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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#691

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

kbenson wrote: post #494
ludston wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "Living in the moment" stuff has depth such that many books have been written on it. It is one of the premises of mindfulness meditation, and Buddhism thoroughly explores this. The summary is that you will be more satisfied if you are not continuously ruminating on the past, or anxiously anticipating future problems, but instead focus on your immediate happiness. e.g. Right now you are comfortable, not in any pa…

I think it depends on whether you want to feel like a good person, or be a good person. Living in the moment lets you feel better, because there's less to consider. Constantly examining yourself and those around you allows you to better react to those surroundings (even if some people don't act on it for various reasons, one of which might be getting too caught up in the examining and never doing). Like literally eve…

This is definitely not true, at least most people don't experience it this way once they learn meditation/mindfulness/etc.

What happens instead is that if you are in the moment, you can much more easily see and feel which things actually exist in the current moment for you to consider, and to actually react to those surroundings that actually matter, instead of those that have been served up by the internal dialog which is based usually on worries, fears, ego beliefs etc. Living in the moment does not make you live like an animal. It makes you appreciate and focus on that which truly matters for you, instead of distractions that a constantly thiking mind always throws at you and makes you feel like everything is says matters and is very important.

Those things that are truly worth considering, already exist in the moment. If you have a real need or want to do something today - it will be in the moment and it will present itself. It is a total nonsense that a person "living in the moment" can never complete any complicated task, accomplish a complicated goal or plan for the future when that is required. - And that is being a good person, not simply "feeling like one".

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#692

Post by sah2ed »

robofanatic wrote: post #130
donatj wrote: post #107

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 ...

> 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 ...

Funny you say that. Growing up, I was almost exactly like that, though thankfully, the habit has shifted elsewhere.

By elsewhere, this amounts to active subvocalization of distinct physical attributes of the person in front of me: shape of head, type of eyes, (ir)regularity of teeth, cut of jib, unusual piercings, color of clothing, etc.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#693

Post by jmiskovic »

TOGoS wrote: post #200
robofanatic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ...

This is what I don't understand when people claim things like "language is required for higher thought" or whatever (no link but I'm sure I've seen that claim numerous times across various articles). We necessarily do plenty of thinking without words. Certainly you can be someone who focuses more on the words or less on the words, and maybe word-based people are naturally better at talking because their thoughts are…

At least language is a huge help. For me crucial insights won't come readily formed in words, they come as abstract occurrences that need to be converted to words. Some of insight is lost in this conversion, I think, because the mind has to switch over to linguistic mode and serialize the memory content. Still, when putting ideas to words it also makes them more clear and distilled. As they say, you don't really understand the phenomenon unless you can explain it clearly.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#694

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

lqet wrote: post #314

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 do think in both and I feel there are multiple good answers to your question, but one that I find especially interesting is that while I do use words, they don't always mean what they mean in the general language.

So for exapmle when I use them to speak to someone, I usually use them in the common way. I transcribe my thoughts into words only in those ways in which those words are exactly used by other carriers of that language.

However, when I dream or reason about some new or abstract concept, I do still some of the words as anchors to hold on to specific parts of that concept, but I am not too strict about using the words that mean(in the common sense) - those exact parts of the concept. I just find the word that somewhat closely resembles something in that concept and use it. But it is just used as an anchor, to let my mind navigate around that concept. Many times, if I was to try to explain this concept to someone else using those exact same words - they wouldn't understand it, because they would be missing the very specific connections that my mind made just for this concept, for this thinking session. And those change all the time.

If the concept proves itself useful, I will just translate it into regular English (or other language) and write or remember etc. But it happens much later, not during the conception and reasoning stages.

> Are you afraid that thinking in language categories prevents you from accessing deeper truths?

I am not afraid of that and I don't think that it does so necessarily. Because if you use words simply as anchors, you can basically anchor them to any imaginable (as deep as you wish) information or concept or part of the internal world, you are basically not limited by the language. You are just using words as pointers, with arbitrary precision and pointing capability. If I am not limited by the implied requirement for those words to be used in the same way by other people (which I am not during this early stage of thought) - then words can basically be infinitely flexible.

Now I don't usually just use random words either, I automatically finds ones that sort of fit approximately, but this non-strict usage just allows to bend the boundaries and achieve great flexibility.

I do sometimes think without words though, when that just seems more efficient.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#695

Post by aaimnr »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #140
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 used to be like that, and it was helpful in many ways as I seemed to always be ready for wherever a conversation might go. But I wasn't living in the moment. Now I actively stop myself from simulating the various branches of potential conversations. It feels good to live in the moment (shaking my head a little when I feel it starting helps). The downside is that I don't have as many prepared responses and am more e…

Your mention about shaking your head is very interesting. How did you come up with that? Are you aware of Peter Levine's or David Berceli's work on shaking/trembling as a natural stress-releasing mammallian instinct that people are usually repressing?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#696

Post by aaimnr »

ALittleLight wrote: post #683
bananamerica wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it is so satisfying when a conversation hits a branch you worked on for hours on end! Very useful for dating and job interviews. Especially for people with foot-in-mouth disease [1] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foot-in-mouth_disease

While I do play out a lot of conversations and branches in my head, my imagined lines of conversation never really play out in reality. I find for example that my imagined conversations are a lot more hostile, I'm always imagining having to battle and batter my coworkers and managers to explain why things are the way they are - but in person I find that not only are others nicer than I imagined they would be, but I a…

The part about hostility is a perfect observation. The reason is that compulsive thoughts are usually driven by fear.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#697

Post by jadia »

This is the reason I can't type/write anything else when someone is talking to me. I need utter silence, so that I can hear myself and type it on the keyboard.

If someone talks then I can't hear my thoughts clearly to type them on keyboard.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#698

Post by Insanity »

james-skemp wrote: post #206
Insanity wrote: post #177

For me, it's definitely the internal monologue. Worse is that I have a form of OCD (repetitive thoughts) so this monologue gets stuck in a 'loop' and I end up just repeating the same sentence, or part of sentences to myself. Drives me nuts. Makes me wonder if people without this 'internal monologue' experience this kind of OCD in the same way..

Until you've 'said' it just right? I definitely have OCD tendencies, and this sounds like me in my 20s. What helped me was distracting myself with another line of thought.

Yeah, until I have said it 'right'. I'm in my late twenties now but have had this pretty much as long as I can remember.

Glad you found a way to deal with it though!

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#699

Post by yetihehe »

JohnBerea wrote: post #676
okareaman wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like hell to me. I don't have an internal monolog. I think in visuals. I am a quiet person. I am a better programmer for it I think. I visualize the structure of a program I am writing and pair programming would also be hell for me.

It's not necessarily either-or. I have an internal monologue for most things but much of my math and programming thoughts are conceptual.

The same for me. Also I have that internal monologue, but it feels like it's just me talking and it's not constant chatter, I can just not talk inside if I don't want to.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#700

Post by User23 »

mikelevins wrote: post #127
User23 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced something similar, namely hypnagogic hallucinations, usually when waking up, that sound exactly note for note the same as the recordings. Strawberry Fields Forever was the most memorable. To my mind experiences like this and particularly vivid dreams show that our mental capacity for self-stimulating is profoundly more extensive than most people believe. I can't think of any reason why you couldn't…

In case you're interested: "hypnogogic" refers to experiences you have while falling asleep. The word for experiences you have while waking up is "hypnopompic".

"The hypnagogic state is rational waking cognition trying to make sense of non-linear images and associations; the hypnopompic state is emotional and credulous dreaming cognition trying to make sense of real world stolidity." [1]

Thank you for the clarification. I've never noticed any distinction between these two states. Perhaps that's why I conflate them. I suppose that stands to my point about the richness of autostimulated experiences.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnopompic

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