TIL that some people do not have an inner voice and think in different nonverbal ways.

I have ADHD, it's like having talk radio permanently on in my head. Often times I'll have an internal monologue playing on top of internal background music.

My inner monologue can easily turn into me talking to myself.

Me too. People like you are fascinating to me. When I first found out that everyone thinks differently I went around interrogating everyone I knew about how they think.

I don't have an interior monologue unless Im typing, but I sometimes use my internal "sound system" to play music.

I too have an internal monologue. I was high on mushrooms and I thought to myself "What would it be like not have an inner monologue?" Then I had an existential crisis on top of an already emotional workout trip.

What happens to your monologue when you're not thinking about it though?

When your senses provide information about tastes or sounds, isn't that a kind of thinking without the monologue?

It's fascinating to me, too.

I have seen everything by now: People who think that only sociopaths have an inner monologue. People who think an inner monologue would be useful, but can't quite lean in on the concept. People who are confused that some people *don't* have an inner monologue. People getting angry at me for even "questioning" the inner monologue, as if it was holy.

Same, sometimes I even move my mouth when I talk to myself if I am too engaged in my internal dialogue. Freaks my wife out sometimes.

Can you 'replay' music in your head?

Your anecdote seems to support that it's a learned behavior/skill, which tracks for me. I have a very active internal dialogue that's difficult to turn off. I say dialogue instead of monologue because I often make up "other voices" that bounce ideas off each other, and this generally happens without my conscious effort. I think I developed this because as I was growing up I was encouraged to pray regularly, and I was very fanatically religious as a kid so I did so as often as I could. I prayed silently so often in fact that my thoughts were basically a constant one-sided monologue directed to god. Whenever I would daydream or let my imagination wander I would imagine god responding, and eventually the constant monologue became a dialogue. I would work out problems or make decisions by having conversations with an imaginary god. When I stopped believing in god the second voice never went away, I just started recognizing it as my own.

TIL. I'm one of the 5-10% as well!! I have not noticed a deficit in verbal memory... I'm more interested reading the comments and learning today that people have inner voices?!?

You get to think in ways that other people can't. You actually have a super power. Don't sleep on that! You rock

I'm with you. Your movie reference really helped solidify it. I assumed I was one of the lonely minds, but this made it clear.

Some things that seem associated with this are my constant cravings for social interaction and intellectual conversation. I can't give it to myself. I have never understood how people can just do nothing. I never had an invisible friend as a kid. There are many things people say and do that could be explained by having personal voices. There are many struggles with communicating to others that have already had a conversation with themselves before I can share a full thought.

"It helps, but I can still tell that I have a deficit compared to most people when it comes to those things."

I was totally gonna ask you about this until I got to the end! It seems like thinking without any kind of internal monologue would be incredibly abstract which might be good for some things but it would probably suck ass for trying to remember or understand extremely detailed instructions and things like that! I'm so curious what it's like to think the way you do and I wish I could flip a switch for a little bit to experience it because it's kind of hard to really imagine what I would be like.

It’s a two-edged sword. Sometimes it can be really mean to you :(

Oh I assure you, you would. Try going to sleep with that mf'r just yapping.

You know what, I can't roll the R and neither can my inner voice and I hate it for that. I have a speech impairment in my freaking inner voice.

*Every* time?

No.

Easy example; picture an item in your head. Now flip it.

No language necessary or really even applicable.

But to learn that some people *never* have an inner dialogue...? That sounds so weird.

Apparently. I first learned about this last year when a co-worker told me to listen to my inner voice. I said, " oh yeah, like Sybil or Jiminy cricket?" I thought she was kidding. Then I thought she was crazy. Then 2/3 of my office said they hear it too. People who hear don't believe that other people don't, and vice versa. People are always trying to trick me into saying I hear something by asking me how I know the sound of my husband's voice or recognize a song, or get a song stuck in my head. When I have a song stuck in my head it's just the urge to sing it and there's no music. I can recognize actors by their voice sometimes, but I cannot do impressions or accents at all!

I can't look at text without my inner voice reading it to me

I can come up with answers or solutions to problem without it, but it's there for a lot of stuff.

Sometimes yes, like right now. I can sense myself saying the words I want to type in my head. Its really like a voice talking to you but I can hear what the sentence will sound like if I read it out loud.

Can take awhile, it doesn’t always seem to like being quiet

Reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8

Oh, that's what meditation is supposed to be? Now I get why I never got it.

So, if you study a map of a building, noticing that it has a kitchen at a certain place, then in go inside the building (without the map), and someone says "go to the kitchen," how do you know where the kitchen is? How do you imagine the paths, rooms, hallways to follow?

If I told you "a pink and brown dog," you can't "see" that dog in your mind at all?

For the longest time I assumed it was just a literary device, not an actual thing anyone really does.

Only 1-3% of people lack the ability to visualize images in their head.

Somewhat related, I recently realized I can't really remember the taste of food at all. I can remember the texture of the food, and whether I liked it or not, but not how it actually tastes. For example, I know I like chocolate but I have no desire to eat it most of the time because I can't remember anything about the taste except for the texture. But once I start eating chocolate and have the taste lingering in my mouth, I find myself craving more of it until the taste fades and I forget what it tasted like again.

I have some very loud voices in my head. One is intentional, like when I read or write things out I hear my own voice in my head. At least one of them just talks shit to me all the time. It's not like schizophrenia "I hear voices", it's just a thought that I'm not actively having. When my depression gets bad it's gets really loud so I drown it out with music and books.

I can't see pictures in my head.

On another note, I'm pretty sure religious nutjobs really hear their own inner monologue and think it's a god talking to them. That's why their god always agrees with them.

The mind of an artist perhaps? I can see vivid film grade depictions of whatever I want in any style I can imagine.

Its quite frustrating when I know my hands could never produce what I see in my mind.

It's like I just "know" the text. It's just in there with no intermediary.

Direct-to-video

I was really surprised when I found out that people imagined voices when reading. Wouldn't they be sped up voices? People read faster than speech. It's so confusing...

How fo they read silently to themselves? 🤔

The same way as listening to someone speak. There's a thread of consciousness that takes in visual data and is translating the written word into a string of syntactical concepts that is then processed analytically.

How do you read silently to yourself? Seems like it would be harder and more noisy if you have to hear the whole thing.

That’s awesome. Mine just criticizes me over and over and over and over and over again. I’m working on our relationship.

I'm almost the opposite. I can recall a song I know and "listen" to it in my head. However my dreams tend to be like comics. A static image with accompanying sounds or, on a couple of occasions, my dream was like listening to an audio book... This was before audio books were a thing.

I get songs stuck in my head almost every day! Drives me crazy and keeps me awake. There's no music, just the urge to say/sing the words

Eh, it isn't all the time for most people, and it isn't hard to shut down for most people either.

The key is that it isn't a separate entity, it's just your own mind using words to ideate. Like, you can see the sky and just enjoy the blue, or you can think about the blue in words, if you have that inner voice. People without that voice still have a way of processing and thinking, it just isn't in words, it's more abstract.

The few people I've met that don't think in words *do* seem to have difficulty in expressing the experience to others though.

It's not "some voice" talking "to you", it really just feels like your thoughts are words, if they're "word adjacent thoughts".
Like, thinking about how to phrase that first part, it felt like I was reciting the words I was thinking of typing, not like someone else was saying them to me.

Ikr, it's wild. I don't think I could cope with something like that.

Mine never turns off the fucking radio

I don't think issues is a great word for something that doesn't have an obvious negative outcome.

I have an inner monologue that is something like an auditory version of my thoughts. Reminds me of a movie narrator explaining what people arre thinking, but not a verbal exchange like the article describes. It is absolutely zero help in remembering things because it switches to my current thoughts, and doesn't just run in the background. It doesn't seem to be a negative at all, and it is hearing hearing what I'm thinking but not rrally hearing because it doesn't sound like anyone in particular.

On the visual side, I can't picture something I haven't seen before and only have brief flashes of what I have seen before. Can't picture anything in my mind except the vaguest of stereotypical ideas, like a tropical island is a tiny island with a palm tree or a lagoon. Maybe the rough outline of a mountain peak. Can't draw anything like that from imagination, but can do a pretty solid sketch of something that I have a visual reference for. Also not really an issue, since most things don't require picturing them without seeing them, but it did derail my interest in art and I can't do any of the meditation exercises that involve picturing myself somewhere.

I assume any of these kinds of differences can be caused by a combination of genetics and environment since genes are expressed differently based on experience and environments can also impact people in ways that don't involve genes.

Probably a combination of environment *(nurture)* and simple evolution. The brain is a complex computer that handles a metric-fuck-ton of information. Some minor variation in how that information is processed or accessed is bound to develope, especially when the sample size is in the billions.

I don't think it's limited like that. While I usually think in sentences, it also happens that I get ideas that I either can't express in words or it happens so fast that I don't bother trying to think it through in sentences.

Try to think of a house and notice how you don't need to describe it in any detail to instantly visualise how you think a house looks.

It'll be interesting to hear what they find in the ongoing research, but it's already clear that the brain is not just a large language model.

God, same. One of my little annoyances in life is that my internal voice is a goddamn motor mouth and I literally CANNOT stop it.

I can stare at a white wall and watch paint dry, and my monologue will start philosophizing about watching paint dry, where the phrase came from, why I'm doing it (to try and silence my internal voice), then go on a wiki walk about how trying not to think about something makes you think about it more and the classic example of telling someone "don't think about a brown bear" makes them think about bears, then I'll start thinking about bears and my monologue is suddenly halfway across the world.

Put me in a sensory deprivation tank, and my internal voice starts ruminating about how Daredevil uses these to sleep, then goes off about fight sequences, and then superhero comics, and whoops I'm halfway across the world.

Even when I'm paying attention and listening, my inner voice is still motoring away, it's just that it's mirroring what is being said to me instead of going on its own wiki walk halfway across the world (though sometimes someone will say something that makes my internal voice go "wait a second, that makes me think of..." and then I stop listening while I go on a wiki walk).

I have ADHD, in case it isn't obvious yet.

You can, but it takes work for some people. Various meditation can help, but require patience and diligence.

I've learned to turn it off and on mostly at will and frequently just play music in my mind when I want to listen but can't use headphones or a speaker.

As long as it's not a monologue like op is describing, you are fine.

I'd try meditation..

With my aphantasia it's not that it's all quiet in there, unfortunately you still get the carousel of regrets/self criticism etc, but it's a carousel of emotions with no narrator if that makes sense

It's voices all the way down!

Oh, the non-verbal one prob does that thing where they look directly into the camera all disappointed & defeated.

I wonder if it's a spectrum. I am probably the same as you, but I am surprised when others mentioned about their inner monologue being constant-- many of which are negative-- and how to "turn it off" when it becomes too toxic. I have never really gotten negative inner monologues.

Nonetheless, the post made me think that this may explain why I am pretty forgetful. I don't speak to myself to remember something in inner monologue/first person.

When I read stuff, my inner dialog reads it back to me, you don't get that? Like in the movies when a someone is writing or reading a letter.

Sounds peaceful. Mine goes like mad sometimes, it's even woken me from sleep.

My understanding is that among other issues schizophrenics view their internal monologue as not being their own thoughts, but rather an external voice. Take that with a grain of salt though, because it's just something I vaguely remember reading on the Internet at some point.

yeh not everyone can visualize in their head. weirdly enough (or maybe not), I can taste in my head. like if you say tomato I can taste it. I should've been a chef maybe

I have that, too, I think. And I see my mind as massive chaos.

The worst is when you start to have conversations in your head in multiple voices. It gets crowded sometimes.

It's basically just you talking to yourself but without actually speaking.

for me, sometimes my internal monologue is like a very lazy audio book narrator who only reads the dialogue, and sometimes not even that. other times its like i have the whole cast of a radio drama in there, in the middle of the apex of the plot.

Its like being on the phone with yourself. Everything you read is spoken to you. When you see an accident about to hsppen, you hear 'That guy is about to eat it.' When you see an attractive person you hear 'Niiiiccceee!'.

for me it's literally just my own voice (and i can mimic other voices) and i sort of hear it overlaid on everything else, sorta like what happens when you hold a hand in front of only one eye, you see both things at once.

The only real difference from my physical voice is that there's none of that delay and friction from having to physically speak, so it's harder to prevent my inner monologue from saying stuff which is extremely annoying since i'm autistic and thus have echolalia, meaning i just reflexively repeat things i hear..

The idea that other people have some sort of independent inner voice, or even several ones, is rather terrifying to me.

It's my own voice in my head. Its difficult to determine on what level I control it. It doesn't "make" me do things, but it's not like I decide what it says before it speaks. I often wonder if it's the other half of my brain. I speak differently in person than I do inside my head, or type, for that matter.

Regardless whether it's a kind of supplemental personality inside my head, one thing I'm convinced of is that many people mistake their internal monologue for the Voice of God.

If you're needing to explain those ideas to other people then it's useful to expound

are you capable of visualizing things? some time ago i learned that most people apparently can literally see things they picture in their head, which is something i'm only barely capable of doing if i close my eyes and relax.

Like i can summon the image of a basic shape and make it rotate at a consistent speed, that's it. But then when i'm extremely relaxed and almost about to fall asleep, or when i'm dreaming, i literally just see my imagination as if i'm looking at the real world.

However what i can do is "visualize" extremely well with the sense of proprioception (the thing that lets you know where your hands are in relation to the rest of your body), so i can rotate objects in my headspace and walk through physical spaces. I can't *see* anything in there, but i'm fully aware of the shape of things and i simply remember what colour things are.

You can read without using your inner voice if you practice. It supposedly lets you read a lot faster, though I have my doubts about how well you retain the information. One way to do it is to think "lalalala" while reading something!

My inner voice is my voice as I hear it, and is more obviously there when I'm contemplative or reflective on ideas and concepts, but it doesn't seem to actively dictate or narrate most of my actions as I go through the day, except perhaps in anxiety or adrenaline peaking situations. It does seem more likely to flip to the forefront when there's an 'emergency' sort of moment to help stay calm and rational where others may panic. I do have some 'imagery' thoughts but only when I'm on more of an autopilot with an activity.

Interestingly, I can have very vivid and detailed dreams filled with unique imagery and events that can seem very real and my inner voice kicks on sometimes during dreams, and I recognize it as a dream. I have at times been able to influence the direction of a dream that my subconscious usually seems to be running. These dreams can be expansive, I'm talking deep backstory, knowing things and languages I do not know, knowing details about history or science or math that I do not know, and having a strange hyper awareness of existence around me that I do not have when awake. The only really 'scary' dreams I've had since I was a kid are ones where I can't find my kids, or where my dad is still alive and shows back up at home like he was just living somewhere else for a while (and it's not so much scary as just hyper-confusing and stressful). The dad dreams are also some of the best dreams to have that inner voice of awareness happen.

Do you remember the last time you were talking to someone for more than a couple minutes? Maybe they were explaining something to you, or telling you a story. You might try to remember what they said later - you can't hear it, but your brain kind of recreates the sensation of having been spoken to even though your ears aren't receiving those sounds.

That's what having an inner voice is like (to me, anyway) - it's remembering a conversation that you never actually had.

An asshole mostly, but that's another issue. Helps you think through problems because you think about it before doing it. When I read fiction I try to imagine other voices. I read a lot when I was younger.

Why, can't you ask yourself? 😁

Can your inner voice be quiet? I'm trying to have a conversation with mine!

A friend asked me the same thing, they have a back and forth of voices, at significant speed, and then they reach a decision. Whereas I just "know" all the pros and cons (to the best of my ability) all at once if that makes sense?

I've got both pathways in my brain. Thinking without words is definitely faster. Verbal thought is better for communication and crystallisation of ideas. I.e. I think about something non-verbally, then internally verbalise the conclusions to help fix it in my memory and communicate it.

I don't think i'm a quick thinker guy, but my reflexes are shockingly good. Like i i sometimes knock something over while cooking and i just see it in the corner of my eyes and somehow catch it midair. But in this fraction of a second my inner monologue still goes: i just knocked something over, but what, oh right, i put the soda stream bottle on the counter because i just emptied the dishwasher. Oh no it's also probably the glass one, because i have three glass bottles and only one that is plastic, so this could bet really messy when it breaks, they are also kinda expensive.
And then i somehow hold it in my hand before i fully caught up. Kinda like when you snooze for 10 minutes but have like 2 hours worth of dreams.

Have to admit the number of people in here with full internal voices has made me realize why podcasts and long videos of youtubers talking are so popular.

I hate them because it's like spending 10 minutes to be drip fed 1 minute's worth of information.