My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their head. All my life, I could hear my voice in my head and speak in full sentences as if I was talking out loud. I thought everyone experienced this, so I did not believe that it could be true at that time.
Literally the first person I asked was a classmate of mine who said that she can not “hear” her voice in her mind. I asked her if she could have a conversation with herself in her head and she looked at me funny like I was the weird one in this situation. So I began to become more intrigued. Most people I asked said that they have this internal monologue that is running rampant throughout the day. However, every once in a while, someone would say that they don’t experience this.
My life began to slowly spiral out of control with millions of questions. How do they get through the day? How do they read? How do they make decisions between choice A and choice B? My friend described it as “concept maps” that she sees in her brain. Another friend says that she literally sees the words in her head if she is trying to think about something. I was taking ibuprofen at this point in the day because my brain was literally unable to comprehend this revelation. How have I made it 25 years in life without realizing that people don’t think like me?
I posted a poll on instagram to get a more accurate assessment of the situation. Currently 91 people have responded that they have an internal monologue and 18 people reported that they do not have this. I began asking those people questions about the things that they experience and it is quite different from the majority.
I would tell them that I could look at myself in the mirror and have a full blown telepathic conversation with myself without opening my mouth and they responded as if I had schizophrenia. One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was real.”
And to their surprise, they did not know that the majority of people do in fact experience that echoey voice in their head that is portrayed in TV and film. Another person said that if they tried to have a conversation with themselves in the mirror, they would have to speak out loud because they can’t physically do it inside of their mind.
I started posting screenshots of these conversations on my instagram and my inbox started 
to flood with people responding to my “investigation.” Many people were reassuring me that I was not crazy for having an internal monologue, while others were as absolutely mind blown as I was. People were telling me that I ruined their day and that they now do not understand anything about life. Maybe you are all just a figment of my imagination, but regardless, yesterday made reality seem even more skewed.
How do they think? How does this affect their relationships, jobs, experiences, education? How has this not been mentioned to me before? All of these questions started flooding my mind. Can those people without the internal monologue even formulate these questions in their mind? If they can, how does it happen if they don’t “hear” their voice? I mentioned earlier that I was spiraling out of control. Well, as I write this and as I hear my own voice in my head, I am continuing to fall down the rabbit hole.
Whether people just have different definitions of their thoughts, or if people literally don’t have an internal monologue, there is one thing that we do know… you will definitely get a headache if you keep thinking about this. Just trying to wrap my head around it is causing irreversible brain damage. I suggest asking people around you what they experience. If you are one of the few that do not have this internal monologue, please enlighten me, because I still do not understand life anymore. Send help.
@RyanLangdon_
Inside My Mind 
Curious to know if people without internal monologue can get songs stuck in their head. Can you hear the beat and music in the song or even the lyrics?
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Very much so. It’s very frustrating to me sometimes, since it interferes with my ability to create my novels. Sometimes when I’m really concentrating on a scene, I’ll even start to hear music. I remember them by the lyrics, mostly. I can’t remember purely instrumental music very well at all, just a few pieces, really.
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I usually hear lyrics, but what really stands out to me is the melodies, harmonies, and instrumentals. While I wouldn’t be able to recreate any of the harmonies from memory, I still “hear” them.
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Of course! For me, the song isn’t part of my thoughts; it’s out of my control, playing mostly on its own. It does play at the same speed as the actual song did, which is slow enough for words. I often find myself mouthing lyrics even though I’ve managed to push the song out of my conscious awareness. My thoughts have nothing to do with the song.
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That’s interesting because singing a song in your mind is much like speaking in your mind. Both involve words, are largely involuntary, are hard to stop, and you “hear” them the same way.
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Not true. My thoughts are very different from songs. They consist of a horde of disconnected words, occasional phrases, snippets of random sensory experiences, mental images, feelings, and static all being dragged behind a Maglev at Mach 5. That is to say, they are much faster and more disorderly than songs. At their most orderly, my thoughts may consist of a single mental movie accompanied by a bunch of feelings that are all related to each other. At their most disorderly, I find myself mouthing lyrics without being aware of it because all the noise drowned out the music. Imagine a violent war movie with background music, and that’s what I’m talking about. Except the images on the screen are capable of dissolving to static or moving too fast to be seen, just like the sounds are. The background music stays background music, though, still coherent and usually quieter than the rest.
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Yes, but the lyrics are the last thing I can recall
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Yes, but the lyrics are the last thing I can recall
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Hey bro I’m one of you.
And sometime I feel like killing.
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While I don’t have an internal monolog, I DO have an internal DJ, and I suspect he’s often quite drunk. There’s always *something* unexpected on the brainradio.
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Sure. I sing and play music so I am very involved with music. It’s not that we can’t hear words, its that we have thought patterns that are faster without them.
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So many different responses. I get songs stuck in my head but I can’t hear myself singing them it’s just the song playing. Same as thinking – I have thoughts and words but no voice to read them.
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Wait, WHAT?! That’s not how songs stuck in the head are for everyone? Just the song playing like it was on the radio? People imagine it in their own voice? But… If I tried to sing the song I couldn’t – most artists I listen to have completely different vocal ranges. So how could I imagine something in my own voice when it cannot be in my own voice? Is this really a thing?
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As a psychologist, sounds to me like the absence of working memory. Never seen it in a person without brain damage, down syndrome, or lack of cognitive problems. So fascinating. I wonder how does she memorize a grocery list at the store?
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As a psychologist, what do you think of this idea I’ve come up with? I have no idea who your comment is referring to, but it got me thinking, and what I thought is this. I’ve said it in other comments, that my mind is like a turbulent river that actually has several different currents inside it. One current might be whatever I’m trying to think about, other are streams of sensory information, memories and story ideas that I could start thinking about instead if they cross paths with and wash out the first current, and there are a multitude of others too. Working memory matches what I think I’ve described as the parts that get caught in eddies. Like, I might take the effort to create “coffee, laundry, milk” when I need to head downstairs to get those things, and make that thought into a loop, which repeats the same way a song would, except that unlike songs in my head, I can break this loop when it’s no longer useful. Working memory is its own sub-current, traveling in slow circles. It can be disrupted; that’s why I say “traveling.” But then it would spin off into a different loop, not a stream like the rest.
Sorry for the overly long reply, I just wanted to talk about this “River model of thought” that I kind of invented after reading this post, and I got sidetracked onto exactly where your comment fits in it. My main point is, what do you think of it? The basic premise of it is that thought is split, and different parts can operate independently. I can go downstairs repeating “coffee, laundry, milk” interspersed with a song that I have in my head, while seeing a new story idea play out and also wondering if snakes have irises. I attribute this busyness to multiple streams of thought. As a psychologist, what say you? Does the idea of split thoughts have any merit? Is there any previous research you could direct me to?
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I do the same with the loop to remember a task list
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The brain can only focus on one thing at a time… you got ADD yo… ( minus the automatic things the body needs like breathing and heart rate) but physically the brain can only think or do one thing at a time multi tasking is not a thing… you can do multiple things at a time but your brain physically switches quickly to each task you are doing🤷🏼♂️
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I don’t think that was overly long at all and it actually like to hear more about your currents and eddies of thought idea. It seems like a reasonable way to explain my thoughts as well, although not when I would have come up with.
My brain loves to offer up a song that matches the rhythm of whatever I’m doing. If it’s physical like walking or running or biking. In the shower in the morning I often find that my brain has offered up a musical number, which is a pun on a dream I had or on what I’m thinking about during the day. Often the pun is on lyrics to a piece of music, but I’m only thinking of the tune in my head consciously or semi-consciously. When I bring it to the foreground and think about the lyrics I realize how clever my subconscious can be 🙂. The lyrics won’t be the actual pun. It will be some play on words on the lyrics that sounds like the lyrics, that relates to something I was dreaming or thinking about.
The first time I noticed it happening my partner had a particularly difficult female boss who was demeaning, suspicious, belittling, sabotaging… Sabotaging… The boss quit and the next morning I found myself coming the tune from wizard of Oz. Ding dong… Not the lyrics, at least not until many repetitions of the tune without them and then it dawned on me…
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Me too! One night, I imagined a scene where a character explains that he likes to be away from people so he can escape the pressure of their opinions and just be whoever he is. I had “The Horse With No Name” stuck in my head the entire following day. It took me a while to recognize what song I was listening to, since I had only heard it maybe once before.
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I consider myself to be one of those people who do not have an inner narrator. Thoughts are abstract associations of images, feelings, impressions, and scattered words, but not a string of words like in a full sentence that leads to more full sentences. No brain damage, down syndrome, or cognitive problems. I can hold and remember words, and occassionally I do think a phrase or short sentence among the rapid associations, but it’s not continuous sentences that lead one into the next. And while I’ve never had a memory test, I would say that I’ve never seemed to have any issues with memory.
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Hang on – this is a surprising assumption. People who go to the grocery store with internal monologues actually memorize lists of words, rather than visualize the items they need?
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NO. When I go shopping I have a map of where stuff is and build the map as I go. I can have the word in my head, but do not memorise a list. As I walk about I might say to myself (in my head) “where is the milk?”
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Okay, that makes sense. I build a map in my head to remember groceries, too. I’m glad you shared that, thanks.
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Yesssss if I had to visualize the item itself I would never remember the list!!!!
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Why would remembering a grocery list require a inner monolog? If I was creating the list myself, I’d have images of places in the refrigerator and the things that are missing or in short supply. Missing ingredients for various menu possibilities, or more likely looking at the stuff and the shelves and remembering what was already available and what I’d have to get more of. Remembering items that we’d used recently and restocking. If someone else made a list, I’d write it down, or remember the sound of their voice reading it to me.
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I’m confused why you think this is about memory at all. It’s about the shape your thoughts take. Some people do an inner monologue, while other people have thoughts more as an instant thing. One person might think, “oh, I forgot to unplug the toaster,” while another might experience the thought as just a momentary realization, perhaps accompanied by an audible “Oh, crap.”
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That’s the way it would work with me. A quick visual of the toaster and a sinking feeling. Not even a need for words.
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The dialog of my life is a lot like the show “Hey Arnold”. Watch this show and you may understand.
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Brain damage??? LOL The arrogance of this comment is amazing. It’s like people who need to add by counting on their fingers mocking those of us who can do it in their head.
I have 2 post-graduate degrees and switched from one difficult field to another difficult field seamlessly. I am equally left and right brained. (same score on the SAT’s, etc.). I am both a developer and creative writer. I have also been an editor for a publishing company and a lawyer. Thus, every type of verbal, mathematical, analytical and creative field. I have written sitcom and 120 page feature scripts from scratch with an ability to vividly imagine and create complex characters, scenes and dialog from scratch.
Thus, not having an internal monologue is not the barren wasteland unable to produce thought that you think it is. “Down Syndrome”, OMG.
Let me explain it to you: We don’t need to use speech all day long. We can if we want to but we are beyond that. I go through my entire day without using internal speech unless I am writing an email or thinking about what I want to say to somebody. If I am trying to concentrate while reading and there is a lot of noise distracting me, I might deliberately hear a sentence of two in my head as reinforcement but normally I don’t need to do that.
If I am expecting a package from Home Depot, I just get a flash of the concept of Home Depot and then I just remember the day they are delivering it. I don’t need to say in my head “When is Home Depot delivering my package? Let me see, I think they said June 9.” Or I get a flash of my friend and remember that I should renew my passport because she wants to travel. I don’t need to say “I should renew my passport so Susie will be happy and get off my back.” That is so slow!
Yes, I can remember a grocery list, LOL!
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I can very much relate to your comment. But in my opinion, there is quite a difference between „I have an internal monologue all the time“ (seems annoying), „I’ll use the internal monologue occasionally, when I need it“ (like we do, seems great) and „I am not capable of formulating thoughts inside my head without moving my lips“ (seems indeed a bit limited – but maybe doesn’t mean „brain damage” but rather „training”?).
After watching the video, I though „wow, so these two people are on the very extreme of the spectrum!“. Occasionally, my mind also drifts off and I think about arguments from months or years ago. But there isn’t a voice all the time, that would be extremely annoying!
I fall asleep very easily, unless I drank large amounts of Coffeine during the evening.
> Let me explain it to you: We don’t need to use speech all day long. We can if we want to but we are beyond that. […] I just get a flash of the concept of Home Depot and then I just remember the day they are delivering it.
I also think in abstract concepts, objects and relations most of the time. But of course, I’ll occasionally remember a past or visualise a future event including imagery and conversations.
> I have 2 post-graduate degrees and switched from one difficult field to another difficult field seamlessly. I am equally left and right brained. (same score on the SAT’s, etc.). I am both a developer and creative writer.
Yeah I mean how are you supposed to do enjoy reading/listening to music or do mathematics, creative writing, coding or any kind of art with that voice in your head? When I want to get something done and enjoy doing it, I’ll try to get into the flow – and the first thing is to switch off any distracting thoughts.
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You are categorized as a person who have inner voice. You can hear voice in your head but you can choose not to. You are like 70% of people in this world.
Some people they don’t have ability to talk with themselves with voice in their head. That is to say that their brain functions differently than most people. Yours is normal, though.
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Thank you! I bumped into this today after hearing once again that my primarily visual brain must be void of thought or somehow damaged. Such an arrogant and silly assumption. I use words for communicating, not for thinking. Thinking in words all the time sounds a bit clunky, to be honest,
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Mmmmm – what a fascinating post. In my coaching role, I describe the board room, with members, that I thought all of us had. At least, those in my sessions all have over the years. The board room is filled with various members – the committee for your life – that are there because of your hardwiring, your background, and sometimes your choice. I start asking someone to name and identify a board member that has a loud voice – for example:
‘Negative Nancy’, who always chips in and says things such as “you’ll fail at that and you look fat in those pants”. Then dress Nancy. How old is Nancy? Describe her appearance. It’s amazing that each of the folks I have played this out with have 2-6 board members who they identify, describe and dress in 30 seconds flat. It gets really fun when chatting with Nancy ;-). So easy to work from our logical core, when we chat with Nancy who is now this 50yr old fluffy haired lady, with lots of rings and pointy red chipped nails, who smells of cigarettes and last night’s vodka. Suddenly, we don’t believe Nancy anymore.
Sometimes there’s Scared Sally, who is 10, and whispers things such as “It’s too scary exploring that”. She’s in sneakers, has braids, and is a little plump due to overeating because of the constant anxiety.
It’s really a fun exercise, especially when one learns to chat with ‘Nancy’ in the car, when that little negative Nancy, or critical Bob, or throw caution to the wind Wendy voice pops up while driving along. It’s sure to bring a smile, if nothing else, as it’s easy to feel a sense of crazy, when rolling along with a conversation with oneself. When getting healthier in any of the areas, logical core gets stronger. May start with “thanks Nancy, I’ll take that into consideration”. As the realization that Nancy’s value is declining, “take a hike down a large hole, Nancy” might come into play.
Mmmmmm. I guess I hear that inner voice. Oh, make that a whole boardroom full. I don’t just hear them, I smell them, see them, chat with them lol.
Thank you for this awesome article that opened my eyes to the fact that Not Everyone Has An Internal Monologue.
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You don’t have to have an internal monologue for that to be a useful strategy. I always understood internal monologue voiceovers in shows perfectly well, even though I didn’t have an internal voice. It might be the same with some of those clients – even without hearing an actual voice, if I was asked what various parts of me were asking me to do, I would play along and construct sentences that closely approximate the general spirit of my thoughts. It would be quite easy to do so. This exercise you describe sounds like a way to learn to pay attention to one’s thoughts, which anyone can do no matter what form their thoughts take.
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The thoughts you mention Sarah, are what I consider to be my inner monologue. I don’t actually ‘hear’ anything, it’s more like I’ll think a though in a sentence inside my head but it’s as if I’m reading it silently and I sense my voice reading it – same as when I read a book silently. I don’t consider those thoughts to have different personalities, but I suppose I could assign one based on the content. It’s very interesting indeed
to see how people’s minds differ.
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I have such an internal voice that I will see a clip of a character and not hear any sound but still do the characters voice in my head….
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When I’m writing a scene I usually hear the character’s dialog in their specific voice. Since I do most of the narrative and description in terms of what they see and experience, they take on the same cadence. I did a chapter with a high-class Englishwoman as the narrator and found myself thinking with those words and grammatical choices, etc.
*****
The woman called Sarah, to whose legs Vivian had clung, stabilizing her as she stood in a moving car, seemed unmoved by the carnage. Her partners, the ones who covered them while they ran for the vehicle, seemed to almost take joy in it, if the jokes and insults they traded were any indication. Only Chuck, adding ‘professional driver’ to his impressive resume, showed any human warmth, sparing her a quick wink while his team dove into the back seats, looking just a little bit nervous. Strangely, that eased her own fears even as her car did things the owner’s manual said it couldn’t under his hands. He kept it from acquiring any bullet holes, but still she suspected its trade-in value was much reduced.
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Great article. My inner monologue is constantly going and it used to be really distracting. I got better at focusing it on where I need it as I got older. That helped reduce my instances of day dreaming as well.
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One thing I’d like to know is, how does it affect your experience reading fiction? For me (no internal monologue), the first read is the slowest, as I have to unpack each of those words to get the intuition contained inside it, and then string them together to get the story. The second time around is much faster. I’m also more aware of gaps in the story logic. Is it different for people with an inner monologue?
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I have since this subject came up, asked different folks about their internal dialog (or not), and there does seem to be a difference in creative imagination for those who are not able to hear/see internally. What an interesting subject! My daughter says she does not have internal imaging, so she is practicing on one small vision that she captured years ago: to see if she can develop more ability.
Suzan
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“Not able to hear/see internally” LOL. It’s so funny. You inner monologue people think we are brain-damaged when in fact we are beyond all that. It’s like people who can only do math by counting on their fingers mocking those of us who can do it in our heads.
As I explained above, I am not an inner monologue person but I am a creative writer. I can create entire tv shows and 120 page movie scripts from scratch via my imagination. I can visualize elaborate scenes. I create characters from scratch and know what they are going to say in a given situation. Yes, when creating dialogue, I hear the words. When I do something involving words, like planning what I want to say or write, I do the words.
But I am just not slowed down by having all of my thoughts written out into speech. I don’t need words most of the day. If I think I need to buy something at the grocery store, I just hold the concept of the missing items in my head. I don’t need to say “I am out of cumin” or “You need to buy cumin.” I just have the concept of cumin in my head. I don’t need to hear “When is Home Depot delivering my package?” in my head. I just get a flash of the concept of Home Depot and then remember when they said they were coming. No need for an intervening sentence in my head “When is Home Depot delivering my package. Let me see…”
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A lot of it may just be perspective because I consider myself an inner monologue person but I am not limited to or by my inner monologue…I don’t have to use it for every thought as I think in imagery and other ways, too, that I can’t even conceptualize into words because of the extensive & elaborate intricacy; at least not without effort. But before I put words onto paper or my computer screen and before I speak, I hear the words in my head. But it isn’t the same as what you’d see in movies as it happens much quicker. I can ‘hear’ multiple sentences in my head in a fraction of a second.
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Exactly why I get no information from videos. They are enjoyable for beautiful imagery or being amused by the antics of kittens and puppies.,
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Well there are documentaries which often provide a shit ton of information on a specific topic, subject, event or people/a person. & Kitty & puppy videos revolve around more abstract ideas if their is no informative content. Either which way, there is potential for learning, in my opinion.
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Hell yeah, it’s different. The same voice that I “hear” (without actual sound) is the one that reads the words. I absorb everything the same as I would if someone was talking to me. I can read fast, but I don’t speed read. That would be like watching a movie at a speed higher than intended and you’d lose a lot of the impact and emotion, etc. I’ll read non-fiction at a faster rate though, unless it’s something I’m reading to learn that is complicated.
I wonder what accounts for the differences. Are we born that way, or could reading at a young age have had some influence? I also notice that some people take to words in general very easily and others can’t remember the simplest rules of grammar despite having seen examples for decades – like not needing to add an apostrophe to plural words. It boggles my mind that a person can see the word “jobs” 10,000 times in their life, but when they go to write it, they write job’s. It’s as if they don’t have an internal framework where words and grammar get processed – the same way that I can’t deal with numbers, math, equations, measurements, etc.
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I just noticed your handle. You’re an author – and have no internal monologue? Wow. I can’t even imagine. I compose my books in my head before they ever get typed. Well, not the entire book, but it’s my internal monologue that processes my plot, the characters, etc. Then I pre-form some of what I’m going to write in my head to see how it’s going to sound first before committing it to (digital) paper.
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I write too. While I can write in my head, I can only do it for very short sentences because I can’t remember exact language if it’s not directly in front of me. You remember exercises where you had to write a definition in your own words so you would remember it better? Well, my mind does that automatically. All language gets immediately broken down into its basic gist as soon as I stop paying riveted attention to the words.
Result: I also write without any preplanning, simply because I have no ability to preplan more than a sentence.
Further result: I write like a conversation. You don’t have to preplan the sentences you speak, do you? I can’t “craft” my writing, so I just use the same mental mechanism as I do when speaking, although the fact that my fingers speak slower than my mouth allows me to do a great deal more monitoring and adjusting as I write. And of course, once the words are on the page, it’s very easy to go back and tweak, but generally I’m satisfied with what my modified speaking has produced.
As for the characters and plot you mentioned, I come up with those by first BEING the characters and imagining their world. The plot proceeds from there in the style I’ve described, as a conversation between the characters and each other, or between the characters and their world. Things just “come up,” the characters move on to one topic change only to realize later that they should have explored or at least remembered about the other one, etc.
I don’t know if that’s how authorguy works, but it is one possible method a person may use if they cannot, for whatever reason, write a whole passage in their head.
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Thanks for sharing! That makes sense. I view the world from the character’s viewpoint as well. Feel what they feel, discover their memories and feelings, etc.
I guess I do “see” the world and events, etc., before writing them down, but I definitely have all kinds of monologue about the story along the way too, doing things like trying to crystallize the plot summary. I want to be able to define the plot/premise for example, to be able to say what the book is about. Not exactly necessary, but a good idea if you’re able to work out key things in advance. (I think I got that from the book Story Engineering.)
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You people think that we can’t do the inner monologue. That is not it. We just don’t need it most of the time. I am a writer and when I am writing dialogue, scenes, etc., it necessarily involves words so of course I am thinking of them in my head. But in daily life, nobody is talking to me in my head all day “You need to buy milk” etc.
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I basically see a movie in my mind when I read. I literally lose awareness of surroundings, just like daydreaming.
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I’m wondering if any of this correlates with handedness, math brain vs creative brain, photographic memory, synesthesia…
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The funny thing is, that after reading your article and watching the QandA video, I am actually confused about whether i have an internal monologue or not!! I experience all the things you both said!!! 😳 I mean like there are times when i hear that voice in my head, but then there are times when I have to physically speak out my thoughts or formulate words to describe the abstract picture in my head. At times of sadness, the voice whispers all negative things in my head until i force feed some positivity in there, but then there are times when i feel so low and exhausted, and just immobile really, almost feverish without realising that there is something thats bothering me, depressing me. What do you think that is???
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You are not the voice in your head
Is time for you to awake
EGO is the name of that voice in your head.
Everyone has the same experience.
Eckhart Tolle videos are the answer that you are looking for, here is a link for one of his videos
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I’m just going to call it friend, these people do of course have an internal monologue, they are just either trying to be precious or are well, dumb. No need to have an existential crisis. Some people are sociopaths, some peoples internal monologues are so stunted they disassociate from them
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Just because you don’t experience it yourself, doesn’t mean that no-one else does. Come on, now, you’re not the center of the universe.
‘Diologue people’ seem to have a misconception that non-dialogue people are like blanks lates with nothing happening in our heads. The opposite is true; I’m thinking a thousand things all the time – there just aren’t words attached to them. I can’t imagine thinking so linearly as to process your thoughts in SENTENCES.
I know the concept of thinking without words seems unfathomable to you, but it’s very much a thing. I mean – intelligent animal species think without language.
Even cavemen had thoughts, even if they didn’t have languages to attach them to.
No idea why you felt the need to be not only so rude, but also so incredibly, confidently wrong lol.
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LOL. People without internal monologues are also weirded out by the thought that other people can hear voices in their heads. I don’t know why anyone needs to have their mind blown by it either way, but “different from you” is neither precious nor dumb.
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I don’t understand how you can think in sentences? My thoughts happen so quickly, and I’m thinking about several things at a time all the time – there’s no way my thoughts could be funnelled into linear sentences. Is life, like, more straight forward for people who have this?
As an author i’m kind of jealous haha
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Are you sure that you’re jealous, being an author? Writing an article, let alone a book seems to be pretty difficult to me when thinking in sentences as opposed to having an abstract concept of what you want to write and then formulating it out step by step without too much focus on the concrete words/sentences during the first draft.
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As another author I’m not. I can[‘t help but think that books written by such a ‘funnelled’ mentality would be lacking in decent characterization. Unfortunately for readers with a similarly funnelled mentality that wouldn’t be a problem, but for me it is.
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I first read this post over a year and a half ago, and only just recently have I realized something about it. I never experienced any of the confusion the OP describes. I never thought it was weird that characters in shows had complete voiceovers. I’ve never wondered why characters in books might have their thoughts written in text. My own thoughts do not take the form of words, so why wasn’t I confused?
Because I can switch between the two! With some degree of effort, I can take my thoughts and condense them into the form of words. It’s not hard for me. My thinking style is actually a blend dependent on if I’m trying or not!
Can anyone else on here do this? How common is it to be able to change the form of your thoughts? Is that a known thing?
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Yes, same.
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I get the impression that the majority of us who don’t have an internal dialogue forced upon us still have the ability to think in sentences if we want to.
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I’ve always hated internal monologue in books as a clumsy expositional device. It never occurred to me that anyone would actually do that, until I complained about it in FB and someone else said they always do that.
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Unconsciously, my mind uses both methods intermittently depending on the topic of thought and whether or not I’m thinking on purpose. Often times I’m utilizing both methods at the same time while each is at a different ‘depth’ of my mind. But yes, with conscious effort I can control which method to use for any thought at any time.
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This stuff is really fascinating. I can jump between different thinking methods depending on needs and complexity I guess. If I’m analysing situations I tend to visualise scenarios and dissect them through an interior monologue as it helps arriving at more precise conclusions. If I’m debating, breaking down or clarifying some foggy perspective or opinion, whether mine or heard from someone else, I’ll usually just need a back and forth kind of interaction and visuals are rarely needed. If I’m kind of testing whether what I just thought makes sense or resonates with my beliefs I’ll sort of wait to see how it makes me eel while thinking it. If I need to arrive at a solution to a problem or when I have break throughs or some kind of revelation/eureka moment it’s usually after a thorough mental back and forth, inevitably with sound. If I need to solve work related stuff (I’m an engineer), I tend to visualise things while narrating, whether it’s equations or even 3D shapes that I need to sort of “force-rotate” in my head. To conclude, yes sound is definitely part of it all. I speak multiple languages, so thoughts could either be in English, Italian or Spanish. If I’m learning a new language I tend to think in that language, but I’ll just hear that language’s sound without understanding the meaning of that makes sense. Sometimes I’ll think in other voices, for example movie actor voices, I guess some thoughts are more effective when narrated with the voices of actors, especially if it’s quotes by them. Here’s a weird thing that helps me quickly remember a long string of numbers: I’ll say the numbers in my head a couple of times and then rely on remembering how it sounded rather than remembering the actual numbers. It works if I need to remember them quickly.
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