# Do You Have an Internal Monologue?



## Orion Balls (Jan 31, 2020)

Today I Learned That Not Everyone Has An Internal Monologue And It Has Ruined My Day.
					

My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their…




					ryanandrewlangdon.wordpress.com
				





*Today I Learned That Not Everyone Has An Internal Monologue And It Has Ruined My Day.*
Posted on3 Days Ago by InsideMyMind






My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their head. All my life, I could hear my voice in my head and speak in full sentences as if I was talking out loud. I thought everyone experienced this, so I did not believe that it could be true at that time.
Literally the first person I asked was a classmate of mine who said that she can not “hear” her voice in her mind. I asked her if she could have a conversation with herself in her head and she looked at me funny like I was the weird one in this situation. So I began to become more intrigued. Most people I asked said that they have this internal monologue that is running rampant throughout the day. However, every once in a while, someone would say that they don’t experience this.




My life began to slowly spiral out of control with millions of questions. How do they get through the day? How do they read? How do they make decisions between choice A and choice B? My friend described it as “concept maps” that she sees in her brain. Another friend says that she literally sees the words in her head if she is trying to think about something. I was taking ibuprofen at this point in the day because my brain was literally unable to comprehend this revelation. How have I made it 25 years in life without realizing that people don’t think like me?





I posted a poll on instagram to get a more accurate assessment of the situation. Currently 91 people have responded that they have an internal monologue and 18 people reported that they do not have this. I began asking those people questions about the things that they experience and it is quite different from the majority.
I would tell them that I could look at myself in the mirror and have a full blown telepathic conversation with myself without opening my mouth and they responded as if I had schizophrenia. One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was real.”





And to their surprise, they did not know that the majority of people do in fact experience that echoey voice in their head that is portrayed in TV and film. Another person said that if they tried to have a conversation with themselves in the mirror, they would have to speak out loud because they can’t physically do it inside of their mind.
I started posting screenshots of these conversations on my instagram and my inbox started 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




to flood with people responding to my “investigation.” Many people were reassuring me that I was not crazy for having an internal monologue, while others were as absolutely mind blown as I was. People were telling me that I ruined their day and that they now do not understand anything about life. Maybe you are all just a figment of my imagination, but regardless, yesterday made reality seem even more skewed.
How do they think? How does this affect their relationships, jobs, experiences, education? How has this not been mentioned to me before? All of these questions started flooding my mind. Can those people without the internal monologue even formulate these questions in their mind? If they can, how does it happen if they don’t “hear” their voice? I mentioned earlier that I was spiraling out of control. Well, as I write this and as I hear my own voice in my head, I am continuing to fall down the rabbit hole.




Whether people just have different definitions of their thoughts, or if people literally don’t have an internal monologue, there is one thing that we do know… you will definitely get a headache if you keep thinking about this. Just trying to wrap my head around it is causing irreversible brain damage. I suggest asking people around you what they experience. If you are one of the few that do not have this internal monologue, please enlighten me, because I still do not understand life anymore. Send help.
@RyanLangdon_

A slightly more scientific look...







						Not Everyone Conducts Inner Speech
					

Inner speech is frequent but not for everyone.




					www.google.com
				





So, like the title says, do you have an internal monlogue?


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## Judge Holden (Jan 31, 2020)

Yeah mine is just this on permanent loop


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## Lina Colorado (Jan 31, 2020)

So what you are asking is "are you an npc?"
Answer is no. No, i'm not.


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## Marco Fucko (Jan 31, 2020)

My internal monologue is me constantly bitching about random shit tbh.


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## Papa Adolfo's Take'n'Bake (Jan 31, 2020)

My internal monologue tells me that we've got issues, and to be fair, he's right.


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## BingBong (Jan 31, 2020)

My internal monologue is just constant shit-talking.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jan 31, 2020)

What an insecure moron. Obviously when children are pre-verbal they lack an inner voice, that doesn't stop them from thinking and learning. It's interesting that some people don't make the leap, but since I'm in the majority of people who aren't broke-brained about it what do I care?


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## From The Uncanny Valley (Jan 31, 2020)

Yeah, but the weird part is that it's all in text.


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## Kari Kamiya (Jan 31, 2020)

My internal monologue keeps going off-topic on a lot of stuff, just can't ever think about one thing at one time.



Uncanny Valley said:


> Yeah, but the weird part is that it's all in text.



Funny thing about that, ever since middle school, I always thought it was "odd" that apparently people can just "think" words in their heads and nothing more, yet I could envision entire scenarios down to the last blade of grass and the hitch in someone's voice. My mom once randomly asked me that on the way back home from school and she thought it was interesting I could do that, but there was never a follow-up discussion about it. Honestly, I forgot that was somewhat of a big deal back then until the NPC meme showed up a few years ago.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jan 31, 2020)

Kari Kamiya said:


> My internal monologue keeps going off-topic on a lot of stuff, just can't ever think about one thing at one time.
> 
> 
> 
> Funny thing about that, ever since middle school, I always thought it was "odd" that apparently people can just "think" words in their heads and nothing more, yet I could envision entire scenarios down to the last blade of grass and the hitch in someone's voice. My mom once randomly asked me that on the way back home from school and she thought it was interesting I could do that, but there was never a follow-up discussion about it. Honestly, I forgot that was somewhat of a big deal back then until the NPC meme showed up a few years ago.


I think most people are capable of visualizing things in their "mind's eye", hence why we have a term for it. There's varying degrees of that ability but I only once met a woman who said she lacked it due to a brain injury and I honestly can't fathom it.

Changing topics slightly, one thing I've been quite stumped by lately is that if I imagine a light shining in my eyes it will cause an after-image in my vision as if the light had actually existed. Maybe it would help if I knew why after-images occur in the first place.

Eta: a quick Google turned this up






						Illusory palinopsia - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org
				




I guess that's what I'm talking about and the TLDR seems to be "Eh, we're not sure." they seem to be implying that our brains expect to see the after image so they conjure one up, which was about what I thought.


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## NIGGER ASS PEE POOPY RAPE (Jan 31, 2020)

thinking with a mixture of sights, sounds, all other senses and words is much more efficient than with nothing but words. your brain is powerful enough to conjure up photorealistic dreams far more detailed than any video game or simulation that modern computers are capable of processing. you can use some of that processing power while awake too. I don't doubt that some people can only think with words, it would explain why they are so "slow". there's a boomer I know who can only count things one at a time, out loud. "one, two, three, four, five..." she also constantly whispers to herself. maybe some people really aren't capable of having an inner monologue.


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## Kari Kamiya (Jan 31, 2020)

Exigent Circumcisions said:


> I think most people are capable of visualizing things in their "mind's eye", hence why we have a term for it. There's varying degrees of that ability but I only once met a woman once who said she lacked it due to a brain injury and I honestly can't fathom it.





NIGGER ASS PEE POOPY RAPE said:


> thinking with a mixture of sights, sounds, all other senses and words is much more efficient than with nothing but words. your brain is powerful enough to conjure up photorealistic dreams far more detailed than any video game or simulation that modern computers are capable of processing. you can use some of that processing power while awake too.



I wonder if being able to just play out scenarios like a movie/video game/simulator in one's head (memories, "what ifs" or anything) including the audio is something most people can't even do. I don't know why that was a topic Mom brought up to 12/13-year-old me, and I don't know if that was of anything significant or what, but it wasn't something I had ever thought about before then. Sometimes I wonder if that's just how you know someone's a daydreamer because they just randomly come up with worlds in their imagination and it's just as real as the physical plane. And yet apparently being a daydreamer is actually really dangerous or a sign of some mental fuckery going on.

I dunno, but maybe that might be why some people go insane in isolation. Having no one to talk to, even a tiny person in your head, sounds like legit hell for a lot of folks.


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## MechanicusAdmin (Jan 31, 2020)

I do, but it's just my voice in smug monotone sarcasm.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jan 31, 2020)

@Orion Balls we need a poll. Who has an inner monologue, who can visualize complex scenarios in their mind's eye, and whether or not OP is a faggot.


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## Mender Bug (Jan 31, 2020)

As funny as the article is... who cares?

We’re incapable of seeing into the minds of others anyways


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## The Fool (Jan 31, 2020)

_I live somewhere off the Jersey turnpike in some shitty house. My name is The Fool. I'm 27 years old. I believe in drinking myself to sleep, through beer and vodka and definitely no exercise. In the afternoon, if my bowls are irritated, I'll sit on the toilet while not doing stomach crunches. I can't even do one. After I'm done suffering, I use whatever dollar store shampoo I have in my grimy tub while I'm in the shower. Then I apply a splash of cold water while I sit and stare at myself in the mirror for 10 minutes. I always use an after shave lotion with plenty of alcohol, because I love alcohol. There is an idea of The Fool, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity. Something illusory. And although I can hide my hollow gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense my lifestyle is outright depressing, I simply am not there._



Spoiler



But for real, I read shit in a voice but it's often not the same voice. I don't often think in a voice, but I read in a voice. It's usually whatever voice I was last listening to that I don't hate, like if I was listening to a talk or one of those explanation/science videos. Or I might have a voice assigned to whoever's text I'm reading, especially if I know their voice. If I'm reading some documentation, instructions or a compsci blogpost and I haven't recently listened to some informative voice, I'll usually use the Announcer's voice from Portal 2.

Other than that, yeah, I don't see the big deal here. Everyone thinks in a different way, if anything this should be considering a good thing.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Jan 31, 2020)

People experience cognition in radically different ways, thus proving that people besides myself aren't actually people.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jan 31, 2020)

I bet the author would trip out if somebody asked him how we know we experience sounds, colours and other sensory inputs the same way. If somebody asked me to describe what red looked like I'd only be able to point to things that are red, or make a list of things that aren't red. 

Of course, I assume these are things most fourteen year olds have already thought about.


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## Dante Alighieri (Jan 31, 2020)

This is at least a year late, this partially kicked off the NPC meme.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Jan 31, 2020)

Exigent Circumcisions said:


> I bet the author would trip out if somebody asked him how we know we experience sounds, colours and other sensory inputs the same way. If somebody asked me to describe what red looked like I'd only be able to point to things that are red, or make a list of things that aren't red.
> 
> Of course, I assume these are things most fourteen year olds have already thought about.


We need a bunch of psychologists to go around with an 8 year old in the "ask stupid yet profound questions incessantly" phase and have them take a survey of adults to get answers to these fundamental things we never even think to ask.


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## The Fool (Jan 31, 2020)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> We need a bunch of psychologists to go around with an 8 year old in the "ask stupid yet profound questions incessantly" phase and have them take a survey of adults to get answers to these fundamental things we never even think to ask.



That's just shower thoughts


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jan 31, 2020)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> We need a bunch of psychologists to go around with an 8 year old in the "ask stupid yet profound questions incessantly" phase and have them take a survey of adults to get answers to these fundamental things we never even think to ask.


Maybe. I think the answer to the question that I posed is that it's a pointless question to begin with. 

We can define red as the band of the visible spectrum between infrared and orange, we can represent it mathematically, but that's where the road ends. We've arrived at an objective definition of red with no ability to escape our subjective sense impressions of the world around us and test to see if there's a discrepancy. 

Even if we bring colorblindness into the picture, it won't help much. I have red/green colorblindness so I misinterpret colors at times but

The majority of people see them properly
It's the result of a physical deficiency
I'm only able to say that a certain shade of red looks orange to me, etc
And the last point brings us full circle back to the problem of "what is red?". 

Anyways, this is a lot of 'tism for a fairly banal subject, but I've always been fond of this sort of nonsense.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Jan 31, 2020)

Exigent Circumcisions said:


> Maybe. I think the answer to the question that I posed is that it's a pointless question to begin with.
> 
> We can define red as the band of the visible spectrum between infrared and orange, we can represent it mathematically, but that's where the road ends. We've arrived at an objective definition of red with no ability to escape our subjective sense impressions of the world around us and test to see if there's a discrepancy.
> 
> ...


Experiencing a voice in your thoughts is different in essence from experiencing no voice, and something that can be described to others. It sucks to rely on self reporting but there must be other differences like that that are actually answerable and not just "is your red my red?"


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## Lemmingwise (Jan 31, 2020)

An interesting study would be to see if people with and without internal verbal dialogue differ in how they view the world.

For some reason I'm curious particularly if it differs in how they view laws.

First, why do I call it internal verbal dialogue? Isn't it implied that dialogue is verbal?

Well my first assumption is that the difference between those who have internal dialogue and those who don't isn't very big at all. Otherwise, why would it have taken thousands of years to discover this? How do we know those without a voice in their head don't think about things that are fundamentally similar, but expressed differently?

It reminds me of karl pilkington, but also carl jung, who have expressed both in a different way that sometimes your brain comes up with things and presents them to you. A lot of the comedy between pilkington and gervais is because ricky takes the literal approach to things, one might say the verbal approach. Things which might be processed in the visual or other parts of the brain.

Conversely many of the historically famous mathematicians are on record for actively using the visualizing parts of the brain to understand things. It makes sense, we have more brain processing power for visual things, because it's the primary sense for survival in humans. Recognising edible fruit and being able to see snakes in the grass or teethed predators were essentially primal parts for our survival early on. The use of language and communication is helpful, but a much younger part of our brain.

Personally I experience something of both. I can have full fledged dialogue inside myself, but I can also think about things wordlessly. They are different processes and they tend to offer different solutions. Dialogue type thinking tends to be literal, social, rules-oriented. Non-verbal thinking tends to be thinking out of the box, innovative and solution-oriented.

I know it led to the political NPC meme, which was previously just a videogame meme. But perhaps it was wrong and wrong exactly in reverse. Perhaps those without internal dialogue aren't the ones who lack agency, but the ones who think beyond the constraints of the rules of other men.

Or perhaps the resulting difference is very minor. Do we see a difference in income? Do we see a difference in political attitudes? Do we see a difference in opinions about laws and whether they have to be followed by the spirit or by the letter of the law?

In the end I suspect the difference is minor and more a difference in style than one of substance. Again, because I think it would have been discovered/ considered earlier if it was a meaningful difference. I could be wrong and studying it would be interesting.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Jan 31, 2020)

I don’t “narrate,” but yes, I do hear my thoughts as words in my head. Not in my voice, but more like an idealized, accentless, manlier version of my voice.

I also talk to myself a lot when alone. Doesn’t matter if I’ve been talking to people all day or not at all, will talk to myself either way.


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## #zzz (Feb 20, 2020)

So do people with an internal monologue imagine the speaking of all their thoughts?  I mean sometimes I do it as a sort of exclaimation like "what the fuck" since no ones around why speak that?  Everything else is instant.  It flashes before I can even think unless its a specific list I need to remember.  Most of the time I just think of a song like bringing up a playlist to eat up "dead air".  Hell I'll just visualize a movie scene or something or visualize a memory if I'm really bored.  If I'm reading though I definately "hear" the words in my head. Probably faster than speaking speed though.

Like do people go "Me open door now to go to work" in their heads or what?


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## Gog & Magog (Feb 20, 2020)

Why yes, I have an internal monologue that never stops. Feels like I'm losing my mind but its fine. Wish I could just put an end to these ceaseless thoughts.


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## Lemmingwise (Feb 20, 2020)

Didn't feynman and another genius try to figure out how accurate our brain was at keeping track of time while doing different tasks? And they figured that one could do it as accurate as when doing nothing as while writing, while the other could do it as accurate as when talking as doing nothing. But if they did the other task they completely lost track of time. Different people use different brain processes to do a similar thing.

Much like internal monologue (which seems to just be verbalisation of thoughts).

Ever had a word on the tip of your tongue? You had the concept in your mind, but not the verbal match for the concept.


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## ??? (Feb 20, 2020)

I'm definitely more visually oriented but I can hear my voice in my head when the mood strikes me or I concentrate.

How do you experience books? I see them, like a movie in my mind.


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## Syikeblade (Feb 20, 2020)

Uncanny Valley said:


> Yeah, but the weird part is that it's all in text.


When you say text is like you see the words forming in your mind?


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## Cedric_Eff (Feb 20, 2020)

Sometimes my inner monologue gets too much and I can physically hear them. But sometimes I get the feeling that my inner monologue is becoming more worse and I’m hearing it more often.


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## Syikeblade (Feb 20, 2020)

Kari Kamiya said:


> I wonder if being able to just play out scenarios like a movie/video game/simulator in one's head (memories, "what ifs" or anything) including the audio is something most people can't even do. I don't know why that was a topic Mom brought up to 12/13-year-old me, and I don't know if that was of anything significant or what, but it wasn't something I had ever thought about before then. Sometimes I wonder if that's just how you know someone's a daydreamer because they just randomly come up with worlds in their imagination and it's just as real as the physical plane. And yet apparently being a daydreamer is actually really dangerous or a sign of some mental fuckery going on.
> 
> I dunno, but maybe that might be why some people go insane in isolation. Having no one to talk to, even a tiny person in your head, sounds like legit hell for a lot of folks.


Like Anaphatasia?


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## B. F. Bugleberry (Feb 20, 2020)

It's a fucking collage of bullshit, like I'll say half a sentence in Wayne Coyne's voice from the intro to "fight test", and the rest of the composed thought is in a blurry fast moving images. Such images or sequences are often reused, or used as an internal shorthand for an abstract feeling. I often get annoyed when I recognise I'm reusing certain sequences too often and I notice I'm going in a rut, e.g. "Oh god, not this bullshit again". 

There is no official "voice" in my head, just many different voices picked up from places, and I sometimes have to think for a moment to remember where a voice I've been using a good deal is from.

There also is this weird bleed in motions and abstract thoughts, such as in I will sometimes catch myself using "the imaginary shorthand of raising my eyebrows" rather than actually doing the motion. I can sort of feel me doing it in my imagination, but not actually engaging in it in a physical sense. This gets doubly crossed when mental actions used as shorthand, are unconsciously bled through to physical actions. For example, in my imagination I use the "blinkblink blink" gif a good deal as shorthand. But I've been catching myself doing that exact physical sequence when I normally would just imagine it. Sitting around thinking about something, dead silent, and occasionally making really weird faces makes me look quite crazy sometimes.

This may all be influenced by many concussions and previous hallucinogenic usage.


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## #zzz (Feb 20, 2020)

??? said:


> How do you experience books? I see them, like a movie in my mind.



Well yeah I thought that was the point of books.  Unless it's like how we are speaking now.  Then it's monologue.


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## Kari Kamiya (Feb 20, 2020)

Syikeblade said:


> Like Anaphatasia?



Well I don't have _that_, and I'm trying to figure out which part of the message you were responding with that, but that sounds like hell to me.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Feb 20, 2020)

#zzz said:


> So do people with an internal monologue imagine the speaking of all their thoughts?  I mean sometimes I do it as a sort of exclaimation like "what the fuck" since no ones around why speak that?  Everything else is instant.  It flashes before I can even think unless its a specific list I need to remember.  Most of the time I just think of a song like bringing up a playlist to eat up "dead air".  Hell I'll just visualize a movie scene or something or visualize a memory if I'm really bored.  If I'm reading though I definately "hear" the words in my head. Probably faster than speaking speed though.
> 
> Like do people go "Me open door now to go to work" in their heads or what?


Only when I'm actually thinking about it. Stuff that is automatic, just working off procedural or muscle memory; like opening a door, has no narration.


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## Syikeblade (Feb 20, 2020)

Kari Kamiya said:


> Well I don't have _that_, and I'm trying to figure out which part of the message you were responding with that, but that sounds like hell to me.


The first part.


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## Webby's Boyfriend (Feb 20, 2020)

Webby and I do have it.


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## Emperor Julian (Feb 20, 2020)

Constantly, the weird part is I can deliberatly/accidently construct a simple opposing personality for counter perspectives or when I need a conversation to articulate my thoughts more effectively. Very useful for online debate because you can usually anticipate the simpler objections to a degree.

Very awkward because I had to learn not to articulate the conversations quite early on.


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## He Who Points And Laughs (Feb 20, 2020)

Not being an NPC, of course I have inner monologue.


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## Faster Than Chris Robin (Feb 20, 2020)

If I had an inner monologue I wouldn't type to think and my life would be boring.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Feb 21, 2020)

Emperor Julian said:


> Constantly, the weird part is I can deliberatly/accidently contruct a simple opposing personality for counter perspectives or when I need a conversation to articulate my thoughts more effectively. Very useful for online debate because you can usually anticipate the simpler objections to a degree.
> 
> Very awkward because I had to learn not to articulate the conversations quite early on.


This but for some reasons when it happens the voice is always whoever my most recent SO was.


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## Mr. Skeltal (Feb 21, 2020)

Exigent Circumcisions said:


> I bet the author would trip out if somebody asked him how we know we experience sounds, colours and other sensory inputs the same way. If somebody asked me to describe what red looked like I'd only be able to point to things that are red, or make a list of things that aren't red.
> 
> Of course, I assume these are things most fourteen year olds have already thought about.


I remember asking myself the question "what would it be like to see through my brother's eyes?" when I was a little tyke and it kind of broke my mind trying to conceptualize it. It didn't help that I was coming off a particularly nasty flu that gave me (then) terrifying hallucinations akin to Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.

As for me, I do have an internal monologue that occasionally becomes external. The monologue only ever occurs in my voice. Visualizing things isn't really hard, it just takes focus. The result does tend to have a blurry, vague sense to it unless the visualization is based on a memory of something I've actually seen.


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## mindlessobserver (Feb 21, 2020)

Fuck yeah I do. Their names are Gary and Mister Sprinkles and they won't shut the fuck up. Mister Sprinkles in particular is  annoying. He keeps telling me to do horrible things.


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## Cool kitties club (Feb 21, 2020)

I talk to myself but like I'm narrating a story probably from too much Dostoevsky and Frank Miller. I also sometimes pretend I'm talking to people I know sometimes (in my head)


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## Demon King (Feb 21, 2020)

I have a bit of a blend. I visualize things in detail, or all 5 senses if I wanted to. Words seem to be a bit more of a drag, as I can portray what I think in a nebulous unfocused but detailed cloud in my head, than I could sounding it out in my head with words. I can hear my own voice, if I wanted to. I sometimes ask myself questions, and answer them. Switching between argument, and counter argument. Imagining scenarios or conversations in which I am about to have, or already have had.  Improving.


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## Fartwhistle (Feb 22, 2020)

Oh, Boy

If I could travel back in time, to 1980 or so... I would chew my parents' heads off and spit them out

Lots of resent... lots of regret. Lots of failure on the part of people I had no choice but to count on.

But, I'd still be me. Damage done.


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## Shadfan666xxx000 (Mar 10, 2020)

When I'm just chilling, I'll play whole movies out as I daydream like Walter Mitty and it'll work a lot like a sliding scale depending on how focused I am on my current task with everything getting boiled down to speaking in my head and fairly simple visualization depending on the task itself.
Edit: something that I've also had happen is sometimes if I watch something, I'll find myself thinking it through similarly to the characters there. For example, if I feel particularly dramatic and overinvested, I'll sometimes overthink and do a play by play like a shonen manga or I'll visualize something I'm scared of seeing.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Mar 10, 2020)

By the way, I do have some inner monologue, but using an inner monologue to feel superior over people has to be one of the most pathetic ones I've seen yet. People think different ways.


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## Unyielding Stupidity (Mar 11, 2020)

I honestly don't understand how people can create visual scenarios in their mind. Do they actually see the thing they're visualizing in their heads, and if so, is it incredibly detailed or extremely vague? Am I just retarded?


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## Shadfan666xxx000 (Mar 11, 2020)

Approx. 59 Robins said:


> I honestly don't understand how people can create visual scenarios in their mind. Do they actually see the thing they're visualizing in their heads, and if so, is it incredibly detailed or extremely vague? Am I just exceptional?


In terms of a medium, I've seen it described like a picture book and I'd describe it like a movie or a comic book.


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## ToroidalBoat (Mar 11, 2020)

I have one and I think it overthinks or talks _too_ much...


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## ??? (Mar 11, 2020)

Shadfan666xxx000 said:


> In terms of a medium, I've seen it described like a picture book and I'd describe it like a movie or a comic book.


It's literally like watching a movie or playing a video game. Reading a good book is for me hallucinating for 11 - 16 hours.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Mar 12, 2020)

Approx. 59 Robins said:


> I honestly don't understand how people can create visual scenarios in their mind. Do they actually see the thing they're visualizing in their heads, and if so, is it incredibly detailed or extremely vague? Am I just exceptional?


Vague, not detailed. Only important things, and even then faces are like half in shadow.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Mar 12, 2020)

Approx. 59 Robins said:


> I honestly don't understand how people can create visual scenarios in their mind. Do they actually see the thing they're visualizing in their heads, and if so, is it incredibly detailed or extremely vague? Am I just exceptional?



Yes, you ARE r'etarded if you can't imagine seeing something.


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## byuu (Mar 12, 2020)

Since there's lots of talk of verbalizing/visualizing:
When you write, do you hear or see the words in your mind?


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## Gravityqueen4life (Mar 12, 2020)

all the time. hell, one of my favorite past times was playing with sticks while talking too myself when i was a kid.


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## Ted_Breakfast (Mar 13, 2020)

I only have an internal monologue when I'm drunk. It's very simple, like 'wee, don't spin in your office chair too much, you'll mess it up.'

When I'm sober and not Clonazepam'd up, I'm a matrix of a dozen different different voices contradicting each other.


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## The Littlest Shitlord (Mar 13, 2020)

I have an internal monologue but usually it's a soundless voice, if that makes sense. The voice has no particular volume, tone, accent, or quality to it and isn't recognizable as my own voice or even as anyone else's. I can't imagine hearing an actual voice sounding anything like it. I conjecture that if I developed schizophrenia and started consequently occasionally hearing my internal voice as an external one, this distinct lack of sound qualities would make it come across more like telepathic reception. The exception is self-criticism and occasional self-motivation, which sound _exactly_ like my former drill sergeant.

Also I don't always use my own name in my own head. I refer to myself as either my last name, a name I used to use on forums and MMOS a lot, or as "we" (because I'm actually two people).



Approx. 59 Robins said:


> I honestly don't understand how people can create visual scenarios in their mind. Do they actually see the thing they're visualizing in their heads, and if so, is it incredibly detailed or extremely vague? Am I just exceptional?


The inability to do this is called aphantasia. In my case the level of detail varies, but usually is pretty vague. This can be improved with practice and is probably important to be a good artist. When I was doing art I was better at it than I am now. Hypnagogic visions, however, can be quite vivid and very imaginative but are impossible to hold in one shape for long. I can also usually see random landscapes when I close my eyes which are occasionally quite vivid, and sometimes the imaginary sunlight is bright enough to make me sneeze. These never hold their shapes either, but rather than transmuting into new forms, I simply move through them as if I am riding in a car I cannot see moving at 40-70 miles per hour. The imaginary landscapes are almost always rural and practically never have people or cars. I prefer it that way; humanity and its creations are so ugly.



garakfan69 said:


> Since there's lots of talk of verbalizing/visualizing:
> When you write, do you hear or see the words in your mind?


Hear soundlessly (as above), except for mathematical symbols, which I mostly see instead (there are also incoherent but distinct sounds for each symbol).


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## Jonah Hill poster (Mar 13, 2020)

My internal monologue would have me sounding like the most selfish person to exist, and these days I see a lot of people trying hard to have internal monologues just to feel special about their inadequacy. Those people use that on social media as an echo chamber.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Mar 13, 2020)

garakfan69 said:


> Since there's lots of talk of verbalizing/visualizing:
> When you write, do you hear or see the words in your mind?


Hear.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Mar 27, 2020)

Something I just remembered and didn't think to add earlier is that I can remember being pre-verbal, or still in the learning stages of speaking fluently. Different colours, objects and shapes had their own distinct tones to them; I remember walking in the backyard and hearing the tones change as I looked around. I was quite fond of the sound of blueberry bushes and rhubarb. One of the first things I remember asking myself once I'd attained language was: "What language did I speak before this one?" 

I guess I just assumed that I'd learned to translate my innate tonal language into English, which seems like a reasonable assumption for a four/five year old to make.


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## FuckedUp (Mar 27, 2020)

I have a monologue in a probably unusual way: I don't think from the monologue, it's just a side-effect of me thinking. It's like a bunch of random snippets of speech as I'm quickly thinking through things.

I imagine TV shows that don't exist all the time. One of the most memorable ones was from when I was sixteen: I was listening to the first NiN album, specifically "Down In It", while thinking of Renaissance Italy for whatever reason, and I suddenly started "seeing" in realtime the intro to an animated series set in Italy at the turn of the 16th century. It had a distinct art style that was basically a fusion of '80s-'90s Saturday morning cartoons and Regular Show; I just "saw" historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo down to the facial features perfectly transcribed in the art style, entirely extrapolated from what my brain knew based off paintings and what those features should look like in that fictional cartoon. I spent several months thinking of new episodes, all fully animated complete with switching camera angles and unique voices, whenever I was bored.

Also, visualizing helps a ton with geometry problems.


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## Recoil (Mar 27, 2020)

Exigent Circumcisions said:


> "What language did I speak before this one?"


If you can find that language and remember how to speak it again, you can use apply its universality to the production of art & music. It's really good for that, as it often transcends culture.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Mar 28, 2020)

Exigent Circumcisions said:


> Something I just remembered and didn't think to add earlier is that I can remember being pre-verbal, or still in the learning stages of speaking fluently. Different colours, objects and shapes had their own distinct tones to them; I remember walking in the backyard and hearing the tones change as I looked around. I was quite fond of the sound of blueberry bushes and rhubarb. One of the first things I remember asking myself once I'd attained language was: "What language did I speak before this one?"
> 
> I guess I just assumed that I'd learned to translate my innate tonal language into English, which seems like a reasonable assumption for a four/five year old to make.


That's synesthesia.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Mar 28, 2020)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> That's synesthesia.


True enough.


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## no_mad_johnny (Mar 28, 2020)

My thought process is mostly textual...sort of. It's a dialogue in the sense that I reply (sometimes verbally) to my own thoughts but I don't really hear any voice inside my head. 

Because it's a constant thing I like to pretend that my inner narrator is my conscience and I usually treat it as its own entity. Sounds a bit schizo but it's all for fun.



Spoiler: minor powerlevel



It has gotten a bit quieter since I took OCD meds though. Now I can sort of turn it on and off at will.


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## AmarettoPie (Mar 31, 2020)

Spoiler: Spergery



Me: "Wait, so it's NOT just me? I'm NOT crazy?"
OtherMe: "I told you, you stupid fuck!"
OtherOtherMe: "No, you're definitely still crazy."
OtherMe: "Nah, see, it's normal!"
Me: "Why does everyone always look at me like I'm nuts when I try to explain it?"
OtherOtherMe: "Because they have internal monologues; you have internal _arguments._"
Me: ". . ."
OtherMe: ". . ."
Me: "...Yeah, I'm probably a little crazy."



So now I have to ask: Does anyone else have _multiple_ 'inner voices', always in opposition of each other? Or have I always been crazy? I'd call them 'Id' and 'Superego', but it's more of a cynic versus optimist deal.


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## Guts Gets Some (Apr 4, 2020)

Is it weird I have monologues inside AND outside?

I feel like I can't get my thoughts fully cemented until I verbally speak them, for some reason.


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