• MudSkipperKisser@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’ve seen this conversation come up so many times and I’m never not fascinated by it. I have a nonstop internal monologue, it can be exhausting really. But I can’t fully wrap my head around thinking without it

    • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

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

      • EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        I have ADHD too but in my case I don’t actually “hear” any of the thoughts. But they exist similar to how you describe. At any given time I can feel multiple different thoughts kind of floating around. When music gets stuck in my head I don’t so much hear it in there as I feel the presence of a song. So I have to talk out loud in order to keep from losing the thread of what I was thinking about.

    • livus@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

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

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

      • Today@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Me too!! I had my nephew and his wife arguing at dinner about whether the inner voice was real or god. 🤣

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        i dont have one at all, i think, i don’t even have one when typing, which i think leads to a lot of weird mistakes, sometimes i’ll just interject a completely random word, or pickup halfway through a sentence with a completely different sentence, it’s weird sometimes.

        • livus@kbin.social
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          5 months ago

          I can see that could have that effect! I pretty much need it for typing, it’s like an act of translation. I have to write a lot for work or I probably wouldn’t have started doing it that way.

          If someone is talking or the radio is on when I type I will accidentally include some of the words from those sources.

    • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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      5 months ago

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

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

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

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

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            i’ve had similar issues with sleeping myself, and i’ve found oftentimes having something playing in the background will help. Literally anything for my brain to focus on without expending so much energy i’m focusing directly on it. White noise might help, i’ve found rain and thunderstorms particularly good for that itch. I used to watch yt to fall asleep, and still do on occasion, but that doesn’t seem to work as well anymore.

            Lately i’ve been pulling up a yt video and trying to doze off about when it ends, and that seems to work pretty well.

            when i’m not doing a variant of that i’m usually doing some sort of pseudo meditation where i actively focus on nothing. That works if i can keep at it. That or not sleeping at all, because my shits fucked up lol.

          • Today@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Try playing tv or radio in s different language. There’s still the sound but you don’t get sucked in.

            • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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              5 months ago

              i’ve found “space music ambience” to work very well, it’s stimulating but not too engaging. Voices don’t work for me no matter what language it’s in, because i’ll try to interpret it.

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            I struggled with insomnia a lot.

            Podcasts and audiobooks helped me immensely. I have wireless headphones but I don’t “wear” them, I just rest them on top of whichever ear. I turn the volume down to a level where I need to concentrate to hear the words. It’s exceedingly rare that it takes me more than 15 minutes to fall asleep these days. Staying asleep is another story though.

        • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          I wouldn’t describe it that way, no.

          I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m not some kind of mindfulness / meditation guru and have no business trying to explain such things to anyone else given I have such a poor understanding myself.

          I think really I’m just talking about feeling feelings. The monologue might be reporting on sensory inputs “that spoonful of peanut butter has a very sticky mouthfeel!” but there’s an underlying feeling. You can kind of feel the feeling and disregard the chatter.

      • yokonzo@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Mine is constantly whatever song my brain has decided is that days hit. Most of the time im able to tune it out but that doesn’t mean that 100% that songs playing over and over audibly in my head, it just varies how loud it is at that moment

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        For me, my inner voice is muted when I am focused on something, like working on a task or playing a video game.

        The second I stop focusing, the inner voice starts.

        If I do nothing, it’s usually a song that is stuck in my head.

        As for other senses, for me, it is the same as focusing on a task. When my senses are activated, the inner voice stops.

        If I am reading something and I know thr voice of the person that wrote that, I automatically read in their voice and it is extremely hard to read in my voice.

        • FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Does you inner monologue have a voice? Mine is just… Voiceless? Like, pure translation. I never think in “My Voice”.

      • MudSkipperKisser@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It doesn’t shut off, I think visually and through the experiences of the senses in part too but the words always accompany the images/senses

    • Shadowq8@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

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

      • efstajas@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I think that’s pretty normal to some extent, I remember reading that you can kinda see people’s inner monologue on a head RMI based on tiny movements of speech organs. Take this with a massive grain of salt, no idea where I read that and too lazy to find it right now lol.

        Personally I definitely notice every now and then that when I activate my inner voice I also move my tongue etc. as if I was saying what it says.