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People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

theguardian.com

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Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#131

Post by mcphage »

Jensson wrote: post #122
josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

Yeah, I don't really understand how people can have an inner voice. I vocalize text when I read, but it isn't like there is a voice in my head saying "I shall now go to the store", rather I just imagine myself going to the store or taking a shower etc, there is no voice I use to reason about problems etc. It would be so strange to talk to myself rather than just imagine the situations, why would you do that? And then…

> And then if you talk to yourself about everything, how do you think about things you can't talk about?

The same way you do, presumably.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#132

Post by mcphage »

haxiomic wrote: post #80
josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

> Some of my most interesting thoughts I don’t have the words for at all. That's a really interesting idea, I wonder if leaning so heavily on language can limit our available thought-space. Certainly a Sapir–Whorf tie-in there! I find when I over-do it with coding I can't stop thinking about everything in terms of coding related concepts and it drives me nuts because I can tell it's gumming up my clarity of understan…

> I wonder if leaning so heavily on language can limit our available thought-space.

Where would new words come from, then?

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#133

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

floatingatoll wrote: post #88
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I trace a spiral from the center counter clockwise, and if I still don’t have comprehension, I go back a couple paragraphs or try again the agonizing word by word way Wow. What?

I don't know, man. I work with my brain as best I can. Some pages of books are an entire page of "glance, glance, okay, that's all meaningless" next-page. But I also remember books as intensely as TV or in-person experiences, if not moreso. If I'm trying to figure out whether what I've just written will make any sense to other human beings, sometimes I'll say a fragment of it out loud to hear the emotion and make sur…

Have you been tested for dyslexia or other disabilities?

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#134

Post by seba_dos1 »

When I was a child I used to "play" with my inner voice by trying to think faster than the voice was able to verbalize. It always amazed me that I could actually do that - I knew what I thought about even though I failed to verbalize it. Always made me wonder about what thinking actually is. Following a longer train of thought this way was pretty hard though (and my undiagnosed ADHD probably didn't help either).

Of course, I don't really hear any voice. It's clearly a thought in my head - yet it takes the form of a voice. It's what makes it actually a coherent thought instead of just a set of vague ideas.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#135

Post by russelldjimmy »

josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

I thought I didn’t have an inner voice for the longest time because I couldn’t hear it being vocalised. Then one day, while I was narrating how I reacted to an incident to my shrink, she exclaimed, “You have an inner critic!”

I thought about it and tried to develop awareness, because I was aware that my mind generated feelings of guilt, shame, fear, etc. out of seemingly nowhere.

Guess what. I found the inner voice. And it was harshly critical. It constantly contradicted things I did and tried to put me down.

Moreover, I recognised it as the “voice of my family”. I somehow likened it to the way my family members responded when they were at their most critical. While they are not always like that, my voice was always like that. It was like the worst of them in my head all the time.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#136

Post by josephg »

russelldjimmy wrote: post #135
josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

I thought I didn’t have an inner voice for the longest time because I couldn’t hear it being vocalised. Then one day, while I was narrating how I reacted to an incident to my shrink, she exclaimed, “You have an inner critic!” I thought about it and tried to develop awareness, because I was aware that my mind generated feelings of guilt, shame, fear, etc. out of seemingly nowhere. Guess what. I found the inner voice.…

That reminds me of a saying I heard a few years ago: "Be careful how you talk to your children. In their darker moments, thats the voice they'll use to talk to themselves".

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#137

Post by ManuelKiessling »

pseudalopex wrote: post #117
checkyoursudo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an interesting mental exercise. I have an inventory of concepts, data, and other random thoughts in my head. If you ask me how many windows are in each room, I can recall this information (probably even relatively accurately!). I cannot picture the room or the windows, however. So, I can tally up the windows and be reasonably certain, only because I know how many there are (in this house, I know how many are in…

> When you are "visiting" each room in your house, I think you are walking through a recalled simulation that is created in your working memory, e.g. a visuo-spatial sketchpad, using the same type of information that is stored in my brain. It's an interesting idea. But I don't think most people remember faces for example like that.

I could swear I have read that there is a special place in our brain for remembering faces.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#138

Post by Camouflager »

josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

It brings up an interesting idea about the relationship between consciousness and written/vocalized words. In my case during the many occasions where I suffered from shame and pain, it actually helps a lot to admit to myself that the feeling being felt is painful, and thus I can actually move on to learn the lesson instead of being trapped by the shameful feelings and my eternal battle of trying to suppress it.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#139

Post by patrickdavey »

josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

My partner is one of the most optimistic and positive people I have ever met. One day we discussed negative self talk, and she was like "nope, don't have that", as I was trying to explain the negative self talk. Then she was like "oohhhhh, you mean my brainstorm partner!!!!". Floored me. She just _doesn't_ do negative self talk, instead it's a collaborative problem solving approach. Amazing.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#140

Post by japanuspus »

There is a theory in evolutionary psychology that consciousness is tightly coupled to inner voices (voices of the Gods) [0]. Personally I find the theory compelling, but I do not know how well accepted it is.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

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