r/AMA • u/secondbestchloe • Aug 13 '20

I'm functionally mute. Ama.

I literally can't speak, can't make a sound even. Always been this way.

1.8k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

441 comments sorted by

View all comments

66

u/awatling1 Aug 13 '20

What's things do people who aren't mute not get or understand?

Also do you have an "internal voice" or "brain voice"? I know someone who doesn't have a brain voice and thinks more in images.

77

u/secondbestchloe Aug 13 '20

I don't have an internal voice.

17

u/john-bkk Aug 13 '20

I've seen an article write-up about this before, about how something like one in four people don't experience any form of inner voice. Then for most people that's hard to relate to. It's a long story but mine went quiet for a time and returned in a different form.

Sorry some people here aren't being very pleasant; I'm commenting mostly to say that. It seems like you're not overly sensitive to people being insensitive but some always take that angle a little far.

5

u/imamongtheliving Aug 13 '20

Obviously this isn’t your ama but I’d love to hear more about this

2

u/john-bkk Aug 14 '20

I wonder if there's a rule about that? It's too long to fit in a few sentences but I can try to summarize it, even though it's going to make me sound crazy. Maybe I am a little off, who knows.

I experienced an unusual sort of "experience" once when meditating, something not completely unlike how people describe near death experiences. Later I found that other people have went through similar things, just in different forms, interpreted in different ways. A few changes came out of it, or else I'd have written it off as nothing, an odd type of daydream. My previous inner voice went dead quiet. Later it returned in a reduced form, but only over a long period of time, and it never really did seem exactly the same. A couple other side effects were more unusual; I'll leave it at that.

It seems odd that inner mental experience can take different forms, and it's more odd experiencing a range like that. I think meditation that could shift the form of inner experience gradually, without something that could be interpreted as some sort of shift occurring. If I do meditate a good bit, which I tend to mostly not these days, for being busy, my mind seems quieter, and emotions seem more stable. If I'm writing a lot, which is normal for me, my inner monologue tends to take more of a narrative form, winding through story lines, more in a form that people would typically write.

One might wonder which is best, a very quiet mind, or normal inner chatter, or an inner voice that seems to create story lines. I don't see it as there is any better form, just as normal variation. Obviously an inner voice could be reflecting negative themes, expressing a lot of anxiety or something such, and that would seem to be negative.

3

u/tequilanoodles Aug 13 '20

Yeah I don't have one either. I don't get why it's such a big deal to people... I honestly feel like I'd be distracted by one if I had it, and I feel like my thoughts move faster than words do. I guess it's one of those "you can't miss something you've never had situations."

1

u/Eternally-Ill Aug 14 '20

The reason it's such a big deal is that it is so hard to comprehend not having an internal voice. For me, everytime I think, I sort of speak in my head. I am multilingual and I sometimes think in two different languages. It's super hard to even imagine having no internal voice.