have a serious question to people here describing themselves (as I understand it) as thinking in words and whole sentences: How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which no words exist? Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any verbal description is essentially incomplete…
I think with words, in multiple languages, but they're silent. I can't actually hear anything. Importantly though, the verbalizing is a later stage of thinking. First there is the thought, seemingly instant, non-verbalized, and fuzzy. If needed, I can already act based on that thought without verbalizing. However if I verbalize it in my head, then that allows for further analysis that may lead me to override the init…