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

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/25/the-last-great-mystery-of-the-mind-meet-the-people-who-have-unusual-or-non-existent-inner-voices

by lxm • 5 years ago

128 268 5 years ago

theguardian.com

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

Hey, it’s me! I’m one of the “inner silence” folks, in case anyone has questions. Didn’t realize y’all heard voices until five years ago.

bsid• 5 years ago

Question: What happens when you're reading?

For me, my inner voice kind of repeats it, if that make sense. Can't wrap my head around what "understanding" would be without that lol.

Aethylia3• 5 years ago

This isn't directly related. It's likely a product of how you were taught to read. You can learn to read without it by trying to have the inner voice say something different like 'a, e, i, o, u' while reading. It takes practice but it increases your reading speed.

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

I glance at the paragraph, it glows briefly, I blink, 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. Sometimes I read left to right to left depending on text width and such. I can usually keep math in the right order but I'm known to add left-to-right which involves the concept of 'one past nine' as a 'digit' for the sake of forcing it into base 10 math, and then I unroll the carries right-to-left, but not always, it depends.

psyc4• 5 years ago

When I read normally, I hear it in real time. There’s a “default” voice, or I can make it a character voice at will. If I want to read a lot faster, I switch the voice off. I seldom do that.

xyzelement2• 5 years ago

I didn't read the article yet but since you're offering... how do you "think through" problems?

Example, this was a dialogue I had in my head this morning:

"Avenue X has a lot of stop signs which is annoying. But Avenue Y is narrow and it's garbage-pickup time, so I can get unlucky and really stuck behind a garbage truck. That's not worth the risk, I'd rather deal with the stop signs so I am taking avenue X"

What is your equivalent of that? Basically, how do you evaluate two alternatives? And how do you know how you made your choice? EG in my case, I know I picked Avenue X because I prefer the annoyance of stop signs to the risk of getting stuck, because that was part of my conversation. How is it for you?

renton_wal3• 5 years ago

I don't always use my inner voice.

I arrange all of the conditions in my head and then logically and rapidly resolve them. In your example, I wouldn't engage my inner voice for something that simple.

If it was planning much more steps than that, I would separate them into blocks and use my inner voice to mentally arrange the inner blocks.

malwrar• 5 years ago

I think in terms of pictures or concepts. Your example becomes me picturing being stuck behind a dump truck, then me stopping at numerous stop signs, then I’d decide based on which one feels like it would be more painful.

Do people actually think in terms of complete sentences like you describe in this passage, or is there some nuance to the experience I’m not understanding? Thinking for me feels more like watching thoughts flow between black boxes representing some known factor than talking to a friend.

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

I run the timelines with conceptual blocks and then do a final pass to put them back into words to reply. It only takes a fraction of a second to solve the puzzle but it’s a pain to figure out wording each direction. Logical-NOT traps in standardized testing are hell on earth because they’re not language-appropriate uses of negation.

If I can afford five minutes of truck wait I’ll rock out in the car. If I cannot, stop signs earn precedence.

The upside of doing it this way is that I can solve the puzzle without needing the variables to be well-defined, because it’s easy to nail down where the crux points are and then leave the .. I don’t have a word here, the subunit of puzzle? .. unresolved until information exists.

alserio• 5 years ago

I find difficult to believe that people articulate their thoughts. It sounds too slow to be practical for the every day tasks. I have the (surely wrong) impression that people rationalize their thoughts after the fact with words. I can e.g. read poetry in my head with a voice that captures the sounds and the meaning of the words, but if I'm solving a problem there's no way words can keep up. But I can hear me can say Q.E.D. when the problem is solved.

throwaway34241• 5 years ago

If you've played a sport or video games you've probably made all sorts of actions / judgement calls without having time to fully verbalize them, but with the thought still conscious enough that you could explain what you were trying to do afterward. At least for me I'd describe it as something like that, just slower and without the time pressure.

rossnordby• 5 years ago

Not OP, but: if you're thirsty and there's a cup of water nearby, presumably you don't need to verbalize the full set of motor commands necessary to move your arm, grasp the cup, and so on. It's a pretty complicated motion involving quite a few decisions, but they're decisions that don't involve verbal ability. (Or at least I assume that's the case.)

For me, at least, most thinking feels like a version of that, but generalized. That doesn't mean it's necessarily easy- I can't come up with a fancy new algorithm by just desiring it momentarily- but most things just don't need words to be thought.

If I want to figure out if, say, some geometric modification obeys some property, the content of the thoughts is the spatial reasoning directly. I can go back and explain the thoughts verbally, but the words are just labels for the more 'native' reasoning.

In my case, I can still think things verbally, though it does seem closer to subvocalization than full inner voice as described. No aphantasia for me either.

Bellend• 5 years ago

Hey! I don't know if I have the voice or not. I seen this on a video (Joe Scott maybe?) a couple of weeks ago and I wondered too. I don't know the difference between thinking and inner voice. Like if I am approaching a road, I don't recall an inner voice telling me to stop but I don't know if that is valid as an example.

The question might be too broad but how do you know you have no inner voice?

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

Other people apparently hear perceptible voices talking to them. Those cartoons about a devil and angel on your shoulders aren’t just cartoons, it turns out, I guess. I’m not really great at explaining it :)

renton_wal3• 5 years ago

Can you speak to yourself in your head? I also think there's a difference between involuntary and voluntary inner voice.

TedDoesntTalk5• 5 years ago

When you hear a song that you know and like, does the music and singing repeat in your head after the song is over?

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

So much yes. I can find the beat and hum along with it usually in the first ten or twenty seconds. I can remember songs from a single opening note. Apparently I have excellent pitch.

dylan6043• 5 years ago

I'd love to be you at bedtime. That's when the voices love to just ruin your day/night.

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

As it turns out, anxiety-insomnia is just as much a problem whether it's with voices or not :(

haxiomic5• 5 years ago

I love hearing about how other minds work! It's the coolest thing to think about and fascinating how we all go by without ever realising how different we can be to one another

HN: How does your mind work? Do you have a dialog, monolog, abstract concepts, something else entirely?

haxiomic5• 5 years ago

For me it's a clear audible monolog which breaks into a dialog of self talk for problem solving and day-to-day planning. It sounds nothing like my physical voice but I feel that's my truest self

I've had this wonderful experience after learning sign language that for the first time I feel like I can talk to other people with the voice in my head! And when they sign back I hear a voice speaking aloud each sign. What I discovered is I'm quite a different person when I don't have to use my physical voice to talk, I'm much more expressive and fun, which I guess I find difficult to translate through the voice of a late 20s man. Something to work on!

Something I've wondered about is how noisy people find images: https://www.reddit.com/r/noisygifs/ is fun to explore. I find all repetitive motion has sound, like anything, no matter how abstract, I cannot help hearing some weird audio pattern when I look at it

jklinger4102• 5 years ago

That's interesting about sign language. I wonder if it helps with plasticity.

jklinger4102• 5 years ago

I have a monologue in the form of an argument between different perspectives. I can envision things, but not clearly, so unclear that at first I wasn't sure if I could or not.

I also feel like I have access to a very limited range of active memory, and when I store old information it can be very hard to find. Like a slow and fragmented HDD on a new-ish computer.

ben_w2• 5 years ago

A lot of monologue, though sometimes I find the abstract part has raced ahead and finished the thought before the words have time to be thought. If I stop those words because the thought is complete, it feels weird.

Sometimes just visuals, especially when I’m trying to understand geometric problems.

haxiomic5• 5 years ago

Totally agree on that abstract bit going faster, sometimes it feels I'm verbalising thoughts for completeness!

renton_wal3• 5 years ago

Interesting about how there's different shades of this. I have an inner voice when I'm working through a problem, but I don't rely on it. I can definitely do abstract and complicated thinking without engaging it. It's a combination of a voice and mental arrows about tasks.

I don't have the voice when reading or writing, but I do when I'm planning around what to write. Incidentally, I read at over 800wpm with an extremely high retention rate, which makes me an outlier.

I have an inner voice, but it slows me down, and I choose to engage it when I need to really work something through accurately and with lots and lots of steps.

I've only recently started paying attention to how I think and I think it's really quite a bit different than the binary "has or doesnt have" that these articles portray. I can't imagine I'm the only person like this. I wonder if the question itself misleads people into overthinking their use of it: "do you have an inner voice?" "yes!"

cecilpl2• 5 years ago

I'm very much like this. I can turn it off and on at will. Meditation is easy for me, I just "turn off" the voice and sit. I run long distances and will sometimes realise that an hour has gone by without any thoughts other than "breathe in, breathe out".

I'm focusing on it right now. It speaks in my head as I'm planning out the next sentence I'm going to type, but then once I'm typing it goes away until I need to stop and plan the next words. I also read very quickly, sometimes multiple lines at a time, reassembling the words in context.

The voice certainly doesn't follow me around chattering in my head the way some people's seems to.

josephg5• 5 years ago

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 full of thoughts - there’s just no voice and no words attached by default. It’s all non verbal unless I think about vocalising it. This mode of thinking makes a lot of sense for imagining algorithms. There’s no words - just a kind of an imagined symbolic mechanism shifting to my will.

I know now I do have an inner critic. It just speaks in my body with emotions like guilt and gut wrenching shame. I have an “inner voice” - but having a thought and having words for that thought are different steps for me. Some of my most interesting thoughts I don’t have the words for at all.

BrianOnHN• 5 years ago

Thanks for putting this into words. It made so much sense to me that I had to save it for future reference.

Might you have any additional takeaways since gaining that perspective?

chippy• 5 years ago

“Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought.

thats your inner voice!

josephg5• 5 years ago

Not quite ... there's (ironically) a language gap here. Those words are what I get when I lend my capacity for words to my thoughts, like I'm doing now. But thats a translation. The thoughts don't seem to start in language.

Maybe another way to describe it is - I understand my thoughts before I know the right words to use to describe my thoughts out loud. In conversation I sometimes find I'll start explaining something; only to notice that the words aren't the right translation for the concept in my head. "Sorry, thats not quite right - its more like ... this".

The other day I had a feeling which was a mix between boredom and anger. Like, a sort of judgemental boredom. I don't think english has a word for that feeling; but neither "boredom" nor "anger" would be a sufficient translation of what I felt. Its like that.

Or another example - I was practicing drawing yesterday. I drew a character's nose, but my line looked wrong and I had to rub it out and redraw it. I don't have any words for the shape my wonky line made. I couldn't tell you in words how it made the face look, or how it needed to be fixed. I could try, but any words I use would be an awkward approximation. I know exactly what was wrong with the shape. But words to describe it would be a sketch compared to my mind's photograph. (Except its not like a photograph either! Aah its happening now too.)

Lots of thoughts work the same way. At least for me. Is it really not the same for everyone?

clairity• 5 years ago

yes, note that nearly all of our thoughts are subvocal/subconscious. some folks have a more active and/or efficient surfacing mechanism than others though.

and a few folks have an overactive vocalization system where most of their subvocal thoughts actually come out of their mouths. i'm always partly fascinated by these folks (just walked past one today), since i tend to be relatively economical in my vocalized thoughts.

shele3• 5 years ago

I think this is about subvocal but conscious thoughts.

smeej5• 5 years ago

I probably look like those people, but I wonder if their experience actually is as you say or if it's like mine.

I do talk to myself out loud, constantly, but it's still actually only a very tiny percentage of the thoughts that are in my mind. I wonder if it would look like most of my thoughts were coming out of my mouth from the outside.

At any given time there are at least 6 tracks running in my head, sometimes twice that many, thinking about all kinds of different things at varying levels of depth.

The mouth can only give voice to one of them at a time, though, so it helps me prioritize. It normally directs my actual actions so that the voice that gets the practical life things done can be heard over all the other ones just running in circles around problems until they finally break open.

haxiomic5• 5 years ago

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 understanding

mcphage2• 5 years ago

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

Where would new words come from, then?

Jensson3• 5 years ago

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 if you talk to yourself about everything, how do you think about things you can't talk about? When I imagine going to the store I can imagine all the different routes etc in a second, there is no way I can talk about the different routes in a second in an inner voice, so to me the inner voice seems utterly useless at best or it hurts your ability to think at worst.

josephg5• 5 years ago

Yeah I can't tell if we actually think differently, or if we just observe our minds differently. If I frame the question to myself as "do I know the words for what I'm thinking?" then the words for what I'm thinking about instantly start arriving. But if I frame the question to myself of "what do these thoughts feel like?" then my thoughts feel a bit formless and instinctive. (Or if I catch myself daydreaming, I can't remember any "inner language" for hours).

I'm not convinced our minds are actually different in kind, as opposed to just having quality differences in how we perceive ourselves. We can run the experiment right now. Does anyone actually have an internal voice narrating the feeling you get watching a sunset?

mcphage2• 5 years ago

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.

stavros5• 5 years ago

The voice doesn't think, the voice just narrates the thought. It's optional filler.

smeej5• 5 years ago

I was originally going to try to explain what it's like to handle mundane things like going to the grocery store, but then I realized I haven't gone to a grocery store in 10 years because it's so anxiety-inducing. Maybe my inner voice is part of the problem.

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!

russelldjimmy• 5 years ago

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.

josephg5• 5 years ago

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".

Camouflager• 5 years ago

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.

patrickdavey• 5 years ago

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.

stavros5• 5 years ago

I'm the same way, in that I don't have negative self talk (or an inner voice). I just don't generally stress about what others think of me. I try to improve myself when I can and do the best I can, and think it's entirely pointless to worry about it if you're doing your best (because there's nothing else you can do).

davidgrenier• 5 years ago

“Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought.

If you've thought "Hah maybe I don't have an inner critic", how did this come about if not through an inner voice?

gala8y11• 5 years ago

I know now I do have an inner critic. It just speaks in my body with emotions like guilt and gut wrenching shame.

This is not exact science, I would say. It is good to have a basic understanding of plenitude of voices, some of them being delicate and fragile, some aggressive and dominating in nature and try to make ever better distinctions (which is which? which part of my behavior is which voice?). It is not that there is only me and my Inner Critic inside me. It is most likely that shame you're feeling after performance comes from a delicate self, which can be called your Vulnerable Child, rather than from your Inner Critic. Lots of sadness, anxiety, shame, retraction comes from such child-like selves (developed during your childhood and still existing functionally in the repertoire of your CNS). These emotions coming from this child like energy are very often accompanied by internalized aggressive energies critical of ourselves. The picture is nuanced, with many parts inside us, interacting with each other.

Accessing this Inner Child energy directly in conversation (sometimes with less words, more like evoking it and just being with it, especially at the beginning) is a profound experience with far reaching consequences (including, once you see it a separate entity inside you, possibility of taking care of this Inner Child by yourself, inside yourself - you just start to take care of this child, which is in fact you... taking care of... you.) It sounds ridiculous, but it is very real.

bluishgreen• 5 years ago

Relevant: There are people who don't have mental imagery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa84hA3OsHU

bengale4• 5 years ago

I appear to have both of these things. I wonder if that’s quite common.

akacia2• 5 years ago

I have mental imagery but it loses clarity with age, so I use less and less.

titusjohnson4• 5 years ago

  The broadcaster Jenni Murray lives in author Hannah Begbie’s brain. 
  Well, not Murray exactly, but a facsimile of Murray, with the same 
  kind but quizzical voice, and a scarf flung loosely over her shoulder.
  “My inner voice is a duologue, like I am in a constant state of
  interviewing myself,” says Begbie, who is 44 and lives in London.
  “The interviewing always happens in a plush radio studio,” she says. 
  “There’s nice rich crushed-velvet walls. There’s a warmth and a colour to it.”

I must just not understand what they're talking about? I have an inner dialog, but I'm very aware that it's just me. In my head I can rehearse things I want to say, or argue a topic back and forth, but it's exactly the same as playing chess against myself. I know what I'm saying and I have infinite knowledge into what the "other side" will say because it's just me. At no time are there other voices, no unexpected insight posited by an old radio announcer.

For the most part I also feel fully in control of my inner dialog. Any time I'm not in control, as in the thoughts are racing and my mind keeps skipping from topic to topic and maybe circling back to a specific topic, that means I'm having some kind of anxiety episode. I probably need a glass of wine or a smoke, and some quiet time to mull over what my brain is trying to get me to process (aka meditation lite).

The very first thing I think of when reading this article is that everyone interviewed except Hopkins is having near-constant auditory hallucinations. An inner voice that consists of an old Italian couple arguing in the kitchen? Really? Am I that disconnected from this concept?

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

There’s no other self in my head to debate with. Except when I’m specifically thinking about what someone else would say, in which case I can get fragments of phrases enough to sort-of rehearse different branches of a conversation. I also can’t play chess against myself, because I can see my own logic on both sides, and it nullifies.

titusjohnson4• 5 years ago

Well, I don't have an "other self" to debate with, I know it's just me. It's like a verbal exercise, where you go through a conversation and prepare responses to expected objections or questions.

Similar to playing chess against myself, there's only use if I am super strict about trying to make "each side" as honest as possible.

sammalloy4• 5 years ago

The very first thing I think of when reading this article is that everyone interviewed except Hopkins is having near-constant auditory hallucinations.

Agreed. The closest I’ve come to this kind of thing is when I take more than 400 mg of caffeine in a single day (I’m genetically sensitive to caffeine). If I do that, then yes, my inner voice will become quite strange.

gala8y11• 5 years ago

My reaction to caffeine is very strong. Can you tell me anything more about genetic sensitivity to caffeine? Did you have it tested/determined?

HKH27• 5 years ago

400mg seems like a lot to me. Most energy drinks have less than 200mg and come with a recommendation that you only have 1 or 2 a day.

StreakyCobra• 5 years ago

Many of the people I speak to learned late in life that their inner voices were not the norm. For years, Worrall thought that other people also had attics in their brains.

I went through exactly the same situation around 10 years ago, but it was about mental imaging. Do you know people can actually visualize and see things when they close there eyes? You probably do, but it took me 25 years to figure out that for most people closing their eyes is not like closing a black curtain.

If that is a surprise to you that people can create and see mental images, you probably have aphantasia as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

Since then I'm convinced that not two brains experience the world the same way. Inner voice and mental imaging are probably two of the many things we assume to be the norm.

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

I can barely do this, at a naturally-occurring rate of maybe one image a month or less. But I can pick up music instantly.

telesilla2• 5 years ago

Really interesting in this thread about how so many see images or hear voices. I always have strong threads of music, always available at any moment. I bet all musicians have this. I used to wish when I was a child that I could jack my brain to a stereo system for instant playback and bypass the effort of writing things down.

kzrdude3• 5 years ago

Aphantasia: Is there a simple test or procedure we can use to make it easier to decide to what degree we have this or not? It just seems like a topic where expectations can differ a lot. Since it's hard to clearly explain what visualizing feels like and doesn't. Some people might even be very normal and yet disappointed and think they are missing something.

I don't think my mind's eye is particularly strong for example, don't have very vivid imagination. But I also don't know where the frame of reference should be!

meowface2• 5 years ago

There are some spatial intelligence tests that essentially require mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects in your mind's eye. That could maybe be one way. Can't speak to the quality of this test, but here's one that might apply: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/iq/visual-spatial-i...

dmitrygr• 5 years ago

Is there a simple test

Close your eyes and imagine a triangle. Now, quickly, what color was it? If you have an answer, you do not have aphantasia. If you have no answer, you likely have aphantasia - your mind instantiated a concept of a triangle, but until the question of color came up, it was irrelevant and was not considered

pseudalopex3• 5 years ago

VVIQ[1] is a common test.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Qu...

ManuelKiessling5• 5 years ago

I’m not going to say it’s a useful test, but how does https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29088032 work for you?

gtardini• 5 years ago

I think this is what you are looking for

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094522...

The authors also include the GitHub with the code for the experiment. Very interesting

distances5• 5 years ago

A simple quick test I've heard: imagine a ball with wings in front of you.

Now, what was the colour of the ball, and what kind of wings did it have?

dylan6043• 5 years ago

Way back in high school, I took several different tests that would have questions that would show a drawing of a folded piece of paper with a hole in it that would then ask what the pattern of dots on the unfolded page would look like. The ASVAB was one of them IIRC. At the time, I was shocked at the number of people that could not visualize this. Going through life, I then met so many people that would say they could not picture what was being described to the point I thought I just sucked at descriptions. While there may be some truth to that, I learned that aphantasia existed and it wasn't that someone was just not trying very hard.

helaoban3• 5 years ago

I don't even have to close them, I can reproduce pictures of objects, people, scenery etc in my mind while my eyes are open and actively observing other things.

As I type this comment I've got an image of a girl I saw yesterday fixed in my mind, as if looking at a picture of her.

I also assumed this was the norm.

vasco2• 5 years ago

Same, I think this is normal. Having to close my eyes to visualize is like having to read out loud to parse the text. I assumed nobody needed to close their eyes and that they did this in movies so "you know" they are thinking.

jraph• 5 years ago

I can't even picture my close friends very well, never mind some stranger I saw yesterday. I'll recognize people visually but their voice, their habits and their facial expressions help a lot if available, especially people new to me.

I have a quite good memory and will easily recall events but the image is not very precise. I might not remember how you were dressed just 10 minutes ago; hard to build precise pictures with such a visual memory.

Relatedly, if you tell me a story, I'll probably not have a precise picture of it in my mind. I noticed some people do have pictures very quickly and may take advantage of it when speaking to have some fun.

I still picture things in my mind. And I don't need to close my eyes. If you tell me about some event I'll probably locate it in my (not very precise) representation of the month / the year if you said when it happened / will happen. I will have some visual representation of what you are telling me or what I am reading, but do not ask me what colors are things or how people are dressed.

If you wonder how I manage to picture things without being able to tell the color they have, well, I can't figure it out neither.

Fricken• 5 years ago

I went through a phase that lasted several months, in which I practiced daily drawing portraits and caricatures.

Towards the end I debeloped a photographic memory for faces. I could go out for an evening, and later I could see all the faces I interacted with that evening crystal clear, and draw their likeness referencing only my mind's eye.

When I stopped practicing portraiture the magical ability went away.

thechao• 5 years ago

Right!? I just naturally assumed that everyone could picture & model 3d shapes in their visual space (like AR), until I was in college. I used to design machines & parts "in front of me" and then build them. I think it's one if the reasons I find CAD so difficult to use.

When I draw 3D shapes, I just "visualize" the shape on the surface and trace it.

bengale4• 5 years ago

This is going to be like when I discovered I had aphantasia isn’t it. People are hearing actual voices inside their heads?

I can sometimes have a train of thought that I could vocalise if I wanted to but I don’t actually hear it as a voice.

Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

floatingatoll14• 5 years ago

Yes, yes it is.

Is your train of thought in the same order as the spoken/written words that it converts to?

bengale4• 5 years ago

Sometimes but not always. I find that it is when I need to “convert” it into a set of steps or communicate it to someone else.

Jtsummers• 5 years ago

Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

Yes. I do, at least. Not always, but I can imagine music and "hear" it in my head. It's not as though it actually sounds like music (that is, it is perceptually distinct from actually hearing something, I'd never confuse an imagined with a real sound), but I can hear it. It was very useful when I actually played musical instruments, imagining how a piece would sound and then trying it later.

Signez• 5 years ago

All the time. To be fair, it can be (a little bit) annoying at times too: typically when you have an earworm you can't get rid of, and loops in your head until you actually listen to some other music.

haxiomic5• 5 years ago

I've heard skilled artists can have aphantasia and my friend who has it gets very vivid dreams interestingly

Do you find you're quicker to read and process things than others seem to be?

Music definitely, it's been stronger at some points in my life, I can't do so easily these days but at one point I could hear and improvise music so clear it felt like everyone else would hear it too if you put an audio jack in my ear

bengale4• 5 years ago

Yeah can be quicker to read and comprehend. I also find I’m quite good at abstract thinking which from what I’ve read is fairly common for people with aphantasia.

dylan6043• 5 years ago

I hate when I hear "random" noises, but my brain tries to hear a rhythm or pattern to the point it stops doing what I feel it should be doing.

I imagine what the guys that create music from gadgets like printers, steam irons, etc. [0] must go through daily. Every little noise sounds like a note/chord that they then are reminded of a song. I'm guessing it gets old/annoying after awhile.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7eI1-rMkQI

darrenf• 5 years ago

People are hearing actual voices inside their heads?

Yep, and pretty much constantly. Mostly my own, but if I think about someone else speaking - like, say, recalling a conversation or even something from TV/film/radio - then I hear the voice of the original speaker.

My own voice, especially during a period of mental ill-health, gets so fast and/or loud that it can drown out everything else. I've been to gigs while depressed and literally "not heard" entire songs because I was too busy inside.

Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

Can't speak for "all", but definitely for me. Music comes and goes throughout the day; if I choose (or otherwise have cause) to think of a song, I can hear it clear as day. I can be rickrolled just by seeing a line from the song.

Visually I am considerably more blank, however. I can recall things like walking/driving routes, views/vistas, the order of shops on a street, the layout of an airport terminal, etc etc - but I can't legitimately claim to be able to see these things in my mind's eye. They're just somehow there. But it's only a past tense thing - I can't do any active visual thinking about things that don't exist. Ask me to think of an apple and I'll recall one, not conjure one up. But ask me to imagine what a room would look like painted a different colour and I absolutely cannot - even with a swatch of paint already on one wall.

shime• 5 years ago

People are hearing actual voices inside their heads?

Yes. It's my voice, unless it's something written by a person whose voice I'm familiar with.

Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

I can hear music sometimes. Especially just a moment before waking up.

alok-g2• 5 years ago

> People are hearing actual voices inside their heads?

Just to be clear, I do not hear my own voice in the way I would if I am listening to a recording with my voice. There is just a continuous train of thoughts, in one of the languages I know well, coming as if it has bypassed the ears and came directly to my attention or conscious access. I clearly know that it's not coming via the ears.

> Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

Yes. Just in the same way as the above.

There have been times when lyrics of a song played back in my mind where I had no a priori awareness that I even remember those lyrics.

checkyoursudo7• 5 years ago

A couple of years ago, I learned that other people see images in their minds. Now I learn that people hear voices in their minds in a way that is dramatically different to mine. When I am thinking, there is pure silence and blank-ness in my mind. I don't see anything in my blind mind's eye, and I don't hear anything in my deaf mind's ear.

It seems that I can create a monologue in my mind, but I have to be consciously thinking of the words and almost subvocalising them to get it to work how several of the examples are described in TFA.

This makes me wonder, if I'm not seeing images for my mental representations, and I am not hearing inner audio compositions, then what is my thinking consisting of?

When I sit here, just now, creating and solving math problems of moderate difficulty, it's like, there's nothing except maybe a feeling of some sort? A drive or desire? The closest maybe that it feels like is the abstract symbols, from the article, "Other people don’t have a voice at all, or they speak in abstract symbols that don’t involve language." Except they aren't image-symbols in any way. Just like, feeling symbols.

Anyway. I don't know.

Fascinating.

boc3• 5 years ago

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head?

For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're relatively easy to see. I figured everyone was able to do that to some extent.

JaimeThompson2• 5 years ago

It is called aphantasia and I have it too. I am totally unable to picture anything in my head despite trying for years.

checkyoursudo7• 5 years ago

If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining.

My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos.

I am jealous.

My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes.

On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it's just black and blank and boring when I close my eyes at bed time. :)

pempem• 5 years ago

That. is amazing!

I cannot see anything personally without a visual reference right before closing my eyes. I can begin to use words to reason my way around the block, but even then despite seeing them so often, I cannot picture them.

ars3• 5 years ago

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head?

I can picture the concept of Mount Everest. But it's more of an abstract idea. Like I don't actually see a mountain in color as if it were in front of me. But there's this "mental concept" sitting in front of me.

Are you able to actually "see" a picture? Are most people able to do that?

I've never noticed a limitation in myself - I can easily visualize how things will look if arranged, but I don't see a picture like a painting, rather I see the concept of the object. So I figured I was typical.

garaetjjte• 5 years ago

So wait, if you close your eyes

Is this just figurative phrase or some people need to close their eyes to visualize images? I can imagine things, but they are not real visual stimuli that I see, they are more abstract going directly to the mind. Thus it doesn't matter whether my eyes are closed or what I'm looking at, it is independent from real sight.

TedDoesntTalk5• 5 years ago

If you do not have any discursive thought, I am curious how meditation is for you. Must be incredibly simple and easy.

ars3• 5 years ago

And pointless. Meditating isn't any different from not meditating.

jeroenhd• 5 years ago

I'm the exact same way. No mind's eye, no constant internal monologue (or dialogue), mostly just calm and silence. I think I can sort of visualize voices and music, but clearly not as well as other seem to be able to.

I always thought people who hear entirely understandable voices were the mentally ill people you hear about in the news and in fiction, not for that to be the norm. I do wonder about the statistics on the "internal monologue". I think I saw some stats on aphantasia (not being able to picture things) but that didn't include the internal monologue.

All in all, while I think the capacity to actually visualize things would definitely be welcome, I think I'd go crazy with a constant internal monologue droning on in the background.

ManuelKiessling5• 5 years ago

Guess the difference is that normal(?) people like me “create” or recall the voices in our heads, while for the mentally ill, the voices “come” to them like from the “outside”? Eww, I realize it’s really hard to conceptualize this stuff and put it into words…

AnimalMuppet• 5 years ago

Question for you, and those like you:

If you don't see images in your mind, do you see images when you dream?

If you don't have an "inner voice", do you hear sound when you dream?

I have no point I'm trying to make here. I just wonder if there's a correlation with dreams.

checkyoursudo7• 5 years ago

I do see images and hear sound when I dream, and when I daydream! That is interesting, isn't it? I have always thought so. So, maybe it's like that unconscious memory crystallization subsystem works, but the conscious recall subsystem doesn't work quite right. I suspect that these are two quite different things, though I don't really know.

princesse• 5 years ago

I do not see anything while dreaming. It is a constant source of slight anxiety as I can be quite conscious and the blindness is puzzling. In daily life I can project myself in some mental space (ie my kitchen) and perceive where the boundaries of things would be, but none of this process has anything to do with vision of sight. It's more like extend proprioception.

If you place your hand on a wall, then close your eyes, then remove your hand, I suspect you'll still feel where the wall is. Even if you picture something completely different in your head, the wall is still there I suppose? My guess is that my extend proprioception (or whatever the right name for this would be) is more fine tuned and apt than someone with a mind eye, but I can't really know. :|

I also do not hear sounds while dreaming, but then again I don't really have an inner monologue anymore, that went away at the same time I learned programming and I don't think it's a coincidence. I do verbalize in my head when reading conversation-like stuff (HN, slack, etc.), but you won't catch me with any internal monologue while reading ingredients, jira tickets, etc.

While dreaming, I can have conversations but there's no gradual arrival of content, it's instantaneous, it was not yet "said" or it was.

_ink_• 5 years ago

I have Aphantasia. I cannot recall any sensoric input, be it visual, audio, taste, smell, touch. I have an inner monologue. I rarly remember my dreams, but when I do I now I saw something. As for hearing I cannot really answer it. Currently I do not think that I hear sounds while dreaming. I can talk with people, but I believe everybody sounds like my inner voice. Again, it is really hard to tell, since I cannot recall it.

ypcx• 5 years ago

What happens (or what would happen) if you sit still in silence and darkness and try to observe these "feeling symbols" as they come and go?

You could be better equipped for deep meditation and deep thinking than most of us, but maybe you just need to do some practice.

advael• 5 years ago

As with "afantasia" a few years back, we seem to keep encountering places where the experience and perhaps even construction of minds are very different from each other, and the diversity of brains is certainly fascinating...

But underpinning all the reporting I read on it is a fundamental assumption that's very strange to me. A lot of people seem to work under a model where brains and lived experiences should be very similar to each other, and I just don't see that actually bearing out anywhere. So what I often come away wondering is: Why is this assumption so pervasive?

playpause• 5 years ago

How do we know we are all talking about the same thing? Sometimes my thoughts feel very ‘verbal’, lots of words, and other times I can think through complex things without any words entering my conscious mind at all. And there’s a full continuum between those extremes. Usually it’s somewhere in the middle, and it’s hard to say if I am thinking with an ‘inner voice’ or not. Do others really experience just one extreme or the other, all the time?

id4• 5 years ago

I'm exactly the same as you. When I do have an inner voice it's essentially like talking to myself but without actually mouthing the words. But it's not present at all times, it's mostly there when I want it to. I can also create mental pictures in my head - but it's not like looking at actual pictures at all. I'm pretty convinced that it's possible that we actually all experience the same and just have difficulty explaining what our thinking experiences are like.

thepra4• 5 years ago

Yep, I am a mixed bag as you.

helaoban3• 5 years ago

Sometimes when I'm lost in thought a sound, a voice or a piece of music that I heard recently is almost completely reproduced in my brain, like I'm actually hearing it again. It's a subconscious act, I don't think I've ever been able to will that sensation consciously, but once it happens I can sustain it for almost a minute or two (especially music).

I have a very "strong" internal monologue, talking to myself all day. I supposed there could be a connection.

Anybody else have similar experiences?

GPerson2• 5 years ago

I used to have sleep paralysis a lot and during at least one episode I could hear, clear as day, a full orchestra playing in my head as if it was coming from somewhere in the house. And when I broke out of the sleep paralysis there was no sound at all.

helaoban3• 5 years ago

Yes! I've also had similar experiences during episodes of sleep paralysis. Interesting.

When I'm awake it happens during periods of deep day-dreaming.

ryan93• 5 years ago

Im insanely skeptical about peoples self reports on this kind of thing. I suspect the vast majority of people have similar experiences visualizing an apple or thinking through a problem.

Jensson3• 5 years ago

Anyone who can solve a problem without being able to describe what they did in words isn't using an inner voice to solve the problem. So if there exists people who mostly reason about problems using words then there are at least two kinds of ways to reason about problems.

nynx• 5 years ago

This is very interesting. I always thought I had an inner voice, but the experiences in this article are completely different than mine. It's just myself speaking to myself, there's never any preconception that it's someone else or a different voice. It's something that isn't present all the time—I can generally engage it when I want. Though, I notice when writing this that I'm dictating my writing non-vocally.

ModernMech• 5 years ago

I live with someone who experiences auditory hallucinations. These hallucinations are always telling her deepest darkest fears to her, and she's unaware that its coming from within her. It makes her a little agoraphobic, but even if she doesn't leave the house she hears these voices through the walls and thinks the neighbors are talking about her. I believed her once, but everywhere we move, the neighbors always have the same very intimate things to say about her. I try to point out that logically it's impossible for all these unrelated people to know these things and to talk about them using the same exact language, but it doesn't help. Maybe in the moment it does, but the voices are too persuasive to overcome.

hanoz• 5 years ago

As with perennial Hacker News favourite Aphantasia, the discussion does leave me with the distint impression that the spectrum of reported condition is more a function of our inability to convey and compare the inner experience, than of variation in the inner experience itself.

psyc4• 5 years ago

When others say they can see images and movies in their heads, and hear voices and play back songs in their heads, I believe I know exactly what they mean. Just as if they were describing itching or feeling cold.

Yet some people respond with “You can see pictures? You can hear voices? WAT?? I see nothing and hear nothing!”

I don’t see how those people could be having the common experience and still be so shocked to hear how others experience it in simple terms.

pseudalopex3• 5 years ago

Some people in the middle think people who describe stronger sensations just exaggerate. And people who describe weaker sensations are just confused by the exaggerations.

id4• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure that's why it's a favorite - you read a different account and can't really believe it, so you write a comment to make sure they actually do experience the same thing.

TheAceOfHearts2• 5 years ago

There is also aphantasia [0]: the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one's mind.

When people say to visualize or imagine something in their head, they actually mean that quite literally. These people can actually see visual images in their head.

My understanding is that some people are also unable to control it, so when you say something they immediately conjure an image.

In my case, I can take concepts and ideas and think about what it would be like to have that mental image, but I can't actually see it. It feels more like as if I were simulating having that mental image rather than actually having that mental image. I can add properties like sound or physics, but it has to be deliberate. My way of imagining things still lets me get easily lost in thoughts and daydreams though.

I can hold the concept of a ball or cat in my mind without instantiating. My ability to conjure mental images is limited though. For example: with a concept of Tony the Tiger, even if I instantiate it I couldn't tell you how many stripes he has.

When people talk about the heart or soul, they're referring to the "place" where their conscious experience happens. If you believe in dualism then it would distinguish between your soulspace and meatspace. If you don't believe in dualism then your soulspace is just a virtual space simulated within meatspace.

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

GPerson2• 5 years ago

I find that the “fuzzy” visualizations I get just in the course of ordinary thinking become more vivid the closer I am to falling asleep. If I focus on them it becomes like a mixture of being asleep and awake.

micromacrofoot3• 5 years ago

There’s a lack of this inner thought which is an actual condition people have, but I’ve discussed with people before who thought they lacked it… and really it was a misunderstanding based on how it’s described. I have an inner voice and can picture things… but it’s important to note this is “mind’s eye” stuff… it’s not literally equivalent to seeing or hearing something.

When I picture something in my mind and close my eyes, it’s not equivalent to sight… it’s a representation of my a priori knowledge of something. Kind of a mental mirage.

id4• 5 years ago

There’s a lack of this inner thought which is an actual condition people have

I find this so hard to believe. Are these people even conscious? I can solve math equations, think about my life, write code... all without any inner voice, especially when I'm in a flow state. When I do have an inner voice, I would describe it more like talking to myself without actually mouthing words. But never, ever did I have no "inner thought" at all. Like, I'm always aware of myself and that I'm thinking.

The “mind’s eye” stuff you described very well, I think.

towb2• 5 years ago

Oh good. Think everyone here is trying themselves right now. I don't really see anything when I picture stuff in my head, it is more that I know how something looks or should look or could look and it's much less than a picture, but for sure more than words. And for the inner voice, I hear my own voice in my head, it's like I'm talking to myself all the time, like a crazy person. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

id4• 5 years ago

I hear my own voice in my head

But you don't actually hear anything either, right? I mean, does it sound like a recording of you talking? Or is it you thinking in words / having an inner monologue (dialogue?)

micromacrofoot3• 5 years ago

yes, “less than a picture but more than words” seems like a good way to put it!

lookACamel• 5 years ago

To people that are confused, I offer the mind bleach test.

Have you ever imagined something that disgusted you so much that you wished you could "bleach" the image out of your head?

E.g. if you read a detailed description of the kinds of things a facebook content moderator might have to look at, is it possible for those words to generate an image and for you to regret reading the description?

gumby• 5 years ago

Like some other commentators, I have no “inner voice” and the idea of it seems bizarre, and seems like it would be super annoying! When doing mathematics or programming there’s just a conceptual structure that I manipulate or think about, and then type in some code that corresponds to it.

When I read a book the characters do feel realistic to me and I do sometimes see (in a patchy way I suppose) scenes. But when reading, the words have no sounds, they just go straight from the page into my brain. Written puns and poetry don’t really work for me.

conradludgate• 5 years ago

I wonder if this is why rubber duck programming is so effective for a lot of engineers. They have a hard time with their own inner dialogue that they need to physically force themselves to talk out a problem to get their brains to create the right connections

Interestingly enough, my inner dialogue is usually me as a tutor, describing my actions to someone (myself?) as I go. As I'm writing code and I realise one of my explanations doesn't quite make sense, I realise that the code isn't probably that great so I rethink the problem

seba_dos1• 5 years ago

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.

japanuspus• 5 years ago

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...

Sosh101• 5 years ago

Are you suggesting that people without an inner voice are less conscious?

TheFreim• 5 years ago

I haven't thought about this issue too much but I don't, at a glance, find an issue with saying people lacking inner voices are less conscious (at least in one aspect of consciousness, for all we know they might lack one aspect but have greater consciousness in other aspects). It seems that someone who has a lesser ability to use their consciousness would definitionally be "less conscious". What are your thoughts?

shele3• 5 years ago

“He can easily while away an hour without having a single thought.” No! It is “not a single _verbalized_ thought”! To write such an article one should have some understanding that thoughts exists outside mental verbalization

throw0101a3• 5 years ago

“He can easily while away an hour without having a single thought.” No! It is “not a single _verbalized_ thought”!

I can have stretches of time where I don't have images (or words) in my head. My mind is blank.

shele3• 5 years ago

Yes, but that’s a different discussion.

antman• 5 years ago

I never heard of inner voices, or have discussed such a thing with other people. Is that a cultural thing? I am totally surprised I thought it was a literal construct when I saw it in the movies etc

Anyway I had read that when you “vocalize” inside your head during e.g. reading you severely slow down. Isn’t that the same with any kind of thinking? Brain works with abstractions won’t involving your “voice” functions force you to early concreteness hampering, well, your heuristics? I have no idea

thepra4• 5 years ago

I could say similar things the other way around, but that doesn't make sense as a way to think about this ways of being.

People used to one way or another from childhood don't really recognize any drawbacks to their way of thinking or not.

stavros5• 5 years ago

I agree, if I sometimes vocalize, it takes much longer to go from one thought to the next. The thought itself takes very little time, but the vocalization takes a while, and then delays the next thought.

I've found that sometimes I'll vocalize a thought, and in the middle of it think "why am I vocalizing? I've already thought the entire thought" and just stop vocalizing altogether.

GoblinSlayer• 5 years ago

People who can't think in abstractions have no other way.

laserbeam• 5 years ago

All of these descriptions are gorgeous! They are really great starting points for inquiry and meditation. Things you may or may not observe when meditating, looking at your own thoughts.

I've met plenty of people who rusj to judge that they think in a certain way, or that they prefer one mode of learning, or that they visualize instead of verbalize. All of those are valid perspectives and opinions. Some may be real, some may be imperfect descriptions, some may only be true at the time of speaking when the person is asked.

I'm loving this comment thread, thanks guys!

Traubenfuchs• 5 years ago

People without inner voice are considered NPC by some.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)

HKH27• 5 years ago

You can make decisions without an inner voice.

anfelor• 5 years ago

My inner voice helps me tremendously while working on a proof or an algorithm: I say the individual steps in my head and then I remember them better. I can even do this with writing blog posts, but then when I get to the keyboard I still know the gist but not the precise phrasing, which is a shame since the original phrasing sounded so good in my head. Does anyone have a solution for that?

agent3272• 5 years ago

Is that an inner voice though? I get the impression that the inner voice described in the article is involuntary, whereas the thing you describe is simply you, thinking conciously.

Having read the article I find I have no idea whether I have an inner voice or not. I can't imagine an inner voice that I cannot shut down if I want to. And it certainly isn't some other persona; it's just me, 'speaking' without actually making the sounds.

distances5• 5 years ago

I agree with the other commenter, this is not an inner voice in the sense of the article.

thepra4• 5 years ago

I don't know you guys but I think I have a little bit of everything going on: 1) I can think with my voice 2) I can think with other sounds such as anothers person voice(ex. Donald Trump or Barack Obama) with some effort 3) I can see images or full blown videos or memories or made up ones as if I can hijack my eyes and can override with what I want, both when closed eyes or open(the later is less done because of safety concerns ;)) 4) And lastly there are times when some kind of solution or answer comes out without even thinking, like in total silent head

Am I alone here?

stavros5• 5 years ago

I can more or less do all these things too, but I generally don't. I don't think with an inner voice, even though I can, because it's much slower than millisecond-thoughts.

thepra4• 5 years ago

I agree, I don't use inner voice all the time

alok-g2• 5 years ago

Same for me.

It's not so explicit for me to say that it's just like it's actually happening. However, perhaps a few same neurons are firing as if it were for real.

Goety• 5 years ago

imagine how torturous telepathy would be if you couldnt turn it off

0xdeadb00f4• 5 years ago

My inner monologue is almost crippling. I can't fall asleep at night, I think of all the stupid shit I've done and said in the past, and I call myself names because of it.

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.

_djo_• 5 years ago

I'm sorry, that sounds extremely unpleasant. The only advice I can offer is to look into professional therapy, as that sort of a negative self-talk pattern is extremely difficult to break out of on your own.

0xdeadb00f4• 5 years ago

I've been diagnosed with MDD in the past. Though I wasn't formally diagnosed with anxiety, I did have symptoms of it. I think that's what's come to the forefront now, and what's probably the cause of this negative self-talk.

Thanks for the advice :)

illwrks2• 5 years ago

I used to dwell on things like that also. Everyone has done or said things throughout their life that are embarrassing, make you cringe or are stupid. Thats part of you growing as a person, and being able to acknowledge them shows that you have grown!

It sounds harsh but the best advice I've ever received is that "people don't care about you". The context in which it was said was that people engage with you when you're there but when you're not you can expect them to be caught up in their own life, problems, issues and listening to their own inner voice.

0xdeadb00f4• 5 years ago

You're so right about that! In fact I've had similar thoughts about it.

Still, i find myself wondering if maybe by chance people do remember and do judge me for things I've said and done. But that can't be true all the time, and yet, I still dwell on these things...

Nevertheless thanks for your comment.

HKH27• 5 years ago

I used to be a bit like that. Now I write out the things that were physically true about whatever a disconcerting memory is pointing to, avoiding sentences/grammar/style/references to emotions etc.

I think any emotion held long-term is definitely distorted, if not stigmatic.

thom• 5 years ago

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 subconscious isn’t working harder to help me out. I do occasionally get very full musical auditory hallucinations which I have always been grateful for but there’s no voice in my head distinct from my own.

psyc4• 5 years ago

If it makes you feel any better, I have pseudo-audible inner voices with no self-detectable subvocalization; but it’s never unbidden, and they never, ever seem like someone else talking, even when I’m role-playing the other side of a dialogue.

gala8y11• 5 years ago

but it’s still me saying it.

It is of course always you, but putting concepts of me/ego/identity aside, you can treat your "you’re being an arsehole" as a certain kind of energy in your consciousness, which tends to make similar remarks and shows up when you're actually acting like an arsehole. The idea here is even bigger - you can talk _both_ to this 'arshole' energy/self (you behaving in a certain way) _and_ to this voice saying "you’re being an arsehole.", critising gently appearance of this 'arsehole' you.

for some people these thoughts occur unbidden

It is a common experience. Even your examples (“that was dumb” or “you’re being an arsehole”) are not consciously, deliberately invited thoughts and indeed, in in many cases voices can become really strong and talk to you all the time.

When you look at your mind as comprised of different selves/states, which are a bit like independent people inside you operating within you, very interesting things happen.

When we focus on the fact that these parts are _talking_, we can refer to them as voices and _converse with them_, but generally these are your energy patterns, eg. your Lazy energy/part or Workoholic energy/part (or your Arsehole energy/part) shows up. Sometimes (very often) some of them are too strong and show up and stay uninvited.

me_me_me• 5 years ago

I think I am a bit like you, I hear voice (my voice when I type or read) and I comment in my head on things around be and things I do, but its me-me, it feels 100% like part of my consciousness aligned with me. It doesn't feel like a separate entity commenting on my life.

I find it fascinating reading about how others' heads are working.

I tied to learn to read faster, and one of the techniques is to stop your inner voice, but I failed. Though maybe I enjoy reading more and acting out the text in my head

lucideer• 5 years ago

Most of us have an inner voice

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?

new_guy2• 5 years ago

It's like those bullshit "studies" that claim you can't "dream in color", "can't read in dreams", "can't see new faces" etc etc and you're just left wondering if that person has ever even dreamt in their life.

bambax• 5 years ago

Like many commenters here, I don't really have an inner voice in the sense of somebody talking to me, calling my name and telling me what I did bad or what I should do.

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.

ghastmaster• 5 years ago

If you like reading this comment thread, here is a similar one:

Not everyone has an internal monologue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451

new_guy2• 5 years ago

The seminal work on this is "The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind - Julian Jaynes"

People used to think this voice was "God"

Personally I don't have this "inner voice", it's something you lose (if you ever had it) when you mediate and develop your consciousness.

[0] https://book4you.org/book/1124752/f435ef

akacia2• 5 years ago

I do have inner voice but I don’t feel a constant need to use it, I can think and understand thoughts without it - actually, it’s hard for me to vocalize more complex thoughts. If I’d have to vocalize everything then my mental capacity would be severely limited. I suggest you to try to get rid of it and you’d surprised how much faster you can think in pure concepts.

johnchristopher7• 5 years ago

Wait a minute... I thought I had internal monologue because I can hear myself speaking thoughts and myself talking to myself (it's like talking out loud but in your head) but reading some of the comments here it seems like people have multiple inner voices and that's what they mean by internal monologue ? I don't have inner voices, there's only me up there (and I do a lot of self pitying and most of the monologue is on a rail and I do dialogue but it's role playing, not other voices with their own mind).

Do most people mean "multiple voices" when they say "inner monologue" ?

throwaway-jim• 5 years ago

Have you tried changing your inner voice to some one else's voice? I'm usually have 1 primary voice but I can synthesize anyone's voice. For example, if I'm reading something that I know was written by a woman my brain automatically makes up a female voice for it.

johnchristopher7• 5 years ago

Yes, when role playing conversations or thinking about someone talking I have their tone and speech patterns but I am the one writing the dialogue (borrowing on their way of phrasing sentences). On that note, I can't picture their own inner monologue but I have never tried that.

When reading fiction I have different tones for people but it's barely noticeable. I read without sub vocalizing much (reading too fast for that but I can pause it to enjoy the scene or the writing or the experience of reading, it depends).

I too make up voices for female and male authors of tweets, blog posts, articles, comments, etc. but it's automatic and they aren't discernable unless I have heard the person then it'll always be their voice.

And there's a huuuuuge bias because the default is a male voice with all of my stereotypes attached to it.

Cthulhu_• 5 years ago

I don't, but I can imagine another voice if needs be; I can imagine some people crafted their internal monologue to be like that. I mean at some point my inner monologue was entirely in English (not my native language), and I spent a lot of time thinking in the style of writing a post on the forum I was active on at the time. I think it's a helpful tool to think outside of your own self (that's the best phrasing I can come up with at the moment).

I think that's where a lot of blogging, livejournaling, tweeting etc comes from as well - it's a way to channel an internal monologue.

johnchristopher7• 5 years ago

I do feel being different when thinking and writing in English but I don't know if it changes my personal traits or inclinations. I read once about how it has an impact though: being more or less assertive, funny or polite. But I wonder if theses changes aren't just an illusion due to the fact that it does change (limit more often than increase) our range of expressions (as in expressing emotions, conveying meaning through the way you craft a message, think McLuhan's medium is the message).

When I am trying to piece how someone else think/would react/feel, when I am trying to be empathic I do not rely on roleplaying that person and I do not write sentences I would listen to with their own tone. It's an analytical process. (But I am pedantic with the definition of empathy and compassion).

I spent a lot of time thinking in the style of writing a post on the forum I was active on at the time

My inner monologue (which can be a dialogue in the sense that when I ponder things I tell myself "what if I do that ?" for instance) is a part what defines me as an individual. It's me but not completely me (it misses the unconscious, as in what I don't have in mind at the moment and what I don't know about myself.. I don't have full knowledge of who I am or why I do things I do).

gala8y11• 5 years ago

Do most people mean "multiple voices" when they say "inner monologue" ?

You will find different conceptualizations of this phenomena, but generally speaking it is very prolific to treat mind (term used imprecisely) as comprised of many sub-parts (sub-personalities/voices/selves/states). You can treat them as separate, functional patterns of behavior with their own agendas, feelings, beliefs, etc. The fun part is that you can engage them and talk to them, eg. you can talk to your Inner Child (you will feel it as separate and feel its child like nature) or your Lazy part or any part you recognize as a bigger pattern. You can even talk to your Sorrow, Silence, Energy of Being (as opposed to doing), etc. You can talk to parts of yourself which were dormant or disowned/repressed (eg. Anger, Romantic Self,...). You can talk to your demonized, aggressive Inner Critic.

The changes which occur due to shift in perspective which results from such dialogues are... beyond the scope of this comment. ;)

edit: Seems I am late for the party, but definitely for a treat here (including the article). (I do Voice Dialogue for a living, which is a practical method of meeting those different parts of ourselves.)

geocar• 5 years ago

You can treat them as separate, functional patterns of behavior with their own agendas, feelings, beliefs, etc.

Wow.

I have seen television shows and art that treat humans as the amalgam of a faceted personality where each facet is depicted by a separate character (representing, I assumed, the embodiment of that fact), but I had never considered this might be demonstrative of the way people might actually think (or think they think).

distances5• 5 years ago

The concept as described in the article is totally foreign to me. Would there be some upside of trying to awaken some additional inner voice? Is that even possible?

I can easily speak in my mind, but it's just me, and I'm in total control. There are no other personas. I of course sometimes get spontaneous thoughts, sometimes even very unwanted ones, but they are my thoughts and I can easily dismiss them. I don't do dialogues in my mind, and there's no critique or negative feedback, just self-reflection. Thoughts in my mind do not keep me awake at night. I don't feel like I'm missing anything really.

throw0101a3• 5 years ago

I don't have inner voices, there's only me up there

I don't have "me" up there most of the time. Usually only when (a) I'm reading to myself or (b) if I'm practicing/going over a conversation or 'debate' on a concept. Otherwise my mind is usually quiet.

johnchristopher7• 5 years ago

I do envy you I think. I am always there except when daydreaming or in the zone (reading, mind wandering, etc.).

Then again what would I think what is "me" if I didn't have that constant 'observation of the world (outer and inner)' ?

Maybe I don't have inner dialogue but anxiety is eating my mind (anxiety as in: being aware of the world all the time, observing it all the time) and it gives an illusion of monologue/being ?

spyder• 5 years ago

Hm... multiple voices would be inner dialog, not monologue.

superposeur3• 5 years ago

Interesting - I experience the opposite in that I can only hear imagined “dialogues” involving other people, but have no inner voice of my own. My emotional priorities dictate what the imagined drama is about and, to be sure, this is a whole lot of self-pity … but the voices have distinct identities and sounds, and none of them are “me”.

johnchristopher7• 5 years ago

Is it like you are listening to a radio talk show? And you have feelings based on what you hear? Or is "you" all of the voices? Are you actively playing the different parts or are they autonomous ?

corobo• 5 years ago

My internal monologue is more like a board meeting

"I" can veto everything but there are other threads relating to specific things. Anxiety has always had a prominent seat at the table but recently we brought in consultants to see if we can dislodge all of the old guard. We got rid of depression's seat last year

They don't have a physical form or anything like that. Purely held within imagination as a way to quickly grab all angles on a thought. Like a mind palace except it also has a meeting room

In the real world I'm just sitting there wearing my usual poker face. Someone asks what I'm thinking, "Not much"

Oh it turned out I have ADHD. The consultants are the UK equivalent to Ritalin. Depression was finally ousted with citalopram and by treating the ADHD

vikaveri• 5 years ago

I don't have an internal monologue, but I do have that board meeting. Kinda makes me think of that Pixar movie, Inside Out. The whole 'board' doesn't meet all the time, mostly it's very quiet and I get an impression or two, a feeling really, here and there, but when I'm excited or enthusiastic about something, engaged in the moment and I'm presented with a problem to solve, it feels like most of the time a solution just comes to me. Like the board meeting had gone over all the possible options, decided on the best course of action rejecting improbable or difficult solutions, gathered up a dossier with executive summary, schedules, workload estimates, problem analysis, risk analysis, the works, all the details I need to implement the solution to a problem and hands the dossier to me, wordlessly saying "Here's our recommendation". And a lot of the time I just know I have the solution, how to get from A to B without consciously knowing all the steps in between, but knowing all the steps have been figured out and it's in the "dossier". I just need to do it, put it in words and explain to others.

Interestingly enough, I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD, at least not yet, but after discussions with professionals, it seems probable that I may have it, to some degree anyhow

skhr0680• 5 years ago

I’m bilingual and can think in either language, and my inner voices for each sound different and have mildly different opinions

superposeur3• 5 years ago

I seem to have a variant of aphantasia where I can conjure images through dint of will, but they immediately begin wildly revolving in space / mutating as if lacking any stable “camera angle”, then vanish entirely. No matter how hard I try, the images refuse to stay put or to persist in memory. Does any one else have this? / does _everyone_ else have this?

wildermuthn• 5 years ago

The Italian mind-couple in the article sound a lot like “Tulpas” — imaginary friends that seem to have their own personality and consciousness separate from their “host”. According to the Attention-Schema theory of consciousness (AST), there’s no real difference between our own consciousness and consciousness we ascribe to others. If AST is correct, there’s no particular reason that a single brain be restricted to a single consciousness.

Although multiple personality disorders grab attention, it may be that less dysfunctional forms of multiple personalities exist in more common and constructive ways — such as two Italians arguing in one’s head, or as seemingly autonomous fictional characters who are transferred by artists into novels and film. Or in the case of “tulpas”, as imaginary friends that provide relief from loneliness and isolation.

If consciousness is produced by the brain, rather than being a non-material 1:1 artifact of a soul, then fundamentally there is nothing to stop a single brain from producing multiple consciousnesses.

It might be hard for most of us to understand what it feels like to be a secondary consciousness (what it feels like to be Frodo), but that doesn’t mean secondary consciousnesses don’t exist. “Tulpas” certainly argue for their own existence and sentience, which at the very least makes for a fascinating read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/

drcongo3• 5 years ago

I'm one of these people. I have constant chatter from around six distinct voices in my head if I'm not concentrating on something. It makes getting to sleep extremely difficult (I have to listen to the radio, take melatonin etc). Possibly even more annoying is that I'm unable to meditate - it is impossible for me to empty my mind of thoughts, as soon as I get anywhere near doing so, I find myself listening in to the conversations of strangers and thinking about what they're saying. This is all entirely distinct from what I would consider my own, inner voice, which becomes the only prominent one when I'm concentrating.

gala8y11• 5 years ago

I met few people with exceptional amounts of chatter 24/7. I haven't work with any of them (psychologically), but, best to my knowledge, it is something that serves specific functions(s) in your mind and is susceptible to change, when approached systemically (not treated as a symptom, but rather in a perspective of totality of your experience/existence).

The basic direction is not to get away from it (to supress it using radio), but welcome it, get interested (edit: how would name those six voices?). Of course I can not go any further than tell you, that it is possible to change, imo, if you want to.

drcongo3• 5 years ago

Thanks for the tip, I do sometimes immerse myself in it and it can be kinda fun, but it's never relaxing. Most of the chatter I can hear is nonsense so it's not particularly interesting to listen to. As a side note, sometimes those voices take on the voice of someone I know in real life, that's always a bit more interesting.

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

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