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

• anfelor 5y 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?
  • agent327 5y 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.
  • distances 5y ago
    I agree with the other commenter, this is not an inner voice in the sense of the article.
• haxiomic 5y 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?
  • haxiomic 5y 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/ 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
    • jklinger410 5y ago
      That's interesting about sign language. I wonder if it helps with plasticity.
  • jklinger410 5y 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_w 5y 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.
    • haxiomic 5y ago
      Totally agree on that abstract bit going faster, sometimes it feels I'm verbalising thoughts for completeness!
• hanoz 5y 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.
  • psyc 5y 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.
    • pseudalopex 5y 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.
      • Lochleg 5y ago
        I never looked into it, but some scientists supposedly lent credence to the existence of lucid dreaming. That's a similar concept where you assume that, with training, some people have tapped into a wellspring of vivid imagination. Or, they just have more natural DMT in their system and start hallucinating in their mind's eye. I can only get a taste of that experience when deeply engaged in reading books. I am hoping the prototypes for deep-dive VR will soon be better than dreaming (for some people that struggle with recollection and other mental exercises) so that we can build what were once only mental palaces and OOBEs.
        • HKH2 5y ago
          If you wake yourself up a bit earlier than usual and then fall asleep again, you'll have a much higher chance of dreaming with the feeling of being in control.
• floatingatoll 5y 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 5y 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.
    • Aethylia 5y 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.
      • weaksauce 5y ago
        Is comprehension changed?
        • Aethylia 5y ago
          I don't know of any particular studies on this, but in my own experience comprehension is changed by how quickly I read, not whether the voice is used. Learning this just raises the speed limit for when you want to read easily comprehensible texts such as news or comments.
      • state_less 5y ago
        Thanks for the pro tip!
      • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        I just reread your post with my inner voice repeating “foo” over and over. Is that the kind of thing I should practice? I don’t understand.
• renton_wal 5y 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 5y 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.
• josephg 5y 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.
  • patrickdavey 5y 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.
    • stavros 5y 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).
  • BrianOnHN 5y 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?
  • 5y ago
• bluishgreen 5y ago
  Relevant: There are people who don't have mental imagery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa84hA3OsHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa84hA3OsHU
  • bengale 5y ago
    I appear to have both of these things. I wonder if that’s quite common.
  • akacia 5y ago
    I have mental imagery but it loses clarity with age, so I use less and less.
• titusjohnson 5y 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?
  • floatingatoll 5y 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.
    • titusjohnson 5y 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.
• StreakyCobra 5y 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 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.
  • helaoban 5y 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.
    • thechao 5y 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.
    • vasco 5y 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 5y 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.
• bengale 5y 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?
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    Yes, yes it is. Is your train of thought in the same order as the spoken/written words that it converts to?
    • bengale 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
  • haxiomic 5y 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
• checkyoursudo 5y 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.
  • boc 5y 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.
    • JaimeThompson 5y ago
      It is called aphantasia and I have it too. I am totally unable to picture anything in my head despite trying for years.
      • agent327 5y ago
        How about abstract concepts? If I ask you to imagine something mathematical, like a circle in a square, do you 'see' anything?
• advael 5y 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 5y 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?
  • thepra 5y ago
    Yep, I am a mixed bag as you.
  • id 5y 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.
• helaoban 5y 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?
  • GPerson 5y 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.
    • helaoban 5y 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 5y 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.
  • Jensson 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
• TheAceOfHearts 5y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
• GPerson 5y 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.
• micromacrofoot 5y 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.
  • towb 5y 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)_/¯
    • id 5y 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?)
      • micromacrofoot 5y ago
        it’s kind of like a memory of what you think your voice sounds like, definitely more like a monologue
      • towb 5y ago
        It's not through the ears so it's different, it's not like talking with the vibrations and bass from the throat. It's a milder voice for me but it's still more like I'm hearing my voice than anything else I think.
    • micromacrofoot 5y ago
• gumby 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
  • Sosh101 5y ago
    Are you suggesting that people without an inner voice are less conscious?
    • TheFreim 5y 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?
• shele 5y 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
  • throw0101a 5y 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.
    • shele 5y ago
      Yes, but that’s a different discussion.
• antman 5y 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
  • thepra 5y 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.
  • stavros 5y 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 5y ago
    People who can't think in abstractions have no other way.
• laserbeam 5y 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 5y ago
  People without inner voice are considered NPC by some. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • HKH2 5y ago
    You can make decisions without an inner voice.
• thepra 5y 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?
  • stavros 5y 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.
    • thepra 5y ago
      I agree, I don't use inner voice all the time
  • alok-g 5y 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 5y ago
  imagine how torturous telepathy would be if you couldnt turn it off
• 0xdeadb00f 5y 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_ 5y 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.
    • 0xdeadb00f 5y 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 :)
  • illwrks 5y 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.
    • 0xdeadb00f 5y 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.
• thom 5y 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.
  • psyc 5y 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.
  • gala8y 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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_guy 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451
• new_guy 5y 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 https://book4you.org/book/1124752/f435ef
• akacia 5y 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.
• johnchristopher 5y 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 5y 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.
    • johnchristopher 5y 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_ 5y 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.
• corobo 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago
  I’m bilingual and can think in either language, and my inner voices for each sound different and have mildly different opinions
• superposeur 5y 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 5y 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/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/
• drcongo 5y 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.
  • gala8y 5y 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.
    • drcongo 5y 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.
      • gala8y 5y ago
        It is really interesting for me - this 'it's nonsense most of the time' part. (As I mentioned in another comment, I work doing Voice Dialogue, which is basically meeting those voices in you and talking with them.) I shouldn't write it here, but just try talking to them. Ask 'who are you?' to one of them and wait for the answer. Of course one could say that this is indiscriminate chatter due to activity of parts of your brain, but I would still insist that if you make an effort you will see patterns in this noise and will be able to make sense of it and change it (where sense is not directly in the content, but rather in a broader view of it all). As I work with myself and other people, I have never experienced anything like prolonged presence of a voice taking qualities of "someone I know in real life" - I would be curious to find whys and hows here. But the very simple framework of recognizing kinds of energies inside us (agressive vs. delicate, goal oriented vs. being oriented, protecting/conservative (even protective of accessing other energies inside) vs. seeking/adventerous and so on) and states they are in (is energy on/off, over the limit, so on)... has showed me time and again that trying to get in touch with them by engaging in a conversation with them brings remarkable results. All the best.