I recently found out that not everyone has an internal monologue, and it surprised me cuz I always thought everyone had one. Now I’m curious: for those who don’t, how do you process your thoughts? Thank you for your answers!
I recently found out that not everyone has an internal monologue, and it surprised me cuz I always thought everyone had one. Now I’m curious: for those who don’t, how do you process your thoughts? Thank you for your answers!
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I have two inner voices that are constantly arguing. So, I drink lots of red wine, and they get along.
I can hear an inner voice if I concentrate on it, but it’s mostly just distracting and I can’t imagine how it would help with anything. My thoughts exist mostly as abstract states of understanding. Like, I don’t have to hear a voice in my head say “That’s a keyboard” to know I’m looking at a keyboard; I just look at it and know what it is without having to put a name to it.
I can “summon” an inner voice in cases when one is helpful, typical when thinking about texts, the exact wording of something I’m going to say to someone and generally when thinking about verbal or texual things.
But most of the time I just think directly in concepts, connections and images, patterns and abstractions without translating them into words first. I never think things like “I wonder if I can cross the road before that red cars comes here” in my mind, I just think of the geometry, the velocity and the situation abstractly, wihtout forming any words in my mind, and make a decision and act on it, also without words. I could form the sentence and think about the sentence and act on that, but that only makes me think slower compared to just thinking it.
Imagine that I want to describe a melody to you.
I could go “OK, it’s in 4/4 rhythm, start at C for two beat, then D,E one beat each, pause one beat, then triplets A-D-C, D-C-E….”
Or I could just sing the melody to you.
That’s how the difference between thinking with and without an inner voice feels like to me. I prefer to just “sing” my thoughts in my head instead of awkwardly describing them in words that do not quite capture their essence.
You wonder how we function? I find it almost impossible to wrap my head around how you people manage to get anything done when having a voice active that slows down your thoughts all the time. But different brains work differently. In the end it’s only a difference in how we think about our thinking.
I do have inner monologue but I think it’s not hard to imagine. My inner monologue is not constantly going, is yours? Like if I’m typing, or reading, or purposefully thinking about something I want to say, it is. But most of the day, my “internal self” is visual. Like if I’m thinking about memories, or visualizing the things I need to go do around the house, I’m not narrating it to myself. When I have to go to the bathroom, I don’t think in my head in words “I need to go to the bathroom now,,” I just feel that sensation and then start walking to the bathroom. I imagine that is exactly how those people are. Thoughts and intentions don’t need a monologue.
I have a silent mind, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to have another person share your head. It sounds creepy, like having a Goa’uld in you.
I also have aphantasia, so I literally can’t imagine it.
Methylphenidate.
We are legion
Hang in. Do you mean you have a monologue running all the time?
My inner voice, thank God, only comes out from time to time. I don’t know what it would be like to have it all the time. I already find life as it is exhausting, imagine having to listen to something all the time.
I sometimes have an inner monolog and sometimes don’t.
When I do, I’m usually planning it out, deciding what I’m going to do before I do it. Sometimes when I’m typing, like right now my inner voice is telling me what to type as I type it, and pointing out when I made a typo and need to go back to fix it.
When I don’t, I am just going about my life and doing things that don’t need a lot of planning to think it out, like how to walk into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I may think “I want a glass of water,” but then I don’t think about how to do it or think about the steps along the way, I just do it.
Can you explain what exactly this inner voice sounds like? For example when driving, is there a voice saying, word for word “I need to turn left here” or something like that?
So do they not hear themselves in their mind when they read?
My stupid inter dialog is singing ra ra Rasputin while simultaneously having a conversation about whether or not I am dialoging about the things I am looking at. Very distracting!
I just found this out recently too! I had no idea some people don’t constantly have a monologue or conversations going on their heads.
If I don’t have my inner voice going, then I have music playing. I wake up every single day with a random song playing. It could be a song I’ve listened to recently or a random one I haven’t heard in months or years. I never know what it’s gonna be! And it changes throughout the day. It’s like someone is randomly changing a radio station in my head!
Tbh I am very jealous of people who don’t have an inner voice.
Mine is like a bitter 53 year-old man who lost all visitation rights to his kids in a messy divorce and who’s career hasn’t developed as he hoped – bro is fucking horrible to me.
Context: I am a 23 year-old man.
I don’t have an internal monologue. I also can’t visualise things or hear things in my heard, I can’t imagine or recall smells or textures either. I know the words for these things and, unless I am physically experiencing them at the time, words are all I have.
It’s called aphantasia for lack of visualisation, I believe lacking everything is called being a total aphant, which’s what I am. I’ve taken part in university studies about it.
I’m also face blind and have ADHD and probably autism – I have two autistic children.
It’s really hard to describe how I perceive my thoughts, because it’s not words or images. I’m just aware of ideas in my head, and they are associations and clouds of probability that I can work through. I can distill to words or images if that helps reason through something or if I’m exercising my imagination. All thoughts are connected to something–to other thoughts, to sensory input, etc, and I “feel” through that. But it’s not some imagined tactile sensation, and it’s not emotion (though emotion is a part of how they’re connected).
If you were in a void, alone with your thoughts, but your inner monologue was muted, would you be thoughtless? I don’t think you would. It’s just that, but with probably more years of awareness of thoughts as only thoughts.
Mine is doing a lot of swearing.
I do not have an inner monologue. I also don’t have a “minds eye”. When I read or write or talk I think in words, but usually I don’t think in words. It makes it difficult to articulate my thoughts more often than not. I also have difficulty finding words most of the time. It’s frustrating. I often say I wish I could just transfer the chunk of thought without translating it into words first. Oddly, I have very vivid olfactory, auditory, emotional, and pain imaginations.
it’s tough, especially when we have team meetings
I only found out that some people DO have inner monologue pretty recently and it’s absolutely wild to me 😂 How does it help you think or function? From how my friends have described theirs I can’t see how it would be helpful
I’ll some times monologue in my head, especially when I’m trying to memorize something. And occasionally there will be a disconnect with what my eyes sees and what my inner monologue says. This especially happens with recipes and fractions.
For example, when I’m cooking, and I’m reading a recipe. The recipe will say 1/4 cup, but my inner monologue will say 1/3 cup. I go through the utensil drawers looking for the measuring cup, repeating in my head “1/3 cup, 1/3 cup…” but instead of looking for the 1/3 cup measuring cup, but my brain is actually looking for the 1/4 cup. When I find the 1/4 cup, I stare at it for a few seconds because my brain finally realized that what I was saying in my head was different than what I was actually looking for. And I usually have to go back to the recipe to confirm that it was 1/4 cup.
If i focus really hard I can have one but most of the time it’s just very quiet,so quiet that I’m always listening to music and sleeping with white noise to avoid the silence.
I have internal monologue and it’s several versions of myself. It’s my voice, but different perspectives.
I have a theory I am exploring and I am glad you posted your question
My inner voices live in my teeth. I rent them out to unburied ghosts that didn’t have a tombstone to move into. I dont listen to their advice much and wouldn’t likely listen to my own if there was one.
Had friend who heard voices in his head. They were intrusive thoughts that bothered him. After years of intervention, one therapist said, ” realize you can say things in your head, in the same voice as the voices in your head. He practiced saying thing untill he realized the voices were his inner monolog, and he could control them.” He told me it was like his thoughts were just loud. He said it’s like when women wear revealing clothing. You don’t want to look, so you practice looking people’s eyes. You focus on their face, and always watch who is talking. You don’t like what the voices say, but you know it’s just thoughts everyone has.
Tbh I’m not functioning super well, especially when I have to be verbal in distracting settings.
I like not having an internal voice, I can think WAY faster & more complex than words. I can have layered thoughts and thoughts about things that seem at the limit of my understanding.
But, I can’t always put that into words at first. There’s a long processing time between thoughts and words sometimes. It can lead to some awkward or frustrating social experiences for me.
I also think I may experience mild aphasia from migraines more often than just when it’s apparent and very bad. It’s rare for it to be bad.
May ask my doctor about it.
Sometimes my wordless thoughts also smash into each other and I just freeze and can’t say anything for a moment.
I’m sure not every person like me has issues with this, though.
I’m a pretty good thinker, not a great talker.
I have absolutely no internal monologue and I find it very difficult to summon one. Even when I’m writing, as I’m typing this, it’s like… I’m not hearing the words in my head, I’m seeing them as I type and approving them as they appear.
To answer your question, I find it extremely difficult to process my thoughts. My thoughts are very rapid, confused and more like “vibes” rather than anything. They’re not even pictures. I find speaking quite difficult as it takes me a lot of time and extra effort to turn my thoughts into words, almost like translating between two languages. I actually can speak three languages, and it’s funny because all through my life people asked me “What language do you think in?” and before I learned that other people had this inner monologue I was always super confused by the question. I don’t think in anything…
I’m terrible at group projects, or teaching people how to do things. However, I’m surprisingly good at writing. I write fiction sometimes, which I’ve gotten heaps of praise about, and as a lawyer I’m known for my incredibly precise drafting. I think this might somehow be connected with the lack of monologue – perhaps somehow I don’t have that extra layer of language getting in the way when I’m writing, so I’m less likely to leave something out or assume something is understood when it isn’t? I am however terrible at in-person negotiation/arguing – it’s too fast for me.
I thought the committee in my head constantly telling me what a piece of shit i was was my inner voice, and that’s what I was stuck with.
I went through some fairly intense therapy and realized that my subconscious was only repeating what I had been told all my life, and I had been brainwashed.
Once I got rid of the committee, I found out I don’t really have an inner voice, and I’m one of those with no imagination.
I’m at peace with it
My mind won’t shut up and it’s annoying, but I also can’t imagine not having it
Imagine being me. A person with adhd and MULTIPLE internal monologues and songs and noises going on in my head ALL AT THE SAME TIME. And I don’t function. That’s the point.
I just learned this about my husband this morning, and I’m not fully over it. He doesn’t see pictures or hear an inner monologue, ever. He also comes from a culture where it’s extremely uncommon for parents to read to their kids and reading books for pleasure isn’t a thing either, so I wonder if that plays a part in it?
I explained it to my husband that its like an impulse I have if I’m thirsty i grab a drink, if I want to answer the door i have a brief flicker of people who it could be but otherwise I just go and do it.
I did find out when I spent the day by myself in a foreign country that I natter to myself all the time then, I think its because I was uneasy and needed to think things through at a slower rate.
I 47m have very little internal monologue (except for songs) and struggle to visualize in my mind. I’ve done well for myself and family though. I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADHD.
Id imagine they’re happier than those of us whose inner voices talk shit to themselves all day
I function well, the only crap thing about it is that silence is way too quiet. I have to watch a movie or a video, listen to music, etc. And to get to sleep at night i need a fan blowing and a video playing. Silence for me is too distracting.
I think in pictures, like a silent film.
I just researched it a bit after seeing your post OP and wow, I’ve ever heard that before and am shocked to hear it. I thought EVERYONE had that voice in their head. It sure explains a lot though if you think about it. I’m gonna have to chat about this with my wife tonight, so curious now.
So… there are people that are not continuously narrating their life like a book? 😶
I mean… yeah it’s alright.
Counter question: how do YOU function with someone blabbering while you just want to do things? I guess I do “silent thinking” instead of what you do.
Idk. I just move. I can still think and stuff. It’s just not orated in my mind.
Like if something happened and I needed to act quickly, you don’t monologue in your brain about how things will go. You just do them.
I don’t think in words, and whenever I see this question, I have to ask: how do you think people thought before language? Thinking in sentences is certainly a new concept in humans.
For me, the thought of having to speak to myself seems like it would be slow and cumbersome. Of course, that’s probably just because your way of thinking is just as abstract for me as my way is for you.
People don’t have internal monologues?
My gremlins talk all day and night
I have always done this. What do normal people do?
I still am not sure what an internal monologue is. I don’t think I have one.
I have like 12 different voices in my head.
They probably function better. A lot of my inner monologue is me yelling at myself for poor life choices.
I have no inner monologue but I do have a very high degree of phantasia.
I picture the words in front of me in my head instead of hearing them out loud. It’s kind of like a teleprompter but it’s my thoughts.
It sometimes gets tricky because I have a mild level of synesthesia and sometimes the words appear in happier colors than my emotions.
For those don’t have one is that why some people mumble to themselves?
You think about things without thinking about the words used to speak about them.
I just think, i don’t need to tell myself what i’m thinking, i’m actually thinking it. Making thoughts into words and then subvocalizing them to myself after knowing what i thought already seems rather inefficient.
Sometimes i can choose to have an inner dialog where i think about a conversation with someone else, but i don’t really create inner monolog to talk to myself.
Ok I’ve heard about this but recently learned some people have vivid imagery in their head. As someone with a strong internal monologue and an inability to conjure up detailed images in my mind. I wonder if there is a correlation between having one way of thinking and not the other.
I’m curious about this, too. I can’t do shit unless I have a conversation with myself first.
I have several channels, not just one. Internal Monologue is one.
Music Radio is another channel. It plays fragments of music, often the chorus. But not always. A piece will play until I figure out what it’s from. Sometimes that’s easy and sometimes not. Sometimes it’s a specific artist or a specific performance from a video. Sometimes, and I don’t understand this one, another piece will replace one before I figure it out.
Then there’s Internal Radio. Not the same as the Monologue. This channel plays parts of conversations. Sometimes from a show or movie or sometimes from my life.
Oh, and I’m a lucid dreamer so I remember a lot of my dreams I have while waking up or if the dream wakes me up. Like if someone I know is dead appears in my dream, I partially wake up or completely wake up, knowing I was just dreaming.
Combined, they are words, music, pictures, and sometimes just a feeling without the other things.
Most of my life I thought that’s what went on in everyone’s head. And, yes, it’s all the time. The channels usually quiet down when I focus on a task, which actually feels good.
When I am alone my inner monologuing becomes more vocal.
Personally, I never understood the purpose or utilization of an inner monologue unless you’re specifically thinking about speaking. Language is used for communicating, not for thinking, though my understanding is your native language can influence your thought process.
If I were forced to think in language, not only would my mind be slowed (imagine only being able to think as fast as you can speak), but I wouldn’t even be able to conceptualize a lot of the thinking I currently do (which is not bound by language).
If your deaf what does your inner voice sound like or deaf people don’t have them?
I can’t comprehend NOT having the inner voice. If I’m not having the internal monologue then there is a song going on.
When my long covid was really bad I stopped having thoughts and I don’t think I functioned well at all.
When it got even worse, I stopped even having feelings. Everything was just blank and numb. I was too fatigued to have thoughts and feelings.
When my symptoms are bad these days I lose my inner voice but then it comes back eventually.
I’m sure I’m having thoughts under the surface somewhere but I can’t access them myself.
I also see in picture. Someone speaks to me and I have to picture the situation to understand… especially when I read books.
I just do. I don’t need a voice in my head to manage my thoughts.
I can actually turn it on, but it’s kind of like reading aloud, cumbersome, slow and only necessary if I have to slow down and figure something out.
I smoke weed to shut mine up…
I hear different voices for each of your comments here. Some sound dark some lighter. I even here different accents sometimes or background noise. I also thought this was normal for everyone until a couple years ago when these posts started trending.
I wonder if people without if feel more at peace when it’s quiet. To me it’s never really quiet. But I’m used to it and would be freaked out if it suddenly stopped.
Because not a lot of “no inner voice” people actually answered you question, here I go:
I don’t have an inner voices unless I actively choose so. Just like speaking. Either I am not speaking (default) or I actively choose to start speaking and say something.
So I can start my inner voice, but it’s just like speaking without saying it out loud. I don’t have an intrusive “voice” making commentary on my life choices.
When I think about something it’s mostly visual. Thinking about going to the bathroom let’s a visual of the bathroom pop up in my mind. When I think about going to the cinema I get flashes of the movie trailer or if I haven’t watched the trailer before just the visual of the cinema I plan to go to.
When I lay in bed and try to sleep I don’t remember someone saying something to me years ago, more like “picture of person”, “picture of setting”, “video of them saying it to me”, “picture of my reaction”. (Trying to change topic, to my gardening plans for this year.) “Picture of terracotta pots”, “Picture of Rosemary’s and Thyme and Basil”, “Picture of Soil and Gardening shovel”, etc.
Funny enough I talked to someone about it and they have an inner voice. When I read, I don’t have an inner voice vocalising the words.
After one or two paragraphs I just visual it like downloading a movie into my mind via words. I visualise everything and fill out everything not mentioned in the books for the setting/characters. If for example hair color gets mentioned it instantly changes from the default color I imagined for the person to the color mentioned in the book, then carries on. Like a movie in the brain. That’s why I love to read. All the movies at my fingertips without actually having to wait for someone to make the book into a movie.
For the Person I talked to (with inner voice and also avid reader) the movie never starts. It’s just always inner voice reading the words. She can choose to visualise the words (with effort) just like I can choose to have my inner voice read the words (with effort). Her default is inner voice reading the words, my default is internal movie playing.
I didn’t know how much brain power my inner voice took up until I got a concussion recently. I was literally hurting myself with all the thoughts I have and how deep down rabbit holes I go. I tried to stop myself from thinking but nothing worked. Counting slightly worked but then a thought would battle the numbers out of the way so I could go back to having these deep inner monologues.
I see things in images not words. If I need to hear words I quiet mumble them. When I read words they come out as thoughts, images or ideas instead of words. Wish I could explain more what it is like for me but I honestly think it’s crazy that the majority of people have an internal monologue.
You only have one inner monolog voice? I have several, one for troubleshooting, one for story formulation, one voice for when I am angry, they’re like a band of bards at times…. With an interesting conversation(s)
Day by day my friend 🫨