171–180 of 272 posts
It's gotten to the point where sometimes when I'm alone I'll vocalise these names I call msyelf out loud. It sort of helps to relieve the stress of reliving cringey memories... But I'm not sure anymore.
Felt a bit crestfallen reading this because I’m not convinced I have one of these. I subvocalise constantly, and I can picture things well, but I’m the originator of those thoughts. Of course sometimes I’ll be saying “that was dumb” or “you’re being an arsehole” but it’s still me saying it. I take it from the article that for some people these thoughts occur unbidden, and I find myself a little envious that my subcon…
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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…
The voice doesn't think, the voice just narrates the thought. It's optional filler.
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The voice doesn't think, the voice just narrates the thought. It's optional filler.
I guess that makes sense. But it seems like many thinks that the voice is their thinking rather than just a narrator? Like, I have heard that people can't imagine solving a math problem without thinking in words.
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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".
It still called me by the name he gave me, not the name I call myself.
So now it's under the same restrictions he is. It doesn't have my permission to speak to me anymore.
Citation?
I've seen informal Twitter polls on this and most respondents (like me) said they have no inner voice. I know that's not a very scientific source, but though this is a "science journalism" article I see nothing referenced to back up this claim. It almost seems as if it's just the writer's opinion/assumption?
But what I have is a sidekick, someone I constantly talk to. This someone has no face or shape, and no voice - it never speaks, yet it is very real.
It's so real that I often find myself telling it "okay, you were right!" even though it never uttered a word. I somehow know what it thinks, and I answer back.
It kind of ressembles a typical scene in movies when a character talks to a dog or to a statue to figure out what they're going to do (except it's not just one scene, it never stops).
The brain is weird.
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…
Mine's not even normally restricted to being an inner voice. I live by myself, and I talk to myself out loud constantly. It's mostly just narration, but I think being explicit about things helps my executive function weaknesses.
"Alright, smeej. Up from the couch. Let's put the dishes away. Grab those two first. Then let's shower because it's getting kind of late this morning."
I catch myself muttering out loud in hardware stores (which are somehow less overwhelming than grocery stores), but who hasn't seen somebody looking for something and muttering to themselves? I'm just that person!
Not everyone has an internal monologue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451