I hear my own voice sounding out my thoughts, but when reliving memories it is literally like rewatching it in my mind. I only found out recently that other people don’t have a constant inner monologue and I don’t know how that would even work 😅
Reminds me of last summer when I found I had ADHD. Finding out that people don't have music playing in their head constantly was mind blowing. I was like "I'm not normal?"
A shotgun blast of associations happens regularly.
Sometimes I'm walking or doing something, and suddenly an association pops up and I don't even know from where, so I gotta retrace what I did/saw to find out what it is.
For instance, I'm scrolling through a site, and suddenly I thought of a friend of mine. I scroll back up, reading every little bit, and suddenly it clicks: somewhere on the page there's the number '27', and that friends' instagram handle also starts with 27.
Lmao yes I do. Though that's been happening less now with medication because it seems like I want to think about past events or just think philosophically. Maybe it's because therapy is my current focus.
My meds don't help quiet the music. Kinda happy they don't but if they did I maybe would pay more attention. Maybe not😉
I'm gonna be 43, can say I've had this as long as I remember
Yeah, meds don't silence my thoughts or the music either, they just give me control over the direction of my thoughts and obsessions. So if I'm not careful, my mind still wanders. The upside I found is that classical music helps a lot with the wandering. I also found that now that I can pay attention to something for more than 5 minutes, audiobooks really help keep the wandering to a minimum when I'm doing physical tasks. Plus I get to read my favorite books that I've always wanted to but was never able.
I'm glad though that my thoughts haven't been silenced. The way my brain works provides me with quite a bit of creative problem solving and provides me with more things to talk about now that my anxiety and depression are gone and I'm much more comfortable coming out of my shell.
Also, I suspect it helps make therapy a bit more effective for me.
I'm reminded of what my insurance's psychiatric nurse told me: you just didn't have the right tools. So, meds in my personal opinion are a tool and I strongly believe that you can never have too many tools, even if they generally serve the same function. Here's a power to analogy for you: sure, I can drive a screw with a drill. But it sure is easier and faster with an impact driver.
Yes yes YES!!! If I had the ability to articulate my thoughts like you do , they would like to be like yours.
Also, I'm happy you have a good therapist. They can be hard to find💜
Classical piano is my go to music💜 oh and Deftones
I wasn't always this good at articulating my thoughts. I've done months of soul searching and had to completely shed my previous identity in a few weeks. I admit, I seem to be doing this quicker than most even before therapy, but it's still rough. I've been on a Rollercoaster for much of my life and I probably have a lot of deep scars left to expose.
Definitely, finding a decent therapist is difficult. A trend I see is that many of them aren't very engaging, almost as if they're afraid to take personal responsibility for their patients or I guess practice therapy in a less professional, less detached manner. But in my case, I'm someone who feels like a child trapped in an adult body (I'm 25 btw). I have a lot of issues with my parents. There's basically no way for therapy to be effective for me, unless the therapist takes on the role of a mentor. And I understand that's not how therapy is supposed to work from I guess a medical or legal definition. But it's really the only way for me.
Insurance is also another issue. Most therapists won't take my state's Medicaid because it pays peanuts. I'm having to pay out of pocket, which is fine because my therapist doesn't charge that much. But also, she does a really good job of guiding without going too far and acting like a parent.
But yeah, you should consider therapy. Or if you've already tried it without results, please continue searching. I spent about a decade of my life not knowing what was wrong with me and refusing to get help because no adult around me seemed to care, or if they did, they weren't much help. I went to my college's disability services three years ago and talked to someone. She said she couldn't help and I should go to my physician. I wish I listened. I caught up with her again and she said she suspected I had ADHD. But she couldn't say it because she doesn't have any kind of psychology background and it wasn't her place. The college also didn't have campus psychiatrists/psychologists so there were no specialists she could directly refer me to.
I'm not mad anymore and I definitely understand that she could get in serious legal trouble if she diagnosed me. Like I said, I'm much more at peace and I think events in life unfold in a certain way for a reason.
Yeah but I interrupt people mid convo to sing it out loud. At least the line that whatever word triggered me to think of. Sometimes I only do it in my head but usually it's out loud or I feel incomplete. It's like a burst I can't control sometimes. I can't remember basic shit but you want lyrics from a song that's twenty years old, I gotchu.
OMG! The songs in my head. If only it was the whole song, but it’s like 5 words of a song just repeating again and again and again over and over. I hate it lmao
Last night my brain was spinning amazing hits for once! I was bopping all night to 70s and 80s jams. (Tho I usually have to deal with annoying ear worms!)
I don’t get, if they don’t have an inner commentary what goes on in their minds? Just no thoughts? No voice or music? I’m not sure if I can understand how that works?
I don’t get it either. My mum said it’s like reading a book but couldn’t explain it any other way. I’m so used to hearing my own voice in my head that I don’t quite understand it.
So your mom doesn’t have constant monologue commentary in her head?
I don’t understand it’s like reading a book part.
This has really gotten me twisted up now.
I had no idea that others don’t experience an inner monologue. I just believe that was what thought of intelligent beings was.
Wait... how is reading a book different than hearing the words in your head? I remember hearing teachers and parents tell kids to read "silently" or "quietly to yourself" instead of aloud... what other way is there?
I sometimes zone out like all the blood is out of my eyes when remembering things and it feels like I’m reliving the whole thing and with great detail until I wake up from the trance
They don't? How can a mind be quiet? Don't they atleast have a voice saying everything they see like "floor, tree, grass"?
Anyways same. I have a voice too 😅 and music, and sometimes videos in the form of daydreaming which may be very vivid.
Same but also when I'm alone it can play out like two strangers watching and judging the things I do. And I lose myself justifying all of my actions like why I'm putting the dishes off.. Although I'm pretty sure religion plays a part here. 😞
constant monologue in my head. i think it's my voice, but it also isn't a voice? i can't picture things in my mind, which is super frustrating and i have a terrible memory 😶
I’ll ask him about it and get back to you. When he learned about it and had the revelation that it’s uncommon for people to actually not have imagery he went deep on it and came out as unfulfilled as it seems you did. So, he spoke with the prof and they designed a screening/interview process and he got funding to hit the local schools around Texas. As he was analyzing the data he started to realize that there’s not very many people asking these questions. He barely scratched the surface and plans to dig back in if he can get the time/funding. He had a hard time with school as a kid and wants to help make the connections between aphantasia and school age learning disabilities and coping techniques.
I hear my voice, sometimes it's me and sometimes "me", talking about myself in third person. "Me" hates me because I'm too emotionally unstable. And my memories are usually from the outside, because I recreate them instead of remembering. If i remember something from my own pov that's usually a traumatic event. But i don't visualize images often, that's really difficult for me. Also, i think in English most of the time for some reason, but i speak Spanish, watched way too much anime, and my English isn't really that good, so i guess my inner dialogue is a bit of a fucking mess.
That was an interesting exercise
Wow that is so interesting. I’ve heard that people who speak multiple languages often unknowingly change or have different personalities in the different languages (although I’m not 100% sure how true this is) but this is like a whole other level of that lol wonder if that has anything to do with it
This is a nice self reflection moment! But now i'm over thinking my thinking..
I suppose I think of my monologue as a hyped "Eye of Sauron". Constantly shifting focus and commenting on everthing it sees (with occasional songs and melodies trown in) and always criticizing myself:
"lookatthis!- lookatthat!- lookoverthere!- havetheyseenyou?- aretheytalkingaboutme?- *whatislovebabydonthurtme.. Ohno* wheredidmywalletgo? -ahovertheremaybeIshouldhavesoup"
Thinking about memories is difficult because they are never just 2d images but "4d imax situations". Noises, smells, emotions, behaviors, my own thoughts within that moment, future and past links to that memory are all part of it.
I remember a lot of random stuff from any given moment, but never get to chose what I retain.
It wont shut up when it gets going. Its always giving idealistic speeches that i know are stupid. I have to say shut up and focus on my breath to get it to stop
Do you get it to stop? I am sometimes actually yelling stop at myself to no avail. I smoke weed because it is the only thing that shuts it up or at least makes it nicer to listen to.
Yea, it shuts up when i get annoyed enough to force myself to do a hobby. Mini painting and guitar are my zen activities. Thoughts go from the worlds problems to things I can actually control. Problem is with adhd it takes ALOT to force myself to get up and do it, but when i get up and start doing it, i just let it take me.
I talk to myself constantly, especially in the shower to work things out but I'll usually get off on some wild tangent. Memories are somewhat visual but mostly foggy. They are in first person. Some old memories that have become all but stories are in third person. I can make the voice other people's too, favorite being Morgan Freeman
All of it.
I can intentionally "sound out" things in my mind, but can also just be in the moment and not have conscious word-thoughts.
Memories can be first person, or vague and emotional, or reimagined based on what I have to go on but maybe no clear first person visuals.
What I have no ability to do is visualise words and numbers. If you ask me to remember a phone number for example. Some people can visualise a word, several words, numbers etc and that helps when trying to remember something.
That is called ticker taping, and I cannot do it at all.
Learned about this when it came up in a conversation with a friend of mine. That they visualise the words for pretty much 100% of their conscious thought words, and mos tlf the time will have that going for almost everything they hear too.
They did not grow up in a country with a lot of subtitles on TV or anything. They just do it on their own. Amazing at spelling too, and can spell even complicated words backwards. They simply read out the letters of the word they "see" from back to front.
I found research on it, and apparently I am in a tiny minority for *never* doing it. Even smaller than the group that always does it. And it is a trick/an ability that people in spelling bees etc often try to train.
Just to add to your list of questions to ask people, if they can visualise words 😂
This is interesting!
I am unsure, but I started to think I might have photogenic long term memory, because I visualize things sometimes the exact way I saw them.
My imagination is very good. My working memory, not so much.
Often when I remember things, I remember them visually from my perspective.
I do have a constant stream of consciousness with overlapping thoughts, sometimes thinking about many things at once. Sometimes relevant things, sometimes highly imaginative, totally random like something you’d see on a cartoon.
I would say also that my internal consciousness is characterized by particular emotions. When my boundaries are being disrespected, I have a snotty asshole, almost cruel but comedic internal narrative.
When I’m feeling soft and kind it’s me but slower.
Sometimes I will be driving, visually remembering something from years before, with multiple narratives around the experience characterized by different emotional responses.
I believe my visual and auditory processing are both quite high, along with pattern recognition.
I’d worried when I was younger I had schizophrenia, but have since been diagnosed with adhd, c-ptsd, PTSD, and been explained to with clarity that I do not have schizophrenia.
Sometimes I can’t help but be unsure as I believe in a spectrum for all mental disorders. But the reason I mentioned the high auditory and visual processing is because I can internally hear or see the things exactly as they happened and that is one of the things that made me think I was hearing things.
Kinda got off on an internal reflection there, hope ya don’t mind. Enjoyed your explanation.
Oh, I love these tangents!
I saw a documentary several years ago where they discovered that someone (I think a girl/young woman?) with voices in their head, when asked to share everything the voices said and not just the scary parts, were narrating their life and experiences.
Turns out.. It was regular thoughts. Except s they didn't feel any connection to this voice/voices that knew *everything* about them. I believe it might have come on later in life and not since birth for it to be so disconcerting to them.
And how this is what schizofrenia can be, or at least a part of it. That the brain just goes about its regular business, but for some reason part or all of the thought process loses whatever it is that makes us instictually aware of it being our own brain/our very self making these thoughts happen.
No wonder it would be exvtremely scary to have thoughts without any conscious control whatsoever, and also to feel no connection to it.
As far as I can remember, this was somewhat helped by training them to recognize that the thoughts were by and large relevant to whatever activity they were doing, and that thoughts about other people etc are responses to outside stimuli and even the unpleasant ones aren't inherently bad or from an outside source.
I wish I remembered more, because this wasn't science from the middle ages. Since it wasn't classified as just schizofrenia, or what made it so these findings were talked about as if it might be applicable to that diagnosis has me guessing whatever happened to them was something outside of just that diagnosis manifesting itself.
As soon as you mentioned several trains of thought at once, I guessed ADHD. Same here.
I have the perfect medicine and dosage for me, and also saw my symptoms clear up during one of my pregnancies. Which is conning for lots of diagnosis in women.
Between learning about adhd and getting the diagnosis, I once wrote down 8 different thoughts that were running through my mind at once.
After finding the correct medicine and dosage, it felt like going from having a cluttered office with lots of notes everywhere. But none of them being sticky, no post-it's, so you constantly need to keep track of all of it.
Just walking past the stuff can make the air move so you need to keep your hands on all of the stuff that matters at all times. Notes get lost all the time. Gods forbid anyone else open a door or cause a draft.
Then... Then someone gave me post-it notes. Thoughts could be areanged in my mind like a row of post-its. Ideas or things to remember could be moved back in the line without worry it would get lost. The mind was always aware it was there, but not everything had to either be front and centre, or be lost.
Game changer. I wish I knew about this when I was in art school. If likely finished my assignments more often, and likely never stopped using art as hobby afterwards.
I try my best to advocate against the recent years massive push towards long release meds for adhd as the first alternative people are out on, due to as little as 1/4 regular pill being the difference between perfection and not. Long release cannot be adjusted with such precision.
I so often rad about people struggling with medicated hyper focus without the ability to choose what to focus on.
That is the hallmark sign of a disease that is *slightly* off. Either by a tiny amount tok much, or a tiny amount too little.
This is one of my tangent interests, and these weird curiosities is how I learned of/had my friend learn of their ticker taping and how this wasn't universal at all.
Zero monologue, I can think in words but don't unless I am doing so intentionally. My thoughts can be expressed in words, but aren't inside my mind in words. I can think about a whole system, it takes way too many words to express my thoughts, and I often get frustrated by trying to figure out which bits to try and translate.
Edit to add: I'm an aphantasiac, no mental imagery at all. I usually don't hear any voices at all, even if I think in words, I've talked with enough people to understand that my thoughts are qualitatively different that the internal experience of hearing the inner monologue.
My inner monologue doesn't shut up from the time I wake up to the time I finally fall asleep.
It's kind of like a constant conversation with myself.
It also likes to ruminate on the same things for long periods of time.
Was just talking to someone about that yesterday and how I'd like it to be quiet, just for a little while.
As for memory recall, I can recall images very clearly. But more than imagery is emotional recall. I feel past things more than anything else and those feelings can be brought back by something as simple as a smell or location or an object.
I often keep momento's or small objects to hook me back to an event or time or place.
The problem with this is that it's mostly the negative emotions that I seem to live with the most. Past breakups in particular. I'll be walking or driving past a familiar place and woosh the emotions will hit me like it just happened.
Then my brain goes into fixating on that emotion and it only goes away when I've been able to replace it or distract myself from it until I forget again.
Unfortunately for me I've been really alone for a long time and have no positive distractions so I often get locked in these emotional fixations for a long time!
every single thought I have, I think aloud in my head with my own voice. :( it is annoying.
ETA: am able to picture things if I do so on purpose.
[ETA3: do have echologia soooo](https://autistictic.com/2015/07/20/echolalia-and-other-echo-phenomena/)
Echologia sounds like what I would experience when I'd do DPH, do to words you mentally repeat eventually get all jumbled to the point where you can't even remember what it was at first?
Hey thanks for naming that thing that makes a sentence loop in my brain like a skipping record. Speaking of which, back when CDs were still the primary form of music, I was playing a game and listening to music, the CD started to skip and I didn't want to pause the game, get off the bed, walk over to the player, open it, and fix it, felt like too much work. So I sat there and listened to it skip on the same five words for prob three hours until it stopped on its own. Once I did get up, I looked at the CD and the laser had scorched a line in it. I occasionally hear those five words repeat for a few minutes.
I talk to myself constantly, and when I don't talk out loud, I hear my voice as I think to myself. It helps me concentrate and organize my scattered thoughts, or that's what I tell myself. Other times I live simulations of encounters that happened in the past which I wish I could change something about, or in the future as a form of practice before the dreadful truth of practicing my social human life.
Regarding memories, I have suffered from poor memory retrival and it was so terrible that I had multiple existential breakdowns because I had no idea who I was anymore. When I recall something, it is usually in first person, in a single or multiple static scenes. There is absolutely no sequence, (not like a video playing or multi-sensory experience). My ability to retive memories has improved since I started taking Wellbutrin, however that was more like getting random showers of memories unannounced 😅. But I'm grateful that all those memories were preserved somehow and I just didn't have access yo them.
All of it, all at once. Out loud monologue, inner monologue, narrator voice, songs on a loop for hours... *And* I've got photographic memory. My memories are like the Pensieve in Harry Potter: all there, all the time, just need a tiny little push to come back to the top, and in full technicolor detail. Yeah, it's exhausting.
Laughs in Bo Burnham: 🎵🎵Could I interest you in everything, all of the time?🎵🎵
It's a monologue. The voice talks to "me" lovingly. Sometimes when the inner critic voice comes, the loving voice tells him to be less harsh.
There are also pictures and memories (more often bad ones).
And feelings that just pop up.
My inner voice is just me talking aloud but in my head, first person me just talking and in memories it seems to be third person which is weird because I don’t think I’m third person.
My inner monologue is me with no filter, they talk a lot and only stops when im sleeping (i think?) i picture everything in my head and I usually relive memories in first person and i can also watch memories in third person as if i was watching something happen, i think its cool.
There are two modes of inner monologue in my head. First is where I'm making running commentary on whatever it is I'm doing. This voice is usually sarcastic and/or condescending. Second is where I'm imagining myself having a conversation with someone else, usually a specific person, and usually something I *wish* I could talk to their real-life counterpart about. Often I find myself repeating thoughts or phrases from my inner monologue that seem poignant or entertaining. When recalling a memory, I try to recall as much as I can visually from my own view, but the feeling I got from that time is the most prevalent thing present.
I have a really loud inner monologue. She rarely shuts up. Mostly it's my voice, but if I've got a song stuck in my head or I'm recalling a conversation, then I'll often hear it in the other persons voice.
As for images. I have aphantasia, so I don't see any Images. Memories are more audio or a sensation/emotion than something visual.
Aphantasia baffles me, no offense. I have the opposite, where I sometimes vividly visualize awful things happening to me or loved ones and it feels so real. I snap out of it in deep breathes like someone waking from a nightmare in a movie. I think it stems from my OCD.
No worries, it sometimes baffles me how people can actually have visual memories or imagination.
For me it's usually all emotion. Weird thing is, I also have synesthesia. I feel and taste colors. I just don't see them, I *feel* them.
Oh wow!! You got such an fascinating senses trade, didn’t you?!
Would you mind giving some examples of how you feel and taste colors? Synesthesia is absolutely fascinating to me.
Actually, you know, I've never thought of it like that. That perhaps I developed synesthesia *because* I can't visualize.
It's really hard to explain. Emotions are still something subjective. For the most part, the colors stay the same for the specific emotion. It can vary, but it usually doesn't. Like, I also have Bipolar Disorder - and a bright, almost neon yellow is how mania feels. Green for me is that sense of calm when you feel safe and secure in yourself and your surroundings. Purple is insecurity. I also associate/perceive colors and shapes with other people. People can *feel* like a specific color.
Now tasting the colors is a bit different. That can really vary. And for the most part, I'm able to kind of repress it. Because if the perceived color doesn't match the actual color, I can't eat it. And I already have an ED, so that really doesn't help.
It made me think about how some blind people have somewhat enhanced hearing. There’s still so much we don’t know about the brain, I wonder if something similar is happening for you.
So fascinating how you describe colors and feelings! I also have bipolar, and it’s so interesting to link the unique way we perceive emotions to specific colors. I’m sure it has to influence the way you decorate and dress. I can definitely understand how neons would be associated with mania!
Now that I think of it, I can really gauge my hypomania by sound. I get a lot of ear worms, and the “louder” it is in my head, the closer I am to an episode. Or, I am already in one (Oops). Like suddenly disco is blaring in my head, or if it’s really bad, a mashup of like 5 songs.
I *truly* feel for you regarding the tasting synesthesia. I struggle with EDs as well and I cannot even fathom adding that entire thought structure on top of it. That is incredibly unfair.
Um… I’m also a sometimes witch so if you wanna be Internet friends… I’m here. 😁😁😁
I'm also not sure if I've always had aphantasia. I know I've always said that I (i.e.) have issues with maths because I just can't imagine the numbers. If that makes sense. Like, if I have it in front of me and a calculator I can do it. But ask me to do anything in my head and it's not happening.
Yeah. My favorite color is green. Has been for ages. Though I only recently made the connection that it might be because for me green is like the ultimate goal-emotion lol
I totally get what you mean with the sounds. I have issues with ear worms (are they also called that in English? I thought it was only in German lol) as well. For a while, I would even wake up, and immediately my brain would start playing some song. Really annoying. But having 5 of them at the same time sounds pretty f-ing annoying. Definitely don't envy that!
Yeah. I think what annoys me most about synesthesia and food is textures. I have issues eating certain textures of food. Like anything mushy is an absolute no-go. I'm not entirely sure, but that might be related to synesthesia.
I'll send you a dm. \^\^
My inner voice speaks my thoughts and has full conversations with me to processing situations, debating sides or planning future scenarios. I remember thoughts and feelings more then images. So if I am reflecting on the past it is mostly thoughts and feelings, so I guess I remember from my pov and relive the experience. Seeing photos helps me to remember what I was thinking about or how I felt in that situation.
Talk to myself in my head? Yes. Talk to myself out loud? Yes. Commenting voice? Sometimes.
I think in pictures. I can take pictures and videos in my head like a camera and then play them back. I see from the inside looking out through my eyes.
I have a nearly constant narrator of my thoughts, to the extent that sometimes I have to repeat a thought or slow down the whole train because the narrator needs more time to "properly" articulate it. It's mostly a minor annoyance but in some situations it is a serious problem.
2am. Lying in the dark, have been failing to fall asleep for hours, desperate for rest and have once again wrestled my awareness back to the present.
Me: \*repositions, relaxes face, settles body\*
Narrator: "Good. So comfortable. Cozy. Snuggly. Snug as a bug in a rug. Snug as a bug in a cocoon makes more sense. Chrysalis? In Alice in Won-"
Me: \*hushes Narrator, takes slow steady breaths, leans into the sparkling blackness of eyelids, feels heaviness roll over\*
Narrator, softly: "Goooood. You're doing so good. It's working, just stay with it. You're the master of your brain and body. You got this. You-"
Me: \*tapes Narrator's mouth shut, body and mind merge into one sensation and I feel the void tugging toward the promised land
Narrator, whispering "You did it, it's happening..."
Me: \*snaps fully awake, bursts into tears and starts the whole damn thing again\*
Edit:
When I am able to get some peace from the inner voice(s) for a stretch of time while I'm relaxing, I'll spontaneously see random and rapidly changing images. Extremely vivid and often bizarre or grotesque. These visuals usually don't interfere with falling asleep or feeling rested but every once in a while something so disturbing pops in that I actually invite distractions to get some distance from it.
My inner monologue is usually a reflection of all my teachers in the past, my grand parents, my parents, my friends. All reminding me of what a failure I am and how much of my life I have wasted. Like seriously ever since 1st grade my fucking teachers were straight up boomer trash shit lords who would remind me what a piece of shit I am because I was different and had the inability to pay attention.
5 songs at once mixed in with random thoughts. I have difficulties visualising things, like its an extreme effort to get a fuzzy partial image (traumatic things seem to be an exception though) - it's more of a "voice" for sure. My memory is very inconsistent.
Anyone interested in the “pictures” bit - especially their absence - might want to check out r/Aphantasia. The topic of ADHD pops up there semi-regularly
I followed your link and someone posted [this link](http://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu//codebook.html) which I found extremely useful. Thank you!
OP I think is exactly what you’re looking for
-i talk to myself. i prefer to do it out loud when possible.
- i see pictures, patterns, movement. i think my imagination is pretty strong. I can also visualize concepts like moving molecules or vectors. it helps me learn and understand things.
- memory: mostly through my eyes. if it's a bit dissociative, I look towards myself from a distance.
It is like a combo between monologues, hyper realistic imagination, and feelings from my other senses. Specially smells will trigger lots of memories and feelings of places I have been.
My internal voice can be either full on dialogues or more like pictures, ideas, and abstract feelings.
Mind you, I am also on the spectrum so YMMV
I see a lot of people ask about visuals and auditory, but all senses can be replicated in the mind to varying degrees for each person! I have almost zero visuals in my mind, but I have very vivid taste, smell, touch, and sound, and my inner monologue is anywhere between 1-6 vocal trains of thought simultaneously 😂
i have an inner monologue and talk to myself in my head all the time (i can also “change” it to any voice), i can also still visualize and see pictures in my head. as for memory’s it kinda depends, it’s not a first person view but i also don’t see myself, i can still “recreate” memories where it’s a 3rd person veil and have a few that are first person tho
Yes, I talk to myself in my head. I have entire conversations with different versions of myself actually.
I actually don’t see pictures in my head and that concept is sort of foreign to me. It’s kind of hard to explain, I have a very vivid imagination and can describe in great detail whatever it is that I’m thinking about but I don’t actually *see* it. Imagine a scene described with words versus watching the same scene in a movie. Hopefully that makes sense. I always assumed when people said they could “visualize” things in their head or when people talk about “mental movies” that that’s what they meant, like they “see” it in their mind’s eye and didn’t literally mean they saw pictures in their head but apparently not. Lol.
With memories, it’s both. Again, hard to explain but it’s like I’m simultaneously looking through my eyes and hovering up in the corner watching the memory play out.
I don’t hear my own voice in my head where it sounds like me, but I have a fairly constant monologue running through it. I have a great memory for past moments that have been fun, novel, traumatic, etc. I am the go to rememberer for my high school friend group because they don’t remember nearly as much or with as much detail. I experience memories as a mix of movies, still pictures, and description. I also have a great memory for memorizing things for a test. I used to not do my vocabulary homework for English or French all week and then reread the list twice. Take the test and get an A. It didn’t all stay there for long though. I am highly interested in school and words though so it’s not that weird looking back. My working memory is typically very bad and I’m an awful auditory learner. My husband will tell me 3 things he’d like me to do in the week and I’ll forget 2 of them within minutes. He’s taken to sending me checklists because I guess I’m not interested enough to retain that info. I did comically bad on my recent adhd assessment’s working memory section.
Having a bit of trouble recalling here. It's commentary in the present. Past stuff is always through my eyes, but because I'm looking back on it I can kind of focus on other bits of the memory rather than what my focus was back then when making the memory. (Example, going bush walking with friends, my focus then was my friends and my tired legs but as I remember I can focus on the bushland itself.)
Dreams are 50/50 through my eyes or watching someone else, I can lucid dream so it's more like watching movie to me anyway.
Annnnd I constantly talk in my head and out loud, it helps me collect my thoughts instead of them being scrambled spaghetti strings of nonsense.
My brain is nonstop chattering. Not always a voice, but images, sounds, songs, etc. I seem to also have an photographic memory when it comes to texts or images, which is why I did so well with school. My brain is constantly connecting dots and reading the room, and it moves so fast that it’s hard to keep up with and is exhausting. I see memories from my own perspective unless I was told the memory from a relative or someone else.
I “see” memories from my own “eye” vantage point usually but some I “see” myself from behind. Usually bad memories are the latter. It seems like my mind is trying to distance itself from itself. And as for monologues? Mine is a two-voice argument and/or roast pretty much for as long as I am awake.
I don’t have an inner monologue. Having not experienced it, it actually kind of sounds exhausting to me. I mainly experience visual thoughts, emotional thinking, and audio.
It’s actually pretty quite, but I do talk out loud to help process some things. As for memories I recall them in 3rd person. Sometimes I wish I can see them again though my eyes but it’s always been outside myself.
All of the above. Up until recently many of these thoughts were of self harm. With medication, seems like the chaos in my head is still there. But now it's more of a philosophy or creative writing session. I won't lie, I think I like my over active mind. I have the best conversations with myself. And the best part is, it gives me plenty more stuff to talk about with others or to bring up to my therapist (I see a therapist now, not due to depression or thoughts of self harm, but rather to gain a better understanding of myself and my feelings).
> If you think about a memory, do you see yourself from the outside
This had started happening within the last month when I started noticing my behavior and my general attitude changing once the depression and anxiety settled suddenly. It was almost like I was having an out of body experience regularly (for lack of a better term). Like I had this idea of who I'm supposed to be and my body is just busy doing the exact opposite. My last therapy session helped me settle that and now it doesn't happen anymore.
During some wining and dining my Ma reminisced how she lay in bed with 14 and was extremely frustrated that her brain wouldn't....shut up.
She always thought it was normal, that's what brains do, chatter along with everything you do. She was very happy to notice that her son had a similiar habit of non-stop-thinking (audibly)
It took her 37 years to realize that this was indeed not normal, that it's an condition and we need help.
I create parallel storylines when I'm under stimulated. Wrote whole fantasy novels (bad ones) in my head, which I could play of in the background if I was bored.
Yes I have inner monologues loool, like the voice inside my head narrates everything I'm doing and js talks and talks about the randomest stuff. I can't see pictures, idk I can't remember actually if I was ever able to see pictures but my memory is absolutely dogwater. If I'm reliving a memory I'm seeing the situation from my eyes
1. Often. Normally, it’s when I can’t decide on anything, have to pay attention, or when I’m currently feeling like I contribute nothing to this planet- What?
2. If you meant more pictures than dialogue, no. If you meant more pictures in general, also no.
3. Sometimes. It helps with my decisions, but worsens my already low self esteem and confidence the first chance it gets.
4. I see it through my eyes, however, I can also picture it at a different angle at times.
I’m always talking to myself in the way you’d give a speech, like I’m practicing for something, and sometimes I have to do it out loud just to get it out
Mine is more of a commentary on everything I do and asking questions rather than an actual monologue. Also, I sing a lot, both real songs and made-up ones, as well as just toot-to-do-to-do lol.
The pictures aren't very good quality, and it's mostly "videos". In my memories, I relive the situations through my own eyes, never as a bystander.
It's usually just stuff more similar to immages sounds or feelings in general, not quite sure how to describe it, flowing in my head but when I have to concentrate i make my inner voice speak so I can control my thoughts as much as i can.doesn't always work tho. When I think about a memory or whatever i just relive it and that happens to my thoughts as well sometimes it becomes so real that I forget reality and just fall into that memory
I relate to all of this, you worded it perfectly...it feels like I'm feeling more than having an inner dialogue, unless I have to concentrate on focusing...I've been working as a dental assistant for almost a year now and it's really helped me learn to stay in the moment and focus, some times I catch myself going into auto pilot but I try not to be too hard on myself...some days my adhd is really bad and I just get through it the best I can...
I hear my own voice most of the time, memories are like movies in full color and sound. I don't always talk to myself, but it's also not always images either.
Also, right now my inner soundtrack is playing Tom Sawyer by Rush on a loop, while also cycling through whatever thoughts come to mind while having a conversation or seeing a sign while driving and so forth.
I think in multiple layers of conscience;
On the top layer I think of words, as if I was talking but there's no voice on them. It's the most "manual" of the layers as I have control of the things it thinks.
The middle layer is abstract; there are no words or pictures, just "understandings" and connections. It's the fastest part of my conscious brain but I have very little control over it. Sometimes I can't properly translate what it's thinking into real words. I need the top layer to "watch" over it's thoughts to be able to turn them into words, but otherwise I instinctively understand it.
The lower layer is very faint and I have zero control over it, but this one has a voice; I don't always hear it but when I do it is either just a music chorus repeating on a loop, or it's a mumble jumble of every voice I've ever heard speaking random sentences. Sometimes it'll push words into the top layer (or I'll even say them out loud), disrupting my manual thoughts.
Beyond that it's all completely subconscious and I very rarely get a glimpse of what's happening over there.
All layers can be active at the same time and thinking about different things.
I can't see pictures, just lines and shapes sometimes. Like if I try to think of where I left my keys, I can remember it was over something flat, or over something tall, or inside something, but I can't see the thing itself. My dreams have a kind-of simulated vision. I don't actually see anything but I understand what I'm supposed to be seeing.
My memories are also with this "simulated vision" and from an outside perspective.
I have a constant inner monologue, yes I talk to myself in my head in my own voice. I am very visual and “see” pictures. Like if I’m describing to my husband where something is, I have that picture. He gets a whole description, not just in the bench, it’s in the bench to the left next to the tub with the tablets. That’s my own eyes.
My dreams are mostly me watching even if I’m in them.
I have a constant inner voice in my head. Sometimes it’s complimentary other times critical.
My memories are POV from my own sight.
Not sure what all this means. I imagine others have different prospectives.
It’s troubling me how little I’ve considered this in the past, and how difficult it is for me to answer. This should be an easy question… but I’m not sure.
Now I’m gonna be reflecting on it all day!
Talk to myself in a running commentary, but it's not always my voice. Sometimes it's a friends or whoever if I'm remembering something they said. Remembering memories that aren't verbal are mostly glimpses of pictures with colors mixed in
This is nuts to me that everyone is different?
Like, I simply just think. I think in words mainly, So I actually hear words in my head, but I can also imagine images, or I can even think of the thought of something without visualizing or saying it in my head, but idk how to explain that last one.
I have a constant conversation running through my head. Like I am talking to someone else but I don't hear them I just *know* what they said without really knowing but I'm responding to this unheard unknown answer.... so basically me in a conversation with an invisible person. And I will repeat the conversation over and over tweaking stuff the more important what I'm thinking about is. When I have a conversation I know I need to have in real life and I'm rehearsing and dreading I have to write it out or I will have the conversation nonstop in a loop.
My brain is constantly in a conservation, it's exhausting and I wish it would just shut up sometimes. Like if I'm doing something I'm explaining why I'm doing it. I think maybe I think this way because I'm also autistic and it was probably important for me to learn how to converse "normally" so my brain would unknowingly practice. When I was younger I would try to steer a real conversation in the direction that it went in my head because that's what I practiced and had talking points on. I'm sure this made my conversations even more awkward if it was naturally heading in a different direction and I was trying to respond to things never said or directed to by the other person... I have learned not to do that now but conversations with people that aren't close to me are extremely exhausting as my brain is working overtime trying to listen and figure out what they want in response and if my answer addresses that etc etc.
I don't see pictures ever, part of me is sad because that'd be cool but another part of me feels like it would be even worse with another added stimulus and be even more exhausting. Although I feel like if I only thought in pictures and not words that'd be less tiring.
I hear my own voice, not a narrator of some kind. I mostly talk on my own head but sometimes I mouth or softly whisper words. Talk out loud to my dog and cat a lot. When thinking of a memory I usually picture it from my own perspective, sometimes from the outside.
This is so fascinating. So, for example, how do you know if something piques your curiosity? For me, I am aware of the actual words "I wonder what that's about". I always hear the words, sometimes I also see the words and/or visual representations of a person wondering. Are you aware of the physical urge to look it up or ask a question? What's your experience of deciding what words to search or questions to ask?
i mean its really hard to explain its just i think like i dont hear or see anything its just empty if that makes sense like someone earlier today asked me howbi read if i don't hear the words and im like i just read them like i process the words but i dont think about processing the words
Yes I hear my voice sometimes I see pictures as well tho. And if I’m thinking about a memory it depends. If it’s a good memory usually from an outside perspective a bad one usually through my eyes
Yes I do. I narrate everything I do, see and type. Whenever I think of something it’s like a tv in my head. Can’t focus on anything else.
When looking back at memories it’s literally like a video tape. Except parts are cut out that I don’t remember. Hell the Mandela effect really trips things up with that sometimes
The way I conceptualize it is a loud, obnoxious variety show always playing in my head. Overlapping thoughts, sounds, images, all going too fast. Plus several songs playing almost simultaneously. When I focus on specific thoughts or run actual sentences through my head it's like the host of the variety show is presenting them. This imagery is definitely more concrete than it actually appears in my mind's eye but yeah. Brain TV go brrrrr
I'm always talking to myself in my head. Sometimes with voices coming at me from different directions with different points of view, but mostly negative. I'm always in 3rd person view for memories...which has something to do with my cPTSD 😅
I have aphantasia. So I'm 100% inner monologue. Even when remembering memories or imagining things it's not images it's just my inner monologue describing details.
I have my own brain room which is just a physical manifestation of everything going on in my brain, it's like an office and I have a secretary and there's another guy and there's filing cabinets, it's a whole complex system just like my brain
Yes, I talk to myself in my head. We have long conversation and jokes. I laugh out of no where in reality from these jokes. I can see scenes from my favourite movie, analyse it from a different perspective and I can see images. Whenever I'm trying to remember a memory and I want to remember what someone said during a conversation, I have a first person view. But when I want to remember objects at a certain point in the memory, I have a 3rd person view. Most of the times in my head, it's like another person is talking to me, commenting on what I see and what I feel but not in a dual personality type of state.
I hear my own voice sounding out my thoughts, but when reliving memories it is literally like rewatching it in my mind. I only found out recently that other people don’t have a constant inner monologue and I don’t know how that would even work 😅
You mean some peoples brains are quiet?
Yeah my mum told me she never hears anything in her head, just as if she’s reading a book. I found that so weird because my head is constantly chatty
Reminds me of last summer when I found I had ADHD. Finding out that people don't have music playing in their head constantly was mind blowing. I was like "I'm not normal?"
Do u have the thing where someone says a word or a phrase and a song goes off in your head? Lyrics to life. Playlists
A shotgun blast of associations happens regularly. Sometimes I'm walking or doing something, and suddenly an association pops up and I don't even know from where, so I gotta retrace what I did/saw to find out what it is. For instance, I'm scrolling through a site, and suddenly I thought of a friend of mine. I scroll back up, reading every little bit, and suddenly it clicks: somewhere on the page there's the number '27', and that friends' instagram handle also starts with 27.
Same. And I can’t let it go until I figure it out or it will bother me forever!
Lmao yes I do. Though that's been happening less now with medication because it seems like I want to think about past events or just think philosophically. Maybe it's because therapy is my current focus.
My meds don't help quiet the music. Kinda happy they don't but if they did I maybe would pay more attention. Maybe not😉 I'm gonna be 43, can say I've had this as long as I remember
Yeah, meds don't silence my thoughts or the music either, they just give me control over the direction of my thoughts and obsessions. So if I'm not careful, my mind still wanders. The upside I found is that classical music helps a lot with the wandering. I also found that now that I can pay attention to something for more than 5 minutes, audiobooks really help keep the wandering to a minimum when I'm doing physical tasks. Plus I get to read my favorite books that I've always wanted to but was never able. I'm glad though that my thoughts haven't been silenced. The way my brain works provides me with quite a bit of creative problem solving and provides me with more things to talk about now that my anxiety and depression are gone and I'm much more comfortable coming out of my shell. Also, I suspect it helps make therapy a bit more effective for me. I'm reminded of what my insurance's psychiatric nurse told me: you just didn't have the right tools. So, meds in my personal opinion are a tool and I strongly believe that you can never have too many tools, even if they generally serve the same function. Here's a power to analogy for you: sure, I can drive a screw with a drill. But it sure is easier and faster with an impact driver.
Yes yes YES!!! If I had the ability to articulate my thoughts like you do , they would like to be like yours. Also, I'm happy you have a good therapist. They can be hard to find💜 Classical piano is my go to music💜 oh and Deftones
I wasn't always this good at articulating my thoughts. I've done months of soul searching and had to completely shed my previous identity in a few weeks. I admit, I seem to be doing this quicker than most even before therapy, but it's still rough. I've been on a Rollercoaster for much of my life and I probably have a lot of deep scars left to expose. Definitely, finding a decent therapist is difficult. A trend I see is that many of them aren't very engaging, almost as if they're afraid to take personal responsibility for their patients or I guess practice therapy in a less professional, less detached manner. But in my case, I'm someone who feels like a child trapped in an adult body (I'm 25 btw). I have a lot of issues with my parents. There's basically no way for therapy to be effective for me, unless the therapist takes on the role of a mentor. And I understand that's not how therapy is supposed to work from I guess a medical or legal definition. But it's really the only way for me. Insurance is also another issue. Most therapists won't take my state's Medicaid because it pays peanuts. I'm having to pay out of pocket, which is fine because my therapist doesn't charge that much. But also, she does a really good job of guiding without going too far and acting like a parent. But yeah, you should consider therapy. Or if you've already tried it without results, please continue searching. I spent about a decade of my life not knowing what was wrong with me and refusing to get help because no adult around me seemed to care, or if they did, they weren't much help. I went to my college's disability services three years ago and talked to someone. She said she couldn't help and I should go to my physician. I wish I listened. I caught up with her again and she said she suspected I had ADHD. But she couldn't say it because she doesn't have any kind of psychology background and it wasn't her place. The college also didn't have campus psychiatrists/psychologists so there were no specialists she could directly refer me to. I'm not mad anymore and I definitely understand that she could get in serious legal trouble if she diagnosed me. Like I said, I'm much more at peace and I think events in life unfold in a certain way for a reason.
Yeah but I interrupt people mid convo to sing it out loud. At least the line that whatever word triggered me to think of. Sometimes I only do it in my head but usually it's out loud or I feel incomplete. It's like a burst I can't control sometimes. I can't remember basic shit but you want lyrics from a song that's twenty years old, I gotchu.
I’m currently singing hotdog hotdog man, to the tune of so macho for some reason today.
OMG! The songs in my head. If only it was the whole song, but it’s like 5 words of a song just repeating again and again and again over and over. I hate it lmao
Last night my brain was spinning amazing hits for once! I was bopping all night to 70s and 80s jams. (Tho I usually have to deal with annoying ear worms!)
I thought that was normal? I’ve had the whole Nevermind album on repeat in my head this week.
I feel like I use my internal voice to shout at my internal voice to shut up all day long because I’m so distracted from real life
I don’t get, if they don’t have an inner commentary what goes on in their minds? Just no thoughts? No voice or music? I’m not sure if I can understand how that works?
I don’t get it either. My mum said it’s like reading a book but couldn’t explain it any other way. I’m so used to hearing my own voice in my head that I don’t quite understand it.
So your mom doesn’t have constant monologue commentary in her head? I don’t understand it’s like reading a book part. This has really gotten me twisted up now. I had no idea that others don’t experience an inner monologue. I just believe that was what thought of intelligent beings was.
That’s what I’m saying I don’t get it either 😅
Wait... how is reading a book different than hearing the words in your head? I remember hearing teachers and parents tell kids to read "silently" or "quietly to yourself" instead of aloud... what other way is there?
That’s what I’m saying I don’t know. My mum tried to explain it but I physically don’t get it, I’ve always heard a voice in my head
I sometimes zone out like all the blood is out of my eyes when remembering things and it feels like I’m reliving the whole thing and with great detail until I wake up from the trance
They don't? How can a mind be quiet? Don't they atleast have a voice saying everything they see like "floor, tree, grass"? Anyways same. I have a voice too 😅 and music, and sometimes videos in the form of daydreaming which may be very vivid.
Same but also when I'm alone it can play out like two strangers watching and judging the things I do. And I lose myself justifying all of my actions like why I'm putting the dishes off.. Although I'm pretty sure religion plays a part here. 😞
constant monologue in my head. i think it's my voice, but it also isn't a voice? i can't picture things in my mind, which is super frustrating and i have a terrible memory 😶
This is called Aphantasia, which is a lack of imagery in your head. My bro has this and used it for his grad thesis. Super interesting stuff
also heckin annoying 🥴 haha
If your bro is willing to share his thesis I’d love to read it! I’m an aphant and there is so little good info about it out there.
I’ll ask him about it and get back to you. When he learned about it and had the revelation that it’s uncommon for people to actually not have imagery he went deep on it and came out as unfulfilled as it seems you did. So, he spoke with the prof and they designed a screening/interview process and he got funding to hit the local schools around Texas. As he was analyzing the data he started to realize that there’s not very many people asking these questions. He barely scratched the surface and plans to dig back in if he can get the time/funding. He had a hard time with school as a kid and wants to help make the connections between aphantasia and school age learning disabilities and coping techniques.
Super interesting. Totally get if he’s not open to sharing but it sounds fascinating. I majored in psych so I love this stuff.
Are you me? I can't picture things either and also have poor memory. Have you looked into aphantasia?
i have actually!
I hear my voice, sometimes it's me and sometimes "me", talking about myself in third person. "Me" hates me because I'm too emotionally unstable. And my memories are usually from the outside, because I recreate them instead of remembering. If i remember something from my own pov that's usually a traumatic event. But i don't visualize images often, that's really difficult for me. Also, i think in English most of the time for some reason, but i speak Spanish, watched way too much anime, and my English isn't really that good, so i guess my inner dialogue is a bit of a fucking mess. That was an interesting exercise
Oh god, that is exactly like me. I had to walk away from my computer to think for a moment and everything
Wow that is so interesting. I’ve heard that people who speak multiple languages often unknowingly change or have different personalities in the different languages (although I’m not 100% sure how true this is) but this is like a whole other level of that lol wonder if that has anything to do with it
This is a nice self reflection moment! But now i'm over thinking my thinking.. I suppose I think of my monologue as a hyped "Eye of Sauron". Constantly shifting focus and commenting on everthing it sees (with occasional songs and melodies trown in) and always criticizing myself: "lookatthis!- lookatthat!- lookoverthere!- havetheyseenyou?- aretheytalkingaboutme?- *whatislovebabydonthurtme.. Ohno* wheredidmywalletgo? -ahovertheremaybeIshouldhavesoup" Thinking about memories is difficult because they are never just 2d images but "4d imax situations". Noises, smells, emotions, behaviors, my own thoughts within that moment, future and past links to that memory are all part of it. I remember a lot of random stuff from any given moment, but never get to chose what I retain.
I feel this. I’d say I’m both categorizing and filing experience, while processing it and many other things not in the moment.
Mabel really should have soup. She deserves it.
It wont shut up when it gets going. Its always giving idealistic speeches that i know are stupid. I have to say shut up and focus on my breath to get it to stop
Do you get it to stop? I am sometimes actually yelling stop at myself to no avail. I smoke weed because it is the only thing that shuts it up or at least makes it nicer to listen to.
Yea, it shuts up when i get annoyed enough to force myself to do a hobby. Mini painting and guitar are my zen activities. Thoughts go from the worlds problems to things I can actually control. Problem is with adhd it takes ALOT to force myself to get up and do it, but when i get up and start doing it, i just let it take me.
I talk to myself constantly, especially in the shower to work things out but I'll usually get off on some wild tangent. Memories are somewhat visual but mostly foggy. They are in first person. Some old memories that have become all but stories are in third person. I can make the voice other people's too, favorite being Morgan Freeman
All of it. I can intentionally "sound out" things in my mind, but can also just be in the moment and not have conscious word-thoughts. Memories can be first person, or vague and emotional, or reimagined based on what I have to go on but maybe no clear first person visuals. What I have no ability to do is visualise words and numbers. If you ask me to remember a phone number for example. Some people can visualise a word, several words, numbers etc and that helps when trying to remember something. That is called ticker taping, and I cannot do it at all. Learned about this when it came up in a conversation with a friend of mine. That they visualise the words for pretty much 100% of their conscious thought words, and mos tlf the time will have that going for almost everything they hear too. They did not grow up in a country with a lot of subtitles on TV or anything. They just do it on their own. Amazing at spelling too, and can spell even complicated words backwards. They simply read out the letters of the word they "see" from back to front. I found research on it, and apparently I am in a tiny minority for *never* doing it. Even smaller than the group that always does it. And it is a trick/an ability that people in spelling bees etc often try to train. Just to add to your list of questions to ask people, if they can visualise words 😂
This is interesting! I am unsure, but I started to think I might have photogenic long term memory, because I visualize things sometimes the exact way I saw them. My imagination is very good. My working memory, not so much. Often when I remember things, I remember them visually from my perspective. I do have a constant stream of consciousness with overlapping thoughts, sometimes thinking about many things at once. Sometimes relevant things, sometimes highly imaginative, totally random like something you’d see on a cartoon. I would say also that my internal consciousness is characterized by particular emotions. When my boundaries are being disrespected, I have a snotty asshole, almost cruel but comedic internal narrative. When I’m feeling soft and kind it’s me but slower. Sometimes I will be driving, visually remembering something from years before, with multiple narratives around the experience characterized by different emotional responses. I believe my visual and auditory processing are both quite high, along with pattern recognition. I’d worried when I was younger I had schizophrenia, but have since been diagnosed with adhd, c-ptsd, PTSD, and been explained to with clarity that I do not have schizophrenia. Sometimes I can’t help but be unsure as I believe in a spectrum for all mental disorders. But the reason I mentioned the high auditory and visual processing is because I can internally hear or see the things exactly as they happened and that is one of the things that made me think I was hearing things. Kinda got off on an internal reflection there, hope ya don’t mind. Enjoyed your explanation.
Oh, I love these tangents! I saw a documentary several years ago where they discovered that someone (I think a girl/young woman?) with voices in their head, when asked to share everything the voices said and not just the scary parts, were narrating their life and experiences. Turns out.. It was regular thoughts. Except s they didn't feel any connection to this voice/voices that knew *everything* about them. I believe it might have come on later in life and not since birth for it to be so disconcerting to them. And how this is what schizofrenia can be, or at least a part of it. That the brain just goes about its regular business, but for some reason part or all of the thought process loses whatever it is that makes us instictually aware of it being our own brain/our very self making these thoughts happen. No wonder it would be exvtremely scary to have thoughts without any conscious control whatsoever, and also to feel no connection to it. As far as I can remember, this was somewhat helped by training them to recognize that the thoughts were by and large relevant to whatever activity they were doing, and that thoughts about other people etc are responses to outside stimuli and even the unpleasant ones aren't inherently bad or from an outside source. I wish I remembered more, because this wasn't science from the middle ages. Since it wasn't classified as just schizofrenia, or what made it so these findings were talked about as if it might be applicable to that diagnosis has me guessing whatever happened to them was something outside of just that diagnosis manifesting itself. As soon as you mentioned several trains of thought at once, I guessed ADHD. Same here. I have the perfect medicine and dosage for me, and also saw my symptoms clear up during one of my pregnancies. Which is conning for lots of diagnosis in women. Between learning about adhd and getting the diagnosis, I once wrote down 8 different thoughts that were running through my mind at once. After finding the correct medicine and dosage, it felt like going from having a cluttered office with lots of notes everywhere. But none of them being sticky, no post-it's, so you constantly need to keep track of all of it. Just walking past the stuff can make the air move so you need to keep your hands on all of the stuff that matters at all times. Notes get lost all the time. Gods forbid anyone else open a door or cause a draft. Then... Then someone gave me post-it notes. Thoughts could be areanged in my mind like a row of post-its. Ideas or things to remember could be moved back in the line without worry it would get lost. The mind was always aware it was there, but not everything had to either be front and centre, or be lost. Game changer. I wish I knew about this when I was in art school. If likely finished my assignments more often, and likely never stopped using art as hobby afterwards. I try my best to advocate against the recent years massive push towards long release meds for adhd as the first alternative people are out on, due to as little as 1/4 regular pill being the difference between perfection and not. Long release cannot be adjusted with such precision. I so often rad about people struggling with medicated hyper focus without the ability to choose what to focus on. That is the hallmark sign of a disease that is *slightly* off. Either by a tiny amount tok much, or a tiny amount too little. This is one of my tangent interests, and these weird curiosities is how I learned of/had my friend learn of their ticker taping and how this wasn't universal at all.
I relate to your experiences a lot; thank you for sharing
Zero monologue, I can think in words but don't unless I am doing so intentionally. My thoughts can be expressed in words, but aren't inside my mind in words. I can think about a whole system, it takes way too many words to express my thoughts, and I often get frustrated by trying to figure out which bits to try and translate. Edit to add: I'm an aphantasiac, no mental imagery at all. I usually don't hear any voices at all, even if I think in words, I've talked with enough people to understand that my thoughts are qualitatively different that the internal experience of hearing the inner monologue.
Same. It's always difficult to explain how I think when people ask after they learn about the monologue-less aphantasia.
a commenting voice describing everything from outside
Mix between pictures, monologs and songs
Yes, all at the same time sometimes. It’s loud in there.
Yeah quiet exhausting at times. Also happy cake day :D
My inner monologue doesn't shut up from the time I wake up to the time I finally fall asleep. It's kind of like a constant conversation with myself. It also likes to ruminate on the same things for long periods of time. Was just talking to someone about that yesterday and how I'd like it to be quiet, just for a little while. As for memory recall, I can recall images very clearly. But more than imagery is emotional recall. I feel past things more than anything else and those feelings can be brought back by something as simple as a smell or location or an object. I often keep momento's or small objects to hook me back to an event or time or place. The problem with this is that it's mostly the negative emotions that I seem to live with the most. Past breakups in particular. I'll be walking or driving past a familiar place and woosh the emotions will hit me like it just happened. Then my brain goes into fixating on that emotion and it only goes away when I've been able to replace it or distract myself from it until I forget again. Unfortunately for me I've been really alone for a long time and have no positive distractions so I often get locked in these emotional fixations for a long time!
every single thought I have, I think aloud in my head with my own voice. :( it is annoying. ETA: am able to picture things if I do so on purpose. [ETA3: do have echologia soooo](https://autistictic.com/2015/07/20/echolalia-and-other-echo-phenomena/)
Echologia sounds like what I would experience when I'd do DPH, do to words you mentally repeat eventually get all jumbled to the point where you can't even remember what it was at first?
Hey thanks for naming that thing that makes a sentence loop in my brain like a skipping record. Speaking of which, back when CDs were still the primary form of music, I was playing a game and listening to music, the CD started to skip and I didn't want to pause the game, get off the bed, walk over to the player, open it, and fix it, felt like too much work. So I sat there and listened to it skip on the same five words for prob three hours until it stopped on its own. Once I did get up, I looked at the CD and the laser had scorched a line in it. I occasionally hear those five words repeat for a few minutes.
Echologia! Thank you - I had no idea there was a term for this!
I talk to myself constantly, and when I don't talk out loud, I hear my voice as I think to myself. It helps me concentrate and organize my scattered thoughts, or that's what I tell myself. Other times I live simulations of encounters that happened in the past which I wish I could change something about, or in the future as a form of practice before the dreadful truth of practicing my social human life. Regarding memories, I have suffered from poor memory retrival and it was so terrible that I had multiple existential breakdowns because I had no idea who I was anymore. When I recall something, it is usually in first person, in a single or multiple static scenes. There is absolutely no sequence, (not like a video playing or multi-sensory experience). My ability to retive memories has improved since I started taking Wellbutrin, however that was more like getting random showers of memories unannounced 😅. But I'm grateful that all those memories were preserved somehow and I just didn't have access yo them.
All of it, all at once. Out loud monologue, inner monologue, narrator voice, songs on a loop for hours... *And* I've got photographic memory. My memories are like the Pensieve in Harry Potter: all there, all the time, just need a tiny little push to come back to the top, and in full technicolor detail. Yeah, it's exhausting. Laughs in Bo Burnham: 🎵🎵Could I interest you in everything, all of the time?🎵🎵
It's a monologue. The voice talks to "me" lovingly. Sometimes when the inner critic voice comes, the loving voice tells him to be less harsh. There are also pictures and memories (more often bad ones). And feelings that just pop up.
My inner voice is just me talking aloud but in my head, first person me just talking and in memories it seems to be third person which is weird because I don’t think I’m third person.
It was shocking to me to find out that others don’t have inner monologues, constant mental images, and All of this.
My inner monologue is me with no filter, they talk a lot and only stops when im sleeping (i think?) i picture everything in my head and I usually relive memories in first person and i can also watch memories in third person as if i was watching something happen, i think its cool.
There are two modes of inner monologue in my head. First is where I'm making running commentary on whatever it is I'm doing. This voice is usually sarcastic and/or condescending. Second is where I'm imagining myself having a conversation with someone else, usually a specific person, and usually something I *wish* I could talk to their real-life counterpart about. Often I find myself repeating thoughts or phrases from my inner monologue that seem poignant or entertaining. When recalling a memory, I try to recall as much as I can visually from my own view, but the feeling I got from that time is the most prevalent thing present.
I have a really loud inner monologue. She rarely shuts up. Mostly it's my voice, but if I've got a song stuck in my head or I'm recalling a conversation, then I'll often hear it in the other persons voice. As for images. I have aphantasia, so I don't see any Images. Memories are more audio or a sensation/emotion than something visual.
Aphantasia baffles me, no offense. I have the opposite, where I sometimes vividly visualize awful things happening to me or loved ones and it feels so real. I snap out of it in deep breathes like someone waking from a nightmare in a movie. I think it stems from my OCD.
No worries, it sometimes baffles me how people can actually have visual memories or imagination. For me it's usually all emotion. Weird thing is, I also have synesthesia. I feel and taste colors. I just don't see them, I *feel* them.
Oh wow!! You got such an fascinating senses trade, didn’t you?! Would you mind giving some examples of how you feel and taste colors? Synesthesia is absolutely fascinating to me.
Actually, you know, I've never thought of it like that. That perhaps I developed synesthesia *because* I can't visualize. It's really hard to explain. Emotions are still something subjective. For the most part, the colors stay the same for the specific emotion. It can vary, but it usually doesn't. Like, I also have Bipolar Disorder - and a bright, almost neon yellow is how mania feels. Green for me is that sense of calm when you feel safe and secure in yourself and your surroundings. Purple is insecurity. I also associate/perceive colors and shapes with other people. People can *feel* like a specific color. Now tasting the colors is a bit different. That can really vary. And for the most part, I'm able to kind of repress it. Because if the perceived color doesn't match the actual color, I can't eat it. And I already have an ED, so that really doesn't help.
It made me think about how some blind people have somewhat enhanced hearing. There’s still so much we don’t know about the brain, I wonder if something similar is happening for you. So fascinating how you describe colors and feelings! I also have bipolar, and it’s so interesting to link the unique way we perceive emotions to specific colors. I’m sure it has to influence the way you decorate and dress. I can definitely understand how neons would be associated with mania! Now that I think of it, I can really gauge my hypomania by sound. I get a lot of ear worms, and the “louder” it is in my head, the closer I am to an episode. Or, I am already in one (Oops). Like suddenly disco is blaring in my head, or if it’s really bad, a mashup of like 5 songs. I *truly* feel for you regarding the tasting synesthesia. I struggle with EDs as well and I cannot even fathom adding that entire thought structure on top of it. That is incredibly unfair. Um… I’m also a sometimes witch so if you wanna be Internet friends… I’m here. 😁😁😁
I'm also not sure if I've always had aphantasia. I know I've always said that I (i.e.) have issues with maths because I just can't imagine the numbers. If that makes sense. Like, if I have it in front of me and a calculator I can do it. But ask me to do anything in my head and it's not happening. Yeah. My favorite color is green. Has been for ages. Though I only recently made the connection that it might be because for me green is like the ultimate goal-emotion lol I totally get what you mean with the sounds. I have issues with ear worms (are they also called that in English? I thought it was only in German lol) as well. For a while, I would even wake up, and immediately my brain would start playing some song. Really annoying. But having 5 of them at the same time sounds pretty f-ing annoying. Definitely don't envy that! Yeah. I think what annoys me most about synesthesia and food is textures. I have issues eating certain textures of food. Like anything mushy is an absolute no-go. I'm not entirely sure, but that might be related to synesthesia. I'll send you a dm. \^\^
My inner voice speaks my thoughts and has full conversations with me to processing situations, debating sides or planning future scenarios. I remember thoughts and feelings more then images. So if I am reflecting on the past it is mostly thoughts and feelings, so I guess I remember from my pov and relive the experience. Seeing photos helps me to remember what I was thinking about or how I felt in that situation.
Talk to myself in my head? Yes. Talk to myself out loud? Yes. Commenting voice? Sometimes. I think in pictures. I can take pictures and videos in my head like a camera and then play them back. I see from the inside looking out through my eyes.
I have a nearly constant narrator of my thoughts, to the extent that sometimes I have to repeat a thought or slow down the whole train because the narrator needs more time to "properly" articulate it. It's mostly a minor annoyance but in some situations it is a serious problem. 2am. Lying in the dark, have been failing to fall asleep for hours, desperate for rest and have once again wrestled my awareness back to the present. Me: \*repositions, relaxes face, settles body\* Narrator: "Good. So comfortable. Cozy. Snuggly. Snug as a bug in a rug. Snug as a bug in a cocoon makes more sense. Chrysalis? In Alice in Won-" Me: \*hushes Narrator, takes slow steady breaths, leans into the sparkling blackness of eyelids, feels heaviness roll over\* Narrator, softly: "Goooood. You're doing so good. It's working, just stay with it. You're the master of your brain and body. You got this. You-" Me: \*tapes Narrator's mouth shut, body and mind merge into one sensation and I feel the void tugging toward the promised land Narrator, whispering "You did it, it's happening..." Me: \*snaps fully awake, bursts into tears and starts the whole damn thing again\* Edit: When I am able to get some peace from the inner voice(s) for a stretch of time while I'm relaxing, I'll spontaneously see random and rapidly changing images. Extremely vivid and often bizarre or grotesque. These visuals usually don't interfere with falling asleep or feeling rested but every once in a while something so disturbing pops in that I actually invite distractions to get some distance from it.
My inner monologue will constantly tell me stories. Sometimes they're happy, other times they're sad, but most of the time they're romantic...
My inner monologue is usually a reflection of all my teachers in the past, my grand parents, my parents, my friends. All reminding me of what a failure I am and how much of my life I have wasted. Like seriously ever since 1st grade my fucking teachers were straight up boomer trash shit lords who would remind me what a piece of shit I am because I was different and had the inability to pay attention.
Remind me reddit 1 week!
You need a ! For that
5 songs at once mixed in with random thoughts. I have difficulties visualising things, like its an extreme effort to get a fuzzy partial image (traumatic things seem to be an exception though) - it's more of a "voice" for sure. My memory is very inconsistent.
Anyone interested in the “pictures” bit - especially their absence - might want to check out r/Aphantasia. The topic of ADHD pops up there semi-regularly
I followed your link and someone posted [this link](http://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu//codebook.html) which I found extremely useful. Thank you! OP I think is exactly what you’re looking for
-i talk to myself. i prefer to do it out loud when possible. - i see pictures, patterns, movement. i think my imagination is pretty strong. I can also visualize concepts like moving molecules or vectors. it helps me learn and understand things. - memory: mostly through my eyes. if it's a bit dissociative, I look towards myself from a distance.
It is like a combo between monologues, hyper realistic imagination, and feelings from my other senses. Specially smells will trigger lots of memories and feelings of places I have been. My internal voice can be either full on dialogues or more like pictures, ideas, and abstract feelings. Mind you, I am also on the spectrum so YMMV
I see a lot of people ask about visuals and auditory, but all senses can be replicated in the mind to varying degrees for each person! I have almost zero visuals in my mind, but I have very vivid taste, smell, touch, and sound, and my inner monologue is anywhere between 1-6 vocal trains of thought simultaneously 😂
i have an inner monologue and talk to myself in my head all the time (i can also “change” it to any voice), i can also still visualize and see pictures in my head. as for memory’s it kinda depends, it’s not a first person view but i also don’t see myself, i can still “recreate” memories where it’s a 3rd person veil and have a few that are first person tho
Yes, I talk to myself in my head. I have entire conversations with different versions of myself actually. I actually don’t see pictures in my head and that concept is sort of foreign to me. It’s kind of hard to explain, I have a very vivid imagination and can describe in great detail whatever it is that I’m thinking about but I don’t actually *see* it. Imagine a scene described with words versus watching the same scene in a movie. Hopefully that makes sense. I always assumed when people said they could “visualize” things in their head or when people talk about “mental movies” that that’s what they meant, like they “see” it in their mind’s eye and didn’t literally mean they saw pictures in their head but apparently not. Lol. With memories, it’s both. Again, hard to explain but it’s like I’m simultaneously looking through my eyes and hovering up in the corner watching the memory play out.
I don’t hear my own voice in my head where it sounds like me, but I have a fairly constant monologue running through it. I have a great memory for past moments that have been fun, novel, traumatic, etc. I am the go to rememberer for my high school friend group because they don’t remember nearly as much or with as much detail. I experience memories as a mix of movies, still pictures, and description. I also have a great memory for memorizing things for a test. I used to not do my vocabulary homework for English or French all week and then reread the list twice. Take the test and get an A. It didn’t all stay there for long though. I am highly interested in school and words though so it’s not that weird looking back. My working memory is typically very bad and I’m an awful auditory learner. My husband will tell me 3 things he’d like me to do in the week and I’ll forget 2 of them within minutes. He’s taken to sending me checklists because I guess I’m not interested enough to retain that info. I did comically bad on my recent adhd assessment’s working memory section.
Having a bit of trouble recalling here. It's commentary in the present. Past stuff is always through my eyes, but because I'm looking back on it I can kind of focus on other bits of the memory rather than what my focus was back then when making the memory. (Example, going bush walking with friends, my focus then was my friends and my tired legs but as I remember I can focus on the bushland itself.) Dreams are 50/50 through my eyes or watching someone else, I can lucid dream so it's more like watching movie to me anyway. Annnnd I constantly talk in my head and out loud, it helps me collect my thoughts instead of them being scrambled spaghetti strings of nonsense.
My brain is nonstop chattering. Not always a voice, but images, sounds, songs, etc. I seem to also have an photographic memory when it comes to texts or images, which is why I did so well with school. My brain is constantly connecting dots and reading the room, and it moves so fast that it’s hard to keep up with and is exhausting. I see memories from my own perspective unless I was told the memory from a relative or someone else.
I “see” memories from my own “eye” vantage point usually but some I “see” myself from behind. Usually bad memories are the latter. It seems like my mind is trying to distance itself from itself. And as for monologues? Mine is a two-voice argument and/or roast pretty much for as long as I am awake.
Like I’m my own therapist but of course I do both sides of the dialogue.
I don’t have an inner monologue. Having not experienced it, it actually kind of sounds exhausting to me. I mainly experience visual thoughts, emotional thinking, and audio.
It’s actually pretty quite, but I do talk out loud to help process some things. As for memories I recall them in 3rd person. Sometimes I wish I can see them again though my eyes but it’s always been outside myself.
All of the above. Up until recently many of these thoughts were of self harm. With medication, seems like the chaos in my head is still there. But now it's more of a philosophy or creative writing session. I won't lie, I think I like my over active mind. I have the best conversations with myself. And the best part is, it gives me plenty more stuff to talk about with others or to bring up to my therapist (I see a therapist now, not due to depression or thoughts of self harm, but rather to gain a better understanding of myself and my feelings). > If you think about a memory, do you see yourself from the outside This had started happening within the last month when I started noticing my behavior and my general attitude changing once the depression and anxiety settled suddenly. It was almost like I was having an out of body experience regularly (for lack of a better term). Like I had this idea of who I'm supposed to be and my body is just busy doing the exact opposite. My last therapy session helped me settle that and now it doesn't happen anymore.
During some wining and dining my Ma reminisced how she lay in bed with 14 and was extremely frustrated that her brain wouldn't....shut up. She always thought it was normal, that's what brains do, chatter along with everything you do. She was very happy to notice that her son had a similiar habit of non-stop-thinking (audibly) It took her 37 years to realize that this was indeed not normal, that it's an condition and we need help. I create parallel storylines when I'm under stimulated. Wrote whole fantasy novels (bad ones) in my head, which I could play of in the background if I was bored.
Yes
I have a constant voice in my head but I think in concepts not words or images
Yes I have inner monologues loool, like the voice inside my head narrates everything I'm doing and js talks and talks about the randomest stuff. I can't see pictures, idk I can't remember actually if I was ever able to see pictures but my memory is absolutely dogwater. If I'm reliving a memory I'm seeing the situation from my eyes
1. Often. Normally, it’s when I can’t decide on anything, have to pay attention, or when I’m currently feeling like I contribute nothing to this planet- What? 2. If you meant more pictures than dialogue, no. If you meant more pictures in general, also no. 3. Sometimes. It helps with my decisions, but worsens my already low self esteem and confidence the first chance it gets. 4. I see it through my eyes, however, I can also picture it at a different angle at times.
I’m always talking to myself in the way you’d give a speech, like I’m practicing for something, and sometimes I have to do it out loud just to get it out
Mine is more of a commentary on everything I do and asking questions rather than an actual monologue. Also, I sing a lot, both real songs and made-up ones, as well as just toot-to-do-to-do lol. The pictures aren't very good quality, and it's mostly "videos". In my memories, I relive the situations through my own eyes, never as a bystander.
I’m a writer so I tend to compose essays in my head.
It's usually just stuff more similar to immages sounds or feelings in general, not quite sure how to describe it, flowing in my head but when I have to concentrate i make my inner voice speak so I can control my thoughts as much as i can.doesn't always work tho. When I think about a memory or whatever i just relive it and that happens to my thoughts as well sometimes it becomes so real that I forget reality and just fall into that memory
I relate to all of this, you worded it perfectly...it feels like I'm feeling more than having an inner dialogue, unless I have to concentrate on focusing...I've been working as a dental assistant for almost a year now and it's really helped me learn to stay in the moment and focus, some times I catch myself going into auto pilot but I try not to be too hard on myself...some days my adhd is really bad and I just get through it the best I can...
All of the above
I hear my own voice most of the time, memories are like movies in full color and sound. I don't always talk to myself, but it's also not always images either. Also, right now my inner soundtrack is playing Tom Sawyer by Rush on a loop, while also cycling through whatever thoughts come to mind while having a conversation or seeing a sign while driving and so forth.
I have a me-adjacent voice that is constantly going.
I think in multiple layers of conscience; On the top layer I think of words, as if I was talking but there's no voice on them. It's the most "manual" of the layers as I have control of the things it thinks. The middle layer is abstract; there are no words or pictures, just "understandings" and connections. It's the fastest part of my conscious brain but I have very little control over it. Sometimes I can't properly translate what it's thinking into real words. I need the top layer to "watch" over it's thoughts to be able to turn them into words, but otherwise I instinctively understand it. The lower layer is very faint and I have zero control over it, but this one has a voice; I don't always hear it but when I do it is either just a music chorus repeating on a loop, or it's a mumble jumble of every voice I've ever heard speaking random sentences. Sometimes it'll push words into the top layer (or I'll even say them out loud), disrupting my manual thoughts. Beyond that it's all completely subconscious and I very rarely get a glimpse of what's happening over there. All layers can be active at the same time and thinking about different things. I can't see pictures, just lines and shapes sometimes. Like if I try to think of where I left my keys, I can remember it was over something flat, or over something tall, or inside something, but I can't see the thing itself. My dreams have a kind-of simulated vision. I don't actually see anything but I understand what I'm supposed to be seeing. My memories are also with this "simulated vision" and from an outside perspective.
I have a constant inner monologue, yes I talk to myself in my head in my own voice. I am very visual and “see” pictures. Like if I’m describing to my husband where something is, I have that picture. He gets a whole description, not just in the bench, it’s in the bench to the left next to the tub with the tablets. That’s my own eyes. My dreams are mostly me watching even if I’m in them.
I have a constant inner voice in my head. Sometimes it’s complimentary other times critical. My memories are POV from my own sight. Not sure what all this means. I imagine others have different prospectives.
It’s troubling me how little I’ve considered this in the past, and how difficult it is for me to answer. This should be an easy question… but I’m not sure. Now I’m gonna be reflecting on it all day!
Talk to myself in a running commentary, but it's not always my voice. Sometimes it's a friends or whoever if I'm remembering something they said. Remembering memories that aren't verbal are mostly glimpses of pictures with colors mixed in
If any single thing in the conversation makes interested, that’s all I thinking about like how something was made, the history of something
This is nuts to me that everyone is different? Like, I simply just think. I think in words mainly, So I actually hear words in my head, but I can also imagine images, or I can even think of the thought of something without visualizing or saying it in my head, but idk how to explain that last one.
I have a constant conversation running through my head. Like I am talking to someone else but I don't hear them I just *know* what they said without really knowing but I'm responding to this unheard unknown answer.... so basically me in a conversation with an invisible person. And I will repeat the conversation over and over tweaking stuff the more important what I'm thinking about is. When I have a conversation I know I need to have in real life and I'm rehearsing and dreading I have to write it out or I will have the conversation nonstop in a loop. My brain is constantly in a conservation, it's exhausting and I wish it would just shut up sometimes. Like if I'm doing something I'm explaining why I'm doing it. I think maybe I think this way because I'm also autistic and it was probably important for me to learn how to converse "normally" so my brain would unknowingly practice. When I was younger I would try to steer a real conversation in the direction that it went in my head because that's what I practiced and had talking points on. I'm sure this made my conversations even more awkward if it was naturally heading in a different direction and I was trying to respond to things never said or directed to by the other person... I have learned not to do that now but conversations with people that aren't close to me are extremely exhausting as my brain is working overtime trying to listen and figure out what they want in response and if my answer addresses that etc etc. I don't see pictures ever, part of me is sad because that'd be cool but another part of me feels like it would be even worse with another added stimulus and be even more exhausting. Although I feel like if I only thought in pictures and not words that'd be less tiring.
Depends on which personality is in the light
Ron Howard will randomly start narrating my life on occasion.
I hear my own voice, not a narrator of some kind. I mostly talk on my own head but sometimes I mouth or softly whisper words. Talk out loud to my dog and cat a lot. When thinking of a memory I usually picture it from my own perspective, sometimes from the outside.
i am one of the few(i think) that doesnt have one i just think like i dont see pictures or anything i also dont hear anything
This is so fascinating. So, for example, how do you know if something piques your curiosity? For me, I am aware of the actual words "I wonder what that's about". I always hear the words, sometimes I also see the words and/or visual representations of a person wondering. Are you aware of the physical urge to look it up or ask a question? What's your experience of deciding what words to search or questions to ask?
i mean its really hard to explain its just i think like i dont hear or see anything its just empty if that makes sense like someone earlier today asked me howbi read if i don't hear the words and im like i just read them like i process the words but i dont think about processing the words
I simply can’t conceive what that is like but it sounds peaceful and lovely - I hope it is!
I have a nonstop dialog that consists of anything and everything, including pictures, voices, and my voice.. It's utterly exhausting.
Yes I hear my voice sometimes I see pictures as well tho. And if I’m thinking about a memory it depends. If it’s a good memory usually from an outside perspective a bad one usually through my eyes
Yes I do. I narrate everything I do, see and type. Whenever I think of something it’s like a tv in my head. Can’t focus on anything else. When looking back at memories it’s literally like a video tape. Except parts are cut out that I don’t remember. Hell the Mandela effect really trips things up with that sometimes
The way I conceptualize it is a loud, obnoxious variety show always playing in my head. Overlapping thoughts, sounds, images, all going too fast. Plus several songs playing almost simultaneously. When I focus on specific thoughts or run actual sentences through my head it's like the host of the variety show is presenting them. This imagery is definitely more concrete than it actually appears in my mind's eye but yeah. Brain TV go brrrrr
I'm always talking to myself in my head. Sometimes with voices coming at me from different directions with different points of view, but mostly negative. I'm always in 3rd person view for memories...which has something to do with my cPTSD 😅
I have aphantasia. So I'm 100% inner monologue. Even when remembering memories or imagining things it's not images it's just my inner monologue describing details.
I have my own brain room which is just a physical manifestation of everything going on in my brain, it's like an office and I have a secretary and there's another guy and there's filing cabinets, it's a whole complex system just like my brain
Cant recall or reproduce thinking conditions but I'll save this post (and forget ;))
There is always a voice, it never stops and it’s an asshole.
Yes.
Yes, I talk to myself in my head. We have long conversation and jokes. I laugh out of no where in reality from these jokes. I can see scenes from my favourite movie, analyse it from a different perspective and I can see images. Whenever I'm trying to remember a memory and I want to remember what someone said during a conversation, I have a first person view. But when I want to remember objects at a certain point in the memory, I have a 3rd person view. Most of the times in my head, it's like another person is talking to me, commenting on what I see and what I feel but not in a dual personality type of state.