I'm a shut-in. This is my story

A majority of people literally read their thoughts to themselves using the part of their brain that processes heard speech.

The pool of people you're drawing from are all nerds who are here reading this stuff. Of course they have quiet thoughts.

It's been my experience that there are two kinds of people in this regard: There are those who process their thoughts with the speech portion of their brain and those who do not. Those who do are usually second-handers; people who depend on other people to form their opinions for them; who depend on the input of their peers to form their own thoughts. They need to hear their thoughts in a voice as if hearing them from a peer in order for them to be rational thoughts.

People who think independently and objectively tend to think using mental associations and imagery.

Thanks for your detailed response with details. I'll address about being a nice person, CBT and Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

a) On Being Nice

My experience of dealing with "nice begets nice" have been situations where, a) both parties are equitable in some context and have something to gain from one another (emotional need met in relationships, being on the same sports or business team etc) or b) where someone who's in a higher position of power and doesn't find the less empowered person threatening. This may sound very clinical but often-times, people confuse themselves unconsciously about their capacity to be a altruistic person vs. their need to feel altruistic. Common example include some people's need to feel like a good person in romantic or social context but in the end lead on the more needy lover/friend, some people's need to feel like a "creative" person but find themselves resorting to "capitalist sins" about their career/promotion in critical times.

For me personally, it's more honest and accurate for myself to say that I enjoy the feeling of giving and being loved and it's important to my well-being; but that feeling is subordinate to my self-interest. I feel this is true love rather than confusing my ultimately selfishness, misrepresenting and leading myself and someone else on.

b) CBT

IMO, most therapy tries to change the way you think or feel about your problems but not how to go about fixing the problems themselves. I don't want to dive into the exact mechanics of CBT/NLP/Psychotherapy/SSRI, but I find them to be more evasive and ultimately ineffective ways to confront emotional issues.

I want to be a professional basketball player in the NBA. Correcting negative emotional triggers throughout the day as to why I'm not 6' 5'' is ultimately not going to be effective. I have to apply domain-specific knowledge in basketball for undersized guards such as floaters and dribble-attack moves to compensate for my shortness. Or if I'm past a specific age, it's pretty unrealistic and I should divert my attention/resources to more realistic goals. The same binary logic applies to relationships, career's and yuppie ambitions. Psychology is too vague to solve my domain specific problems such as how to talk to girls, whether to work for a RoR or Python shop or how to start a vegan bakery-shop that would impress my friends. I don't want to suppress my negative thoughts or "sublime" them into more positive one's, they are there to force me to either do correct my shortcomings or admit that I suck. And I'd rather concede to my realistic conditions and progress realistically than to delude myself with the magic bullet of positive thinking that will never come.

c) Maslow's Pyramid of Needs

I believe that self-actualization and self-transcendence is too abstract for me. Helping to start a school or free clinic in Africa to me is a vanity like owning a yacht because I wouldn't do it unless I have more free time or money. I don't see any of my artistic/creative activities like creative writing, composing music etc. as "higher-lifting" as much as playing World of Warcraft or programming. They are fun things that I like to do to get into the flow of one particular thing and to assign a higher purpose and say I'm a "maker/tinkerer" or "chronicler of human condition" is ludicrous and egoistic. In my humble opinion, Einstein, Shakespeare or Tom Brady whoever don't do necessarily write or think differently than I do. They just do it in orders of magnitude better which doesn't put them in a different "creative class" of "free-thinkers" which somehow one day I hope to associate with, it just means that I suck and will most likely suck for the rest of my life. My problem isn't "finding myself," I did that exercise in kindergarten But it's how to make my life better now.

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Edit: Seems reply below is right, I misread the article. He actually calls out his lifestyle as specifically "unhealthy".

>...my unhealthy mental state...

It's more like talking to yourself. (There's a school of thought that language is thought; related is Sapir–Whorf). The limitation of words is a strength; it enables you to pin down ideas precisely, like butterflies for careful examination. But do it too soon, and they slip through the net.

Capturing thought in words implies that thought differs from words; but words are an important tool of thought. Linguistic thought seems a builtin for humans and our intelligence would be less if we did not have words - and not just for communication/collaboration and external storage.

BTW: There was a study of mathematicians done about a century ago IIRC, and it was found that about 70% of them thought visually about mathematics; about 15% verbally/linguistically; and only 5% thought in actual mathematical notation.