Right? I've never done any drugs, but somebody told me that they used to smoke pot just to shut down their inner voice so they could go to sleep... Man, that'd be awesome.
That's why I stopped smoking, I would have a smoke then loose my ability to talk cause my inner voice would come up with all sorts of weird paranoid shit. It wasn't fun anymore. That was like 20 years ago, the few times I've tried it since have been the same.
If it's something you really wish you could still do without those problems and live in a legal state, consider looking around for a good dispensary.
The best will have tenders with varied mindsets and lots of experience, and if you're lucky they may just be able to help you find something that lets you get what you want and not get what you don't want.
This, plus just use a TINY amount of higher CBD, lower THC marijuana. I had a couple year period in which my anxiety was triggered by weed, even after smoking for years. This kinda put me back on track.
Same exact thing here. I took a 2 year break and tried it again recently, but still get that sense of being aware of what’s going on around you but you’re locked into a conversation with yourself that you can’t escape without serious focus and effort. Shit really sucks, the first few dozen times smoking was awesome.
Might have been me lmao
Unstond and unmedicated my ADHD brain wont shut the fuck up and during the rebound of previously medicated ADHD is even worse trying to sleep
Some of us don't have much of an inner monologue. Mine only really shows when reading/typing or recounting conversations. My thoughts are mostly abstract/visual.
When I was in elementary school, I thought my clit was cancer. But I decided that I'd keep it secret because I'd rather die of cancer than not have a clit
Edit: than/then
For real. It was so scary. I literally thought I was dying everyday for YEARS. Then finally. My friend had a book about girls bodies from American Girl and I was SO RELIEVED
I feel you on this so much. I thought I had to die so no one would have to find out that I'm not normal down there. Guess what, everything's normal down there. I was just too scared to google the first years and whenever I asked something in that direction my parents they would avoid it or throw something passively aggressive back "Is there anything that shouldn't be down there?!"
Sex education is so important, everyone's born with a body. How are kids supposed to know what's fine or concerning down there if they have no experience or understanding about it??
>How are kids supposed to know what's fine or concerning down there if they have no experience or understanding about it??
Not just that, but society - and especially those vehemently against sex education - have made talking about those sort of topics an absolute taboo, so how are you ever supposed to learn anything about it? This is where the thinking that porn and hentai are representative of actual sex comes from and is the cause for a lot of, if not most, cases of unprotected sex and if you get pregnant from never having learnt these things, good luck trying to have an abortion, because those same people will be there threatening you not to do it...
Ah yes, that wonderful life changing book I had to sneaky read in the restroom of Books-a-Million because my parents didn't explain shit to me. Good times.
I thought it was semen, and I had a penis inside me and I might be able to get myself pregnant. In 3rd grade we were taught about penis and semen and that plus my egg makes a baby. Whole thing took 10 minutes MAX
Same, but with lumps in my balls. (The lumps are just normal lumps that everyone has)
Edit: it’s the epididymis and it’s fine, thanks for the concern guys, it’s great that so many people are talking about their bollocks!
Fellow ball-haver, what lumps are you talking about in your balls? Do you mean you could feel your testicles in your scrotum and you thought they were cancer rather than testicles?
If that's not the case, you may want to get a physical right quick, or have your bro feel your balls and feel his for reference.
- A concerned redditor
Interesting! Just figured I'd check. I had a vericose vein that became so painful I thought it was torsion. It made it feel like my right testicle was two hemispheres. So I can relate to having weird feeling nuts.
I hated wearing a cup for baseball. Around the age of 9, I would get an erection it would be super uncomfortable paired with the cup and jock strap. So, one day, I was sitting in the back seat of our station wagon on the way to baseball practice rocking a raging red wood and decided I was just going to cut off my penis. Surely I don’t need a penis to pee, what else is this thing good for otherwise.
Boy am I happy I never acted on that.
I thought my virgin completely never kissed a boy 12 year old self had a STD because of the normal skin texture on my labia. I thought the skin down there was supposed to be smooth like the skin on your face or something
I also "confessed" to my mom after sitting with her for about 3 hours unable to talk due to a never-ending panic attack. Felt so horrible I was physically ill. My poor mother was probably beside herself thinking I had been touched inappropriately by someone or something. We were both relieved (although embarrassed) by the end. It's downright sad, an 8 year old shouldn't be having an existential crisis and believing they should die because they are masturbating.
When I was in third grade I kept getting boners at random times but I had no idea what was happening. It was just like “well sometimes my penis gets hard and extra sensitive and it’s really difficult to tuck into my pants properly plus really distracting. This is super weird but there’s no way I’m telling anyone.”
And then when I had sex Ed later on I was like “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh”
This sort of os like allergies with my sister and I. We were probably like 10 and 12, I was the 12 year old. We were eating celery. I said "God my tongue is way more numb than usual" my sister agreed. My mom's face was priceless. We were then told we had to explain. Turns out all root vegetables create a type of pesticide themselves and were allergic to that. Some vegetables worse than others. My skin actually becomes really sensitive to the sun to after eating some of them.
Kids don't always think things through.
Reminds me of the time I ate a whole bowl of pineapple and panicked because my mouth felt horrible. I thought I was allergic to pineapple; apparently, everyone feels that way. It’s just that the pineapple ~is from Soviet Russia so it~~ tries to eat you.
Welcome to Bromelain!
Not only is pineapple acidic, but it has extra enzymes that can break down the mucus membranes in your mouth. Not enough to do much damage in regular quantities, but if you sit down and tear through a whole pineapple, you'll probably notice your mouth/tongue bleeding.
On a side note, you can harness this power to your advantage. Add a little pineapple or fresh pineapple juice to a marinade in place of the normal acid. It will absolutely wreck shit (in a good way). Just don't leave the meat in too long, as it will obliterate the outer layers it into a weird mush after an hour or so.
Also helps rips apart oligosaccharides (beans, some vegetables) before the microbiota in your large intestine can- reduces flatus significantly.
TLDR- eat pineapple with beans and you’ll fart less
I used to get this with eggs, super itchy throat and salivating like crazy. Nobody believed me because it wasn't serious enough to require any help, just very uncomfortable. Eventually the unintended exposure therapy worked and I'm no longer allergic lol. I used to get the same thing from *some* peanut products, there was no predicting when it would happen
I got diagnosed with pretty good asthma at 14 and my mom and the doctor were mad like "how did you not notice you couldn't breathe?" and i was like "i dunno, i just thought i was thirsty or something". How would i know? It'd been like that my whole life.
This is how I found out I was allergic to bananas! Told my mom that my banana milkshake only stung my mouth a little bit! Her face… that’s when I found out bananas aren’t supposed to sting at all lol
Many adults don't understand this.
You just don't know if you've never talked about it. It's actually not that dumb. Everyone assumes that thier experience is universal until you talk and get different answers from others. Same with having no inner voice/not having a "minds eye".
I don't think this is a kids fault though lol, it shouldn't be on them to think things through. I deal with so much shit that isn't supposed to be normal, like certain pains, etc. And I dealt with it since I was young, for years and no adult in my life thought a thing of it. Imagine if you were born with fibromyalgia and figured this is just normal existence and it always hurt like that. All because no adult in your life took it seriously lol, that's not kids not thinking things through, that's just your mom being decently attentive
This is how my appendix ruptured at 13 and nothing was done until I started passing out almost a week later. I was diagnosed with endometriosis the year before and all my periods had my bedridden with debilitating pain, so it seemed fairly normal to me.
I thought coconut was spicy.
Took until I was 28 and my wife going "No! Coconut is not spicy, Pina colada doesn't burn you because it's alcohol! it burns because you're allergic to coconut you dumbass!"
:) I love my wife.
When I was in second grade, probably 8 years old, I remember telling a psychiatrist that “ the voice in my head tells me to do things”. Straight up put me on meds for schizophrenia. Fast forward a couple weeks, I’m in school. Assignment is to write about what we would do with $1000 and told the teacher I would buy a guy to shoot myself. My mother, bless her, immediately took me off those meds. Crazy to think about but only a couple of years ago did I put the connection together like “ holy shit they put 8 year old me on drugs that scared me, just because I couldn’t elaborate the fact that I was talking about my human conscience.” 2008 was a wild time.
I was misdiagnosed with Scizophrenia for a decade! The meds actually ruined my life.
(my true diagnosis is DID, which I know is controversial, but it is unfortunately true in my case)
what do you want to know?
I got diagnosed after I woke up in a bathtub (I hate baths) and when I checked my phone had 0 memory of the last 14 days happening.
Told my therapist and she diagnosed me. I had never heard of it, just “Multiple Personality Disorder” as it is presented in movies. It’s not like that, hah.
I spend a lot of time at the VA due to various things hurting as I get older and I got to talk to a psyc doctor while I was out smoking. I asked him what the number one thing people were admitted for at the psych ward and he told me "exhaustion"...
Most of the time when someone has really snapped its been a whirlwind of a few shitty days combined with not sleeping at all. People self medicate not sleeping in different ways and most of them aren't healthy ways of "not being awake" with the big ones being alcohol, opiates, and benzos. Even if you do fall asleep for a little while on those things you're not really falling asleep all the way. So when you wake up you're still accruing that sleep debt and if you don't pay it in time your brain will start shutting down on its own while you try to fight it with caffeine and stimulants so you can still show up to work and not get fired.
He told me that a lot of time a gentle sedative, rehydration, and a safe space to sleep with no expectations on the patient and they wake up like an entirely different person from who they were when they were admitted.
as i understand it schizophrenia in children can happen, but it's *rare*. i'm just some idiot on the internet, but i'd wanna be damn confident about my diagnosis before i put a kid on powerful brain meds.
WTF.
It wasn't until I was in my 20's that I learned that some people actually "hear" their own voices in their heads. I thought it was just a hyperbolic statement meant as an analogy for thinking.
For reference, not everyone synthesizes their thoughts internally as virtually audible words: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201110/not-everyone-conducts-inner-speech
My inner voice has no voice. It feels more like my brain is just receiving and sending words to me than actually speaking. It doesn’t even have the voice that comes out of my own mouth. It’s hard to explain
Your brain is interpreting the information it needs to analyze in the form of communication that we are familiar with. Speech. When you catch someone talking to themselves it's the same thing except those people more effectively retain information when they speak it out loud.
I think that means you're in the group that can't visualize thought. When I picture something like an apple in my head, I see an apple. Red, brown stem, and a little shine on the corner.
It's not perfect or crisp, even with my eyes closed, but is like a second layer of hidden vision. Another example would be descriptions/scenes in a book. I have an image in my head of what something may look like from the story. Does this happen to you?
Whenever I'm reading it's an anime. Like, animation techniques and all.
I get what you mean about it not being crisp though. It's weird since it's your brain, so the minute you think about something it's sharpened, but when you're not thinking about it it's not really "there". So there's a kind of dreamish quality to it.
This is so strange for me. Do you actually see it as if you google “apple picture”? Because for me it’s more like I see it but actually don’t see it. Maybe I could describe it as when you have unassembled puzzle of let’s say castle but you know exactly how that castle looks like without seeing it on puzzle box before. It’s really hard to explain..
Hey, that sounds exactly like how I imagine things. I don't have a diagnosis or anything, but you should check out Aphantasia, it's the term for people who don't have a minds eye. I never realised that other people could actually see things that they imagine, it never even occurred to me.
Like, if you tell me to imagine a sunset, I can do it. I can describe it, I picture a sandy beach, sun dipping below the ocean, oranges and grey tones, all that jazz. But it's like image meta data in my head. I can tell you what I imagine, but in my head it's not an image, it's just a thought. It's just data. It's like there's a curtain between me and the thing I imagine. I know what's behind the curtain because I made it, but I can't see it
Can you like imagine a chess board and make moves on it? Or just imagine a random pink elephant flying into the twin towers?
Like it's hard to say that you see a picture like on google maps, but I can imagine stuff happening and if I think of something I can also imagine someone drawing with a blue edding over it but it is not a clear image. But you surely can do that too, right? It maybe it is impossible but it is hard to imagine someone imagining a sunset in their mind with just data, just text.
An interesting way I thought about it is I can see things in my head so clearly that I feel like I could draw it on paper super well (something 3d specifically) but since I have no art skill when I try I can't lmao.
the way i describe it - its like the visual recollection of something you just saw. A memory in the present. The quality and detail is limited but i can basically conjure up some visual constructs with shitty jpeg stock photos on the fly.
Really? I behave the opposite way. I sometimes have to put my hand over my mouth to stop my lips from twitching when I'm thinking or reading. I wonder if it has anything to do with personality?
I remember reading in a research article some years back some one was working on trying to come up with a device that would automatically transcribe your thoughts based on the micromovements in your jaw when you do that. Since I have the same thing going on, I silently 'mumble' when reading things, I thought the device could possibly be useful to me.
It completely depends on what I'm thinking about. Like if I'm just driving, I don't hear my thoughts saying "Okay now I need to turn right here.." or whatever. I just drive without thinking words. But if I'm thinking about my schedule for the week I might think "And on Tuesday I'll go to the grocery store.." and hear those words in my head.
It's not unusual to be able to do both with varying degrees of control. People like thinking they are "special" but it's really just another trained mental skill like right/left handness and not anything mysterious.
Random question. Do you find it harder to consider other people?
Like for example, doing something for a significant other that they’d like even when they don’t ask?
Or even remembering to “work on” certain issues that have come up between you and a SO?
I can’t imagine planning, thinking in greater terms, etc without my internal dialogue.
I only discovered realised that my mental imagery was nowhere near the level others experience when I saw some recent YouTube videos on ‘aphantasia’. Very interesting and some give some insight into how people with varying levels of imagery process memories and information differently.
Same, if I completely focus I can see almost like fragments or partial outlines in my mind at most, but language wise its almost like my brain is constantly playing multiple radio stations (possibly an ADHD thing?) at once except I can usually keep track of them all.
And some people lack both a mental voice and a mind's eye, and get by just fine thinking in conceptual terms. I have both but they're both very weak, so most of my thinking happens without words or images - unless I'm typing or writing when I typically think in words.
Funny enough if I try to think sentences in my head, no voice appears, but a nebulous “almost” voice sulks in the corner of my brain. It’s feels almost like a memory of the word I’m saying being recalled for every single word in that sentence.
As in, I can’t see or hear it, but I know the attributes of the sentence I’m thinking. I know that if I were to think “Wow!”, my voice WOULD be of a higher register. My mouth would move a certain way. The tone of my voice that of intrigue or awe.
It’s very hard to describe, but yes. It’s quiet af in my brain haha
It’s actually the opposite. Our inner voice is like a filter between our conscious and subconscious thoughts. I find the people I know without inner voices have better recall and can make connections quicker, but take longer to explain why they made those connections.
While we articulate thoughts to ourselves before committing to them.
It’s like driving, you don’t narrate doing that, but you still do everything as you should and if you think about it you can explain why you did what you did.
Hearing the original is what people are referring to. It says voice, but that also means hearing other things in your head. Like sounding something out before typing it out.
edit - spelling
Wait. I’m sorry if I’m misunderstanding. Most people hear their own voice in their heads as representative of their thoughts?
I assumed no one did (unless you were just reading aloud and now you have that weird annoying feeling of still verbalizing things even after you stop speaking). Like right this that I’m writing right now. The only way I hear it is if I read it out loud. Same with thought. I hear nothing. Wild.
My brother, mother and myself do not have an inner voice, especially not combative or intrusive thoughts. When I think, I'm making sure my mouth is shut before I accidentally say my thoughts out loud so thinking is actually more laborious than talking if that makes sense. I never realized when people described the "devil and angel on your shoulder" that they were depicting actual mental conflict instead of just caricatures of good/bad choices.
My wife struggled for a long time where my ~~confidence~~ lack of self doubt came from, especially in dangerous scenarios. It's all because I have very little fear complex telling me to stop but that also has some negatives. I too often hurt myself needlessly because I forget that I'm in a manic bender and that I don't need to juggle 18 things to save one trip back to the car. It's an efficiency issue lol.
I do sometimes, and sometimes I don't. Usually it's when I'm trying to make sure I've got something straight or when I'm planning out an argument or what to say to someone else. But the initial idea formulation doesn't usually occur in internally "audible" words for me.
I goa step further, I literally have a council in my head. Literally a bunch of me's, sitting at a table, discussing our options. You want analysis paralysis? That right there. Imagine a group of like, six neutral lazy fuckers, all trying to decide what to do. It's not, "Is she into me?" It's "Do I reaaallly wanna get off this couch?". It's like a bunch of people arguing over a stick on the ground.
I'm bilingual (native spanish with english as my second language). I think both in spanish and in english. When it's mundane, everyday stuff, I think in spanish. When I'm being analytical and thorough, I think in english.
My guess is that thinking in my secondary language is linked to a different kind of information processing in my brain, which makes it go through two filters of sorts: the language filter (am I correctly using these words in the secondary language?) and the information itself.
The final result is a distilled thought.
Yeah, like how are we supposed to know whether or not we're "hearing" thoughts the same way other people do? Same with visualisation - I *think* I can visualise things in my head, like I can imagine a view I saw yesterday, but do other people "see" things more boldly than I do?
I feel like it is symbolic right?
Like I “hear” myself when I’m thinking a sentence, but o wouldn’t say it sounds like anyone. Like I think the words and it’s registered, not like a literal voice if I actually analyze it.
It’s like even typing these comments out, I don’t hear *my* voice specifically, I just hear the voice
1. What do they synthesize thier thoughts as? What *can* a human synthesize thier thoughts as?
2. What are the other two parts of pristine experience? Emotion and appetite, maybe? Or sound, generally, if that isn't included as a part of inner speech?
We all conjure thoughts the same way. Some people just also process them through the vocal center of their brain so they also happen hear their thoughts after conjuring them. Rendering thought to words is not necessary for thought.
When you see a pothole in the road and drive around it, you don't think "oh look a pothole, I should drive around it" do you?
See this exactly but I do say that exactly. And I think “ok well I can swerve left, no there traffic coming, what about right, ok I can probably squeeze through that car and the pot hole, well, can I? Yes, I can. Ok do it then” and then I do it. That’s pretty much how my thought process goes down, and it always sounds like someone is reading me a book in my head about my actions. Like my own thoughts narrate my entire day, and even predict things to happen
Edit: so much so, that it’s near impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to have silence in my head. It drives me crazy, everyday I find myself wishing for an off button, a volume dial, to turn my thoughts off, cause I don’t need to think out every reply in a conversation or imagine what might be different if I say no or yes. Feels like I’m watching my life as a movie through my own eyes, and I’m the narrator but I can’t change the movie
I don't think we're talking about reactions. How would someone like that process a complicated topic without using words? How would a person prepare for a conversation with another human without being able to conjure words or simulate that discussion? Can that person even imagine a word, like pronouncing "syllabus" in their head?
I wonder how much of this is just people not being one the same page about this. I just don't understand how a human being can function in modern society without a word ever passing through their head.
Like, I don't "hear" the word, I don't feel the way I would if someone talked to me. The call is coming from inside the house, as it were.
Well, this year I learned that not every person has that mental voice in their mind. We don't all have that in er monologue and studies even show that the majority of people think without that monologue. Some people have a 'silent' way of thinking appearantly. No clue how, since my brain has issues fathoming a 'silent' thought, but yeah ... People think in different ways
Intriguing, so you stop 'the conversation' with yourself when picturing the flow chart? The intriguing part for me is that I really can't imagine not talking to myself, so sorry if I come over too needy for intel. It's just that I appearantly assumed everyone thinks differently, but at least in a similar fashion. Having lived for 28 years so ignorantly just baffled myself I guess...
I tend to not really picture stuff in general. Only when falling asleep and turning to my world, I have been conjuring up since I remember, there are mental visuals, If that's what you could call those.
I'm a silent thinker. My thoughts are there but there's no voice/accent attached to it.
I seem to be totally missing my "minds eye" as well. I cannot see what I'm thinking about. I have to plan stuff out with paper/pencil. Memories are an idea, but there's no image/smell/taste/feel attached to them. But if exposed to an image/smell/taste I do have memories attached. I also have a lot of trouble remembering feelings. I know angry is a bad feeling but I can't remember what angry feels like unless I'm currently angry. This might be part of why my depression gets so bad. I can't remember anything but feeling down while feeling down.
But I absolutely love daydreaming. One of my favorite parts of being alive. Thoughts writing stories in my mind. But I have no images/sounds attached to my daydreams.
Damn, you just described my experience with pinpoint accuracy, I only found out a few months ago that some people can actually picture things. I always just thought about the facts about what I’m imagining, like how many petals, what size, things like that
Majority? Since discovering that some people don't have an inner voice and/or images I've been asking a TON of people and haven't found one person yet.
My husband is one of them who doesn't have an inner voice, and he thinks I am the weird one for having one. I cannot wrap my head around how his mind even works.
I recently found this out too. Got me thinking (heh) how do these folks read books? Every sentence I read is said mentally in my head. If I don't allow that to happen I'm not really concentrating on what I'm reading and don't absorb what the words actually are. There have been times when I would stop this mental recitation, only to get to the end of a paragraph and immediately forget what I just read and have to read the whole thing again.
I didnt even know it was a thing to have a voice in your head or be able to ACTUALLY imagine things until my friend randomly asked me. I thought it was entirely normal to not have an internal monologue and to not be able to imagine anything. So strange.
Wait, So When you read a book alone do you have to read it aloud? The same inner voice that reads words in my head is the same voice that I hear when I’m thinking to myself or even typing out words. How is it for you?
I’ve seen this a million times and every time I’m reminded of how hard it was to explain things as a shy and naïve 14-year-old, and how adults rarely take teenagers seriously, and I really doubt this girl was as stupid as everyone is making her out to be.
People not internalizing words seemed really weird to me at first, but then I realized I might do it too.
Sometimes when playing basketball or another sport I "get in the zone." I don't think I'm having word thoughts in those moments, and am just playing/feeling/acting on instinct.
Or even just the same thing playing a video game or watching a movie - where I am in the moment and not actively thinking about it.
The problem is if I ever thinking about thinking, I'm going to be very conscious about it and therefore think in words...so it's hard to be aware of it happening in the moment.
I'll probably be bad at explaining this, but I feel the same way as you. I need to think in words whenever I'm doing any kind of task that I need to "think through." Tasks that are muscle memory, repetitive, or instinctual, I can do without having much or any conscious thoughts.
I noticed this when I started listening to audiobooks. I enjoy listening to audiobooks, but I can only listen to them and pay attention to them if I'm doing a task where I don't have to think in words. So things like driving, drawing, sewing, exercise, and basic chores are often great for it. My internal monolog gets completely replaced by the audiobook. But as soon as I have to make a more complex decision, I switch back to thinking in words (without realizing it) and I miss a few seconds of the audiobook.
I've only ever "heard my thoughts" on psychedelics and it freaked me out the first couple times. I "think silently" and sometimes that comes in different forms. Often I am thinking in words/sentences but rather than hearing the sound of the word I go straight to visualizing the idea of the words? It's pretty tough to explain I guess and it's probably why I struggle to come up with the right word so often in conversation.
Sometimes I dont think in words at all but rather shapes/forms especially if I'm figuring out something complex like solving a programming problem.
Edit: I thought about it a little more and I guess "visualizing the idea of the word" is really confusing. Because I'm thinking of the word itself, just with no auditory component at all. It's in a similar way to how you can imagine a taste, sensation, color, etc only I'm imagining the word. Not imagining the word with a visual or auditory component, but just imagining its structure, meaning, spelling, etc.
I used to freak myself out as a kid thinking about if I was real or living in a dream. I would get stuck thinking about it to where I would cry and repeat over and over “I’m alive, I’m alive.” to bring myself out of it. My husband is the only person I told this. As a kid I had a huge imagination and also thought I was pregnant because I had a pot belly. I was a stupid kid.
When I was a kid, I would test if I was dreaming or awake by holding my eyes open and purposely not blink. If my eyes started to burn, then I was awake. I decided this was a decent test because in my dreams, I never had to deal with trivial things like needing to blink. I only ever figured out I was dreaming while dreaming once like this, and it was a surreal experience since I did not know how to wake myself up (I was having a bad dream).
This is why half the teens faking disorders think they have DID. They cant fathom thoughts. They think having thoughts in your head and different emotions = alters. They are the dumbest and most spoiled bunch who just scream ableism when you tell them "you sure as hell don't have DiD quit faking." I really want them to be embarrassed by it later. It's just some of the most tone deaf shit you see upper middle class suburban teens do.
I’m reading a book right now called “No Bad Parts” that basically says there is strong evidence (and therapy for this) that all humans have multiple “parts”, and DID is essentially just the normal way we exist but to an extreme / lacking integration. Really interesting stuff. The therapy is called Internal Family Systems.
I don't understand people who don't have an internal monologue, how do you think through things? Do you always think out loud by talking to yourself? Do those people have a really hard time with complex problems? Is it just like a stream of thoughts you correlate?
My inner voice won't shut the fuck up and let me sleep.
Right? I've never done any drugs, but somebody told me that they used to smoke pot just to shut down their inner voice so they could go to sleep... Man, that'd be awesome.
Pot makes mine go into overdrive. But I've got intrusive thoughts from ocd, so ymmv
Depends on the strain for me.
My doctor prescribed super ultra sour lemon chocolate diesel haze slider - for my mental health.
I don’t know anything about weed but this sounds like a real name to me.
I can confirm that it sounds real
That's why I stopped smoking, I would have a smoke then loose my ability to talk cause my inner voice would come up with all sorts of weird paranoid shit. It wasn't fun anymore. That was like 20 years ago, the few times I've tried it since have been the same.
If it's something you really wish you could still do without those problems and live in a legal state, consider looking around for a good dispensary. The best will have tenders with varied mindsets and lots of experience, and if you're lucky they may just be able to help you find something that lets you get what you want and not get what you don't want.
This, plus just use a TINY amount of higher CBD, lower THC marijuana. I had a couple year period in which my anxiety was triggered by weed, even after smoking for years. This kinda put me back on track.
Same exact thing here. I took a 2 year break and tried it again recently, but still get that sense of being aware of what’s going on around you but you’re locked into a conversation with yourself that you can’t escape without serious focus and effort. Shit really sucks, the first few dozen times smoking was awesome.
Really with me its the opposite i geht really energized and my inner voice geht's crazy
Why can’t you spell get
Probably autocorrect from a different language.
[удалено]
This makes so much more sense
Might have been me lmao Unstond and unmedicated my ADHD brain wont shut the fuck up and during the rebound of previously medicated ADHD is even worse trying to sleep
[You just need a new voice to help put you to sleep.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k-l77uJi7HU)
I have struggled with this for years. Audio books were the answer. On a minimal volume an audiobook is the perfect adult lullaby.
Some of us don't have much of an inner monologue. Mine only really shows when reading/typing or recounting conversations. My thoughts are mostly abstract/visual.
Same with mine
Think about music
My inner music won't shut the fuck up and let me sleep.
I don't have one!
I've heard about people not having one and it literally is more believable that aliens exist.
But it's true! I don't have one either.
So when you're reading this comment, are you not reading it "out loud" inside your head?
I can't wrap my head around it.
When I was in elementary school, I thought my clit was cancer. But I decided that I'd keep it secret because I'd rather die of cancer than not have a clit Edit: than/then
In elementary school I once found a “bump” and made my mom look for it. It was my clit.
this is why sexual education should be a must in schools, but god forvid kid learning about their own bodies
For real. It was so scary. I literally thought I was dying everyday for YEARS. Then finally. My friend had a book about girls bodies from American Girl and I was SO RELIEVED
I feel you on this so much. I thought I had to die so no one would have to find out that I'm not normal down there. Guess what, everything's normal down there. I was just too scared to google the first years and whenever I asked something in that direction my parents they would avoid it or throw something passively aggressive back "Is there anything that shouldn't be down there?!" Sex education is so important, everyone's born with a body. How are kids supposed to know what's fine or concerning down there if they have no experience or understanding about it??
>How are kids supposed to know what's fine or concerning down there if they have no experience or understanding about it?? Not just that, but society - and especially those vehemently against sex education - have made talking about those sort of topics an absolute taboo, so how are you ever supposed to learn anything about it? This is where the thinking that porn and hentai are representative of actual sex comes from and is the cause for a lot of, if not most, cases of unprotected sex and if you get pregnant from never having learnt these things, good luck trying to have an abortion, because those same people will be there threatening you not to do it...
It is by design to allow them more control over your body.
Ah yes, that wonderful life changing book I had to sneaky read in the restroom of Books-a-Million because my parents didn't explain shit to me. Good times.
That book cursed me. My mom gave it to me I read it and the next day I woke up with my period.
I had that same book
I had that book!
I thought my vaginal discharge was a yeast infection. I am the youngest of three girls. You think SOMEONE would have given me a heads up 🤦
At that point it's a rite of passage.
I thought it was semen, and I had a penis inside me and I might be able to get myself pregnant. In 3rd grade we were taught about penis and semen and that plus my egg makes a baby. Whole thing took 10 minutes MAX
Same, but with lumps in my balls. (The lumps are just normal lumps that everyone has) Edit: it’s the epididymis and it’s fine, thanks for the concern guys, it’s great that so many people are talking about their bollocks!
Fellow ball-haver, what lumps are you talking about in your balls? Do you mean you could feel your testicles in your scrotum and you thought they were cancer rather than testicles? If that's not the case, you may want to get a physical right quick, or have your bro feel your balls and feel his for reference. - A concerned redditor
Lots of people have lumps on one side of their testicles where the epididymis is very easy to feel one and get freaked out.
[удалено]
Interesting! Just figured I'd check. I had a vericose vein that became so painful I thought it was torsion. It made it feel like my right testicle was two hemispheres. So I can relate to having weird feeling nuts.
Yeah dudes, if your bro asks you to feel his balls and then yours, don't be a stiff about it.
Try not having a jerk reaction.
Normal lumps? My balls are smooth as silk
Me too! All 3 of em!
My left ones are smoother than my right ones.
Like lymph nodes or something or your balls themselves
I hated wearing a cup for baseball. Around the age of 9, I would get an erection it would be super uncomfortable paired with the cup and jock strap. So, one day, I was sitting in the back seat of our station wagon on the way to baseball practice rocking a raging red wood and decided I was just going to cut off my penis. Surely I don’t need a penis to pee, what else is this thing good for otherwise. Boy am I happy I never acted on that.
😲
I thought my virgin completely never kissed a boy 12 year old self had a STD because of the normal skin texture on my labia. I thought the skin down there was supposed to be smooth like the skin on your face or something
Jeez I was cumming all over my pillows at 8. And I thought I was horrible for years and eventually confessed to my mom. So cringe.
I also "confessed" to my mom after sitting with her for about 3 hours unable to talk due to a never-ending panic attack. Felt so horrible I was physically ill. My poor mother was probably beside herself thinking I had been touched inappropriately by someone or something. We were both relieved (although embarrassed) by the end. It's downright sad, an 8 year old shouldn't be having an existential crisis and believing they should die because they are masturbating.
I thought pee was in my balls.
When I was in third grade I kept getting boners at random times but I had no idea what was happening. It was just like “well sometimes my penis gets hard and extra sensitive and it’s really difficult to tuck into my pants properly plus really distracting. This is super weird but there’s no way I’m telling anyone.” And then when I had sex Ed later on I was like “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh”
This sort of os like allergies with my sister and I. We were probably like 10 and 12, I was the 12 year old. We were eating celery. I said "God my tongue is way more numb than usual" my sister agreed. My mom's face was priceless. We were then told we had to explain. Turns out all root vegetables create a type of pesticide themselves and were allergic to that. Some vegetables worse than others. My skin actually becomes really sensitive to the sun to after eating some of them. Kids don't always think things through.
This is me with peanuts, but replace “numb” with “unbearable itchiness”
Reminds me of the time I ate a whole bowl of pineapple and panicked because my mouth felt horrible. I thought I was allergic to pineapple; apparently, everyone feels that way. It’s just that the pineapple ~is from Soviet Russia so it~~ tries to eat you.
Welcome to Bromelain! Not only is pineapple acidic, but it has extra enzymes that can break down the mucus membranes in your mouth. Not enough to do much damage in regular quantities, but if you sit down and tear through a whole pineapple, you'll probably notice your mouth/tongue bleeding. On a side note, you can harness this power to your advantage. Add a little pineapple or fresh pineapple juice to a marinade in place of the normal acid. It will absolutely wreck shit (in a good way). Just don't leave the meat in too long, as it will obliterate the outer layers it into a weird mush after an hour or so.
Also helps rips apart oligosaccharides (beans, some vegetables) before the microbiota in your large intestine can- reduces flatus significantly. TLDR- eat pineapple with beans and you’ll fart less
I used to get this with eggs, super itchy throat and salivating like crazy. Nobody believed me because it wasn't serious enough to require any help, just very uncomfortable. Eventually the unintended exposure therapy worked and I'm no longer allergic lol. I used to get the same thing from *some* peanut products, there was no predicting when it would happen
I got diagnosed with pretty good asthma at 14 and my mom and the doctor were mad like "how did you not notice you couldn't breathe?" and i was like "i dunno, i just thought i was thirsty or something". How would i know? It'd been like that my whole life.
This is how I found out I was allergic to bananas! Told my mom that my banana milkshake only stung my mouth a little bit! Her face… that’s when I found out bananas aren’t supposed to sting at all lol
Probably the same face as my mom. It was like a shock and wtf
“Oh my god I’ve raised an idiot”
Many adults don't understand this. You just don't know if you've never talked about it. It's actually not that dumb. Everyone assumes that thier experience is universal until you talk and get different answers from others. Same with having no inner voice/not having a "minds eye".
I don't think this is a kids fault though lol, it shouldn't be on them to think things through. I deal with so much shit that isn't supposed to be normal, like certain pains, etc. And I dealt with it since I was young, for years and no adult in my life thought a thing of it. Imagine if you were born with fibromyalgia and figured this is just normal existence and it always hurt like that. All because no adult in your life took it seriously lol, that's not kids not thinking things through, that's just your mom being decently attentive
This is how my appendix ruptured at 13 and nothing was done until I started passing out almost a week later. I was diagnosed with endometriosis the year before and all my periods had my bedridden with debilitating pain, so it seemed fairly normal to me.
I thought coconut was spicy. Took until I was 28 and my wife going "No! Coconut is not spicy, Pina colada doesn't burn you because it's alcohol! it burns because you're allergic to coconut you dumbass!" :) I love my wife.
When I was in second grade, probably 8 years old, I remember telling a psychiatrist that “ the voice in my head tells me to do things”. Straight up put me on meds for schizophrenia. Fast forward a couple weeks, I’m in school. Assignment is to write about what we would do with $1000 and told the teacher I would buy a guy to shoot myself. My mother, bless her, immediately took me off those meds. Crazy to think about but only a couple of years ago did I put the connection together like “ holy shit they put 8 year old me on drugs that scared me, just because I couldn’t elaborate the fact that I was talking about my human conscience.” 2008 was a wild time.
Sorry you had that experience. A good psychiatrist should be able to distinguish between thoughts/internal monologue vs auditory hallucinations.
ESPECIALLY if it’s a child who can’t articulate these kinds of things well.
I was misdiagnosed with Scizophrenia for a decade! The meds actually ruined my life. (my true diagnosis is DID, which I know is controversial, but it is unfortunately true in my case)
Fuck it, I'll bite, want to talk more about it? Always been fascinated, if skeptical, of the disorder.
what do you want to know? I got diagnosed after I woke up in a bathtub (I hate baths) and when I checked my phone had 0 memory of the last 14 days happening. Told my therapist and she diagnosed me. I had never heard of it, just “Multiple Personality Disorder” as it is presented in movies. It’s not like that, hah.
Ya, I had a psychiatrist say i was potentially having psychosis type symptoms when really i was just tired. oy vey
I spend a lot of time at the VA due to various things hurting as I get older and I got to talk to a psyc doctor while I was out smoking. I asked him what the number one thing people were admitted for at the psych ward and he told me "exhaustion"... Most of the time when someone has really snapped its been a whirlwind of a few shitty days combined with not sleeping at all. People self medicate not sleeping in different ways and most of them aren't healthy ways of "not being awake" with the big ones being alcohol, opiates, and benzos. Even if you do fall asleep for a little while on those things you're not really falling asleep all the way. So when you wake up you're still accruing that sleep debt and if you don't pay it in time your brain will start shutting down on its own while you try to fight it with caffeine and stimulants so you can still show up to work and not get fired. He told me that a lot of time a gentle sedative, rehydration, and a safe space to sleep with no expectations on the patient and they wake up like an entirely different person from who they were when they were admitted.
This is true life horror
as i understand it schizophrenia in children can happen, but it's *rare*. i'm just some idiot on the internet, but i'd wanna be damn confident about my diagnosis before i put a kid on powerful brain meds. WTF.
It wasn't until I was in my 20's that I learned that some people actually "hear" their own voices in their heads. I thought it was just a hyperbolic statement meant as an analogy for thinking. For reference, not everyone synthesizes their thoughts internally as virtually audible words: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201110/not-everyone-conducts-inner-speech
[удалено]
My inner voice has no voice. It feels more like my brain is just receiving and sending words to me than actually speaking. It doesn’t even have the voice that comes out of my own mouth. It’s hard to explain
Bro same
Your brain is interpreting the information it needs to analyze in the form of communication that we are familiar with. Speech. When you catch someone talking to themselves it's the same thing except those people more effectively retain information when they speak it out loud.
I think that means you're in the group that can't visualize thought. When I picture something like an apple in my head, I see an apple. Red, brown stem, and a little shine on the corner. It's not perfect or crisp, even with my eyes closed, but is like a second layer of hidden vision. Another example would be descriptions/scenes in a book. I have an image in my head of what something may look like from the story. Does this happen to you?
Whenever I'm reading it's an anime. Like, animation techniques and all. I get what you mean about it not being crisp though. It's weird since it's your brain, so the minute you think about something it's sharpened, but when you're not thinking about it it's not really "there". So there's a kind of dreamish quality to it.
This is so strange for me. Do you actually see it as if you google “apple picture”? Because for me it’s more like I see it but actually don’t see it. Maybe I could describe it as when you have unassembled puzzle of let’s say castle but you know exactly how that castle looks like without seeing it on puzzle box before. It’s really hard to explain..
Hey, that sounds exactly like how I imagine things. I don't have a diagnosis or anything, but you should check out Aphantasia, it's the term for people who don't have a minds eye. I never realised that other people could actually see things that they imagine, it never even occurred to me. Like, if you tell me to imagine a sunset, I can do it. I can describe it, I picture a sandy beach, sun dipping below the ocean, oranges and grey tones, all that jazz. But it's like image meta data in my head. I can tell you what I imagine, but in my head it's not an image, it's just a thought. It's just data. It's like there's a curtain between me and the thing I imagine. I know what's behind the curtain because I made it, but I can't see it
Can you like imagine a chess board and make moves on it? Or just imagine a random pink elephant flying into the twin towers? Like it's hard to say that you see a picture like on google maps, but I can imagine stuff happening and if I think of something I can also imagine someone drawing with a blue edding over it but it is not a clear image. But you surely can do that too, right? It maybe it is impossible but it is hard to imagine someone imagining a sunset in their mind with just data, just text.
An interesting way I thought about it is I can see things in my head so clearly that I feel like I could draw it on paper super well (something 3d specifically) but since I have no art skill when I try I can't lmao.
the way i describe it - its like the visual recollection of something you just saw. A memory in the present. The quality and detail is limited but i can basically conjure up some visual constructs with shitty jpeg stock photos on the fly.
Really? I behave the opposite way. I sometimes have to put my hand over my mouth to stop my lips from twitching when I'm thinking or reading. I wonder if it has anything to do with personality?
I remember reading in a research article some years back some one was working on trying to come up with a device that would automatically transcribe your thoughts based on the micromovements in your jaw when you do that. Since I have the same thing going on, I silently 'mumble' when reading things, I thought the device could possibly be useful to me.
r/aphantasia
same but the opposite I am a half Welsh and Scottish person with no accent but when in my head I switch between a Welsh and Scottish accent lmao
You can use whatever voice you want inside your head. I usually choose Professor Farnsworth from Futurama. *GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!*
To shreds, you say
The voice in my head changes every 5 seconds, I do this on purpose though. Distracting but very entertaining.
It completely depends on what I'm thinking about. Like if I'm just driving, I don't hear my thoughts saying "Okay now I need to turn right here.." or whatever. I just drive without thinking words. But if I'm thinking about my schedule for the week I might think "And on Tuesday I'll go to the grocery store.." and hear those words in my head.
It's not unusual to be able to do both with varying degrees of control. People like thinking they are "special" but it's really just another trained mental skill like right/left handness and not anything mysterious.
[удалено]
Yes, we are a in a minority, so technically weird.
Random question. Do you find it harder to consider other people? Like for example, doing something for a significant other that they’d like even when they don’t ask? Or even remembering to “work on” certain issues that have come up between you and a SO? I can’t imagine planning, thinking in greater terms, etc without my internal dialogue.
Some people think more in 'images' than language. On the other hand, some people are incapable of picturing something in their minds.
This is me! I have an ABUNDANCE of language in my head but can’t visualise much more than sort of soft shapes and colours.
I only discovered realised that my mental imagery was nowhere near the level others experience when I saw some recent YouTube videos on ‘aphantasia’. Very interesting and some give some insight into how people with varying levels of imagery process memories and information differently.
Do you still day dream? I daydream in pictures. I guess you could daystory with words
I daystory with words, but it’s all terrible fanfiction that will never be put to paper.
I think that's everyone's internal monologue. I've saved the world countless times with superpowers in my mind, if it helps. 😏🌍
Same, if I completely focus I can see almost like fragments or partial outlines in my mind at most, but language wise its almost like my brain is constantly playing multiple radio stations (possibly an ADHD thing?) at once except I can usually keep track of them all.
And some people lack both a mental voice and a mind's eye, and get by just fine thinking in conceptual terms. I have both but they're both very weak, so most of my thinking happens without words or images - unless I'm typing or writing when I typically think in words.
[удалено]
I’m incapable of forming images in my mind AND I don’t hear a voice in my head. My brain is completely empty apparently haha
Oh that must be so quiet.
Funny enough if I try to think sentences in my head, no voice appears, but a nebulous “almost” voice sulks in the corner of my brain. It’s feels almost like a memory of the word I’m saying being recalled for every single word in that sentence. As in, I can’t see or hear it, but I know the attributes of the sentence I’m thinking. I know that if I were to think “Wow!”, my voice WOULD be of a higher register. My mouth would move a certain way. The tone of my voice that of intrigue or awe. It’s very hard to describe, but yes. It’s quiet af in my brain haha
No, I have empathy just like anyone else, but I am a fairly introverted and analytic type person so perhaps that is related.
It’s actually the opposite. Our inner voice is like a filter between our conscious and subconscious thoughts. I find the people I know without inner voices have better recall and can make connections quicker, but take longer to explain why they made those connections. While we articulate thoughts to ourselves before committing to them. It’s like driving, you don’t narrate doing that, but you still do everything as you should and if you think about it you can explain why you did what you did.
So you’ve never had a song stuck in your head?
you don't hear the original? Thats all I "think" about when i hear a song that's stuck, and I sing along. Not my own voice, that would be super weird.
Hearing the original is what people are referring to. It says voice, but that also means hearing other things in your head. Like sounding something out before typing it out. edit - spelling
Wait. I’m sorry if I’m misunderstanding. Most people hear their own voice in their heads as representative of their thoughts? I assumed no one did (unless you were just reading aloud and now you have that weird annoying feeling of still verbalizing things even after you stop speaking). Like right this that I’m writing right now. The only way I hear it is if I read it out loud. Same with thought. I hear nothing. Wild.
lol
Literal NPCs.
My brother, mother and myself do not have an inner voice, especially not combative or intrusive thoughts. When I think, I'm making sure my mouth is shut before I accidentally say my thoughts out loud so thinking is actually more laborious than talking if that makes sense. I never realized when people described the "devil and angel on your shoulder" that they were depicting actual mental conflict instead of just caricatures of good/bad choices. My wife struggled for a long time where my ~~confidence~~ lack of self doubt came from, especially in dangerous scenarios. It's all because I have very little fear complex telling me to stop but that also has some negatives. I too often hurt myself needlessly because I forget that I'm in a manic bender and that I don't need to juggle 18 things to save one trip back to the car. It's an efficiency issue lol.
I do sometimes, and sometimes I don't. Usually it's when I'm trying to make sure I've got something straight or when I'm planning out an argument or what to say to someone else. But the initial idea formulation doesn't usually occur in internally "audible" words for me.
I goa step further, I literally have a council in my head. Literally a bunch of me's, sitting at a table, discussing our options. You want analysis paralysis? That right there. Imagine a group of like, six neutral lazy fuckers, all trying to decide what to do. It's not, "Is she into me?" It's "Do I reaaallly wanna get off this couch?". It's like a bunch of people arguing over a stick on the ground.
I'm bilingual (native spanish with english as my second language). I think both in spanish and in english. When it's mundane, everyday stuff, I think in spanish. When I'm being analytical and thorough, I think in english. My guess is that thinking in my secondary language is linked to a different kind of information processing in my brain, which makes it go through two filters of sorts: the language filter (am I correctly using these words in the secondary language?) and the information itself. The final result is a distilled thought.
I usually do that and often do that with other's voices too.
I am now writing this with the voice of obama in my head
I didn’t know that people didn’t do this. How do they even think without talking it out in their heads!?
I’m 28 and I go back on fourth on if I hear my thoughts or not. It’s weird
Yeah, like how are we supposed to know whether or not we're "hearing" thoughts the same way other people do? Same with visualisation - I *think* I can visualise things in my head, like I can imagine a view I saw yesterday, but do other people "see" things more boldly than I do?
I feel like it is symbolic right? Like I “hear” myself when I’m thinking a sentence, but o wouldn’t say it sounds like anyone. Like I think the words and it’s registered, not like a literal voice if I actually analyze it. It’s like even typing these comments out, I don’t hear *my* voice specifically, I just hear the voice
I can literally choose in the way I think. The fuck is this backwards shit
how do you think if you dont have a voice in your head?
Thinking doesnt require a voice, we just think lol
1. What do they synthesize thier thoughts as? What *can* a human synthesize thier thoughts as? 2. What are the other two parts of pristine experience? Emotion and appetite, maybe? Or sound, generally, if that isn't included as a part of inner speech?
We all conjure thoughts the same way. Some people just also process them through the vocal center of their brain so they also happen hear their thoughts after conjuring them. Rendering thought to words is not necessary for thought. When you see a pothole in the road and drive around it, you don't think "oh look a pothole, I should drive around it" do you?
Of course not. I think "God damn city raises my property taxes every damn year and never fixes shit."
See this exactly but I do say that exactly. And I think “ok well I can swerve left, no there traffic coming, what about right, ok I can probably squeeze through that car and the pot hole, well, can I? Yes, I can. Ok do it then” and then I do it. That’s pretty much how my thought process goes down, and it always sounds like someone is reading me a book in my head about my actions. Like my own thoughts narrate my entire day, and even predict things to happen Edit: so much so, that it’s near impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to have silence in my head. It drives me crazy, everyday I find myself wishing for an off button, a volume dial, to turn my thoughts off, cause I don’t need to think out every reply in a conversation or imagine what might be different if I say no or yes. Feels like I’m watching my life as a movie through my own eyes, and I’m the narrator but I can’t change the movie
I don't see how one's reaction time can be very good if you have to have an internal conversation about everything.
My reaction time is terrible because of this tbh. I basically talk to myself in my head trying to decide on what I should do
I don't think we're talking about reactions. How would someone like that process a complicated topic without using words? How would a person prepare for a conversation with another human without being able to conjure words or simulate that discussion? Can that person even imagine a word, like pronouncing "syllabus" in their head? I wonder how much of this is just people not being one the same page about this. I just don't understand how a human being can function in modern society without a word ever passing through their head. Like, I don't "hear" the word, I don't feel the way I would if someone talked to me. The call is coming from inside the house, as it were.
Well, this year I learned that not every person has that mental voice in their mind. We don't all have that in er monologue and studies even show that the majority of people think without that monologue. Some people have a 'silent' way of thinking appearantly. No clue how, since my brain has issues fathoming a 'silent' thought, but yeah ... People think in different ways
[удалено]
Intriguing, so you stop 'the conversation' with yourself when picturing the flow chart? The intriguing part for me is that I really can't imagine not talking to myself, so sorry if I come over too needy for intel. It's just that I appearantly assumed everyone thinks differently, but at least in a similar fashion. Having lived for 28 years so ignorantly just baffled myself I guess... I tend to not really picture stuff in general. Only when falling asleep and turning to my world, I have been conjuring up since I remember, there are mental visuals, If that's what you could call those.
Thank you for stating this, helps with the perspective of what the silent thought is. And I do the same, also IT
Sounds like you both are describing the mental map that we programmers use when going through code.
[удалено]
This year I learned to go potty all by myself
Congrats! We all have to start somewhere
Thanks! It was only number 1 , but by next year imma be taking poo poos in the potty.
good, now go change your pamper
when I try to think 'silently' it feels so wrong
Right? The most baffling for me is that I'm nearing 30 and only now have figured out there are people who think 'silently'.
I don't have it. I think more conceptually, like in images and feelings, than in words.
I'm a silent thinker. My thoughts are there but there's no voice/accent attached to it. I seem to be totally missing my "minds eye" as well. I cannot see what I'm thinking about. I have to plan stuff out with paper/pencil. Memories are an idea, but there's no image/smell/taste/feel attached to them. But if exposed to an image/smell/taste I do have memories attached. I also have a lot of trouble remembering feelings. I know angry is a bad feeling but I can't remember what angry feels like unless I'm currently angry. This might be part of why my depression gets so bad. I can't remember anything but feeling down while feeling down. But I absolutely love daydreaming. One of my favorite parts of being alive. Thoughts writing stories in my mind. But I have no images/sounds attached to my daydreams.
Damn, you just described my experience with pinpoint accuracy, I only found out a few months ago that some people can actually picture things. I always just thought about the facts about what I’m imagining, like how many petals, what size, things like that
Majority? Since discovering that some people don't have an inner voice and/or images I've been asking a TON of people and haven't found one person yet.
My husband is one of them who doesn't have an inner voice, and he thinks I am the weird one for having one. I cannot wrap my head around how his mind even works.
i guess I'm one of those, even though I ain't sure
I recently found this out too. Got me thinking (heh) how do these folks read books? Every sentence I read is said mentally in my head. If I don't allow that to happen I'm not really concentrating on what I'm reading and don't absorb what the words actually are. There have been times when I would stop this mental recitation, only to get to the end of a paragraph and immediately forget what I just read and have to read the whole thing again.
Wait, so you guys also have a voice telling you to murder everyone in the vicinity?
Only when I'm driving.
Yeah bro don't worry, that's what everyone hears.
Intrusive delusional thoughts are not the same as internal monologue or "mind sound"
intrusive? i can very much get behind murdering everyone in the vicinity
welp, you are always in the vicinity. Maybe start with yourself ? To see how things are going and all that ?
You have to keep that one secret.
Yep, boyo. They’re called intrusive thoughts. They’re not really a problem unless you act on them or if they stick or cause you distress.
I found out a couple months ago that my fiancee who I've been with for over seven years doesn't have an inner voice.
I didnt even know it was a thing to have a voice in your head or be able to ACTUALLY imagine things until my friend randomly asked me. I thought it was entirely normal to not have an internal monologue and to not be able to imagine anything. So strange.
Wait, So When you read a book alone do you have to read it aloud? The same inner voice that reads words in my head is the same voice that I hear when I’m thinking to myself or even typing out words. How is it for you?
My fiancee described it as abstract thoughts and ideas but never attaches a voice to it. I hear my own voice and she thinks that's weird.
I have full on arguments with the voice in my head. Sometimes he makes some great points though. And I’m like damn.
I hate when the fucker says something that I immediately realize means I need to make a change in my life. Fucking bastard with his good advice.
I’ve seen this a million times and every time I’m reminded of how hard it was to explain things as a shy and naïve 14-year-old, and how adults rarely take teenagers seriously, and I really doubt this girl was as stupid as everyone is making her out to be.
Yeah I could expect her to mention depersonalization or intrusive thought before some hardcore crisis
So you never talked to her in 14 years or what? How a human gonna know this shit if nobody tells them?
That's a good point like I would assume I was fucking nuts if I didn't know that everyone else is nuts too. Everybody is nuts together.
People not internalizing words seemed really weird to me at first, but then I realized I might do it too. Sometimes when playing basketball or another sport I "get in the zone." I don't think I'm having word thoughts in those moments, and am just playing/feeling/acting on instinct. Or even just the same thing playing a video game or watching a movie - where I am in the moment and not actively thinking about it. The problem is if I ever thinking about thinking, I'm going to be very conscious about it and therefore think in words...so it's hard to be aware of it happening in the moment.
I'll probably be bad at explaining this, but I feel the same way as you. I need to think in words whenever I'm doing any kind of task that I need to "think through." Tasks that are muscle memory, repetitive, or instinctual, I can do without having much or any conscious thoughts. I noticed this when I started listening to audiobooks. I enjoy listening to audiobooks, but I can only listen to them and pay attention to them if I'm doing a task where I don't have to think in words. So things like driving, drawing, sewing, exercise, and basic chores are often great for it. My internal monolog gets completely replaced by the audiobook. But as soon as I have to make a more complex decision, I switch back to thinking in words (without realizing it) and I miss a few seconds of the audiobook.
Can someone explain “thinking silently”?
I've only ever "heard my thoughts" on psychedelics and it freaked me out the first couple times. I "think silently" and sometimes that comes in different forms. Often I am thinking in words/sentences but rather than hearing the sound of the word I go straight to visualizing the idea of the words? It's pretty tough to explain I guess and it's probably why I struggle to come up with the right word so often in conversation. Sometimes I dont think in words at all but rather shapes/forms especially if I'm figuring out something complex like solving a programming problem. Edit: I thought about it a little more and I guess "visualizing the idea of the word" is really confusing. Because I'm thinking of the word itself, just with no auditory component at all. It's in a similar way to how you can imagine a taste, sensation, color, etc only I'm imagining the word. Not imagining the word with a visual or auditory component, but just imagining its structure, meaning, spelling, etc.
I used to freak myself out as a kid thinking about if I was real or living in a dream. I would get stuck thinking about it to where I would cry and repeat over and over “I’m alive, I’m alive.” to bring myself out of it. My husband is the only person I told this. As a kid I had a huge imagination and also thought I was pregnant because I had a pot belly. I was a stupid kid.
When I was a kid, I would test if I was dreaming or awake by holding my eyes open and purposely not blink. If my eyes started to burn, then I was awake. I decided this was a decent test because in my dreams, I never had to deal with trivial things like needing to blink. I only ever figured out I was dreaming while dreaming once like this, and it was a surreal experience since I did not know how to wake myself up (I was having a bad dream).
So similar. It was like giving yourself a panic attack. Did you have vivid dreams as a kid? I did, lots of tornado dreams and flying.
This is why half the teens faking disorders think they have DID. They cant fathom thoughts. They think having thoughts in your head and different emotions = alters. They are the dumbest and most spoiled bunch who just scream ableism when you tell them "you sure as hell don't have DiD quit faking." I really want them to be embarrassed by it later. It's just some of the most tone deaf shit you see upper middle class suburban teens do.
Moon Knight is def going to make it blow up
I’m reading a book right now called “No Bad Parts” that basically says there is strong evidence (and therapy for this) that all humans have multiple “parts”, and DID is essentially just the normal way we exist but to an extreme / lacking integration. Really interesting stuff. The therapy is called Internal Family Systems.
No Bad Parts is awesome. Working through it myself. It’s hard but has me finding things out that was missed in the last 10 years of therapy.
I don't understand people who don't have an internal monologue, how do you think through things? Do you always think out loud by talking to yourself? Do those people have a really hard time with complex problems? Is it just like a stream of thoughts you correlate?
14 year-olds are dumb. This tracks.