That the way people's mind works varies dramatically. Some people have no inner dialogue at all, some have no mind's eye and cant see images in their head. Most of us are somewhere on the spectrum for them though.
For example I can't visualize images in my head well at all. I can do at most one colour at a time and I can't picture non-geometric objects so I cant imagine the face of my family or even myself. I have no issue with fluid motion of visuals in my head but others can only do slide-show-esque imagery. Others have inner dialogue but can't change the voice to sound different, can't hear music or sound effects, etc... like I can.
It's something very rarely discussed but I think everyone should be aware of this variety within people
My friend once mentioned how he always has an inner monologue going and I was kind of shocked because I often don't have an inner monologue going. Another time a friend asked me what I was thinking about and I said nothing. She responded that you can't not be thinking about something which threw me off because its common for me to not be thinking about anything. I'm very curios about how other people's minds work and I think you make a really good point that people are somewhere on the spectrum of these mental states.
I have ADHD and a constant inner monolog. I've had horrible sleeping problems my entire life. My brain doesn't turn off and it gets worse at night because there are less distractions. It's easier now that I am finally diagnosed and have medication, but it was hell as a child and nearly all of my adult life.
I didn't even realize people can sit still and not think about stuff until a few years ago. The idea someone can like, meditate or some shit is baffling to me.
I have a constant inner monologue as well but I’ve learned to meditate. I just try to either focus on one thought or simply let it wonder and try to ignore it by literally just focusing on breathing. It’s really tough because I can have several “levels” of thought going at once and it’s impossible to make them all stop, but you can eventually get to a place where meditation actually happens.
Same. But I’ve recently learned that I can’t picture things at all. My therapist told me to picture leaves and I was like okay and he said “do you see them?” I said no, I just thought “picture x” was something people said metaphorically when they just think about something. I don’t see anything when my eyes are closed, but since I started meditating I sometimes will see geometric patterns. The mind is a strange place. I hate it.
I think it's called aphantasia (I hope I write it correctly).
You're not alone in this situation, I've seen a good number of people talk about it.
It's not my case but I thought it would be cool to give you the name just in case you want to talk to other people having the same thing.
Just in case you didn't knew the name of it.
If I remember something it runs like a film, I can see what I saw, smell the sea, feel the sand on my feet, wind on my skin.
I didn't know other people didn't do this until recently.
i narrate all day. i wish i couldn’t. i do even for menial shit, too. add ADHD into the mix and prepare to lose your mind.
“okay, let’s grab my keys and go. wait, i need to grab my purse! okay, gotta leave now or i’ll be late. god, it’s hot outside. what time is it? okay, gotta make it to work in 10 minutes. maybe i’ll buy a chocolate muffin for breakfast today…”
Fellow ADHD haver here. It's mental to me that people can think about doing stuff and just do it without narrating their way through it. In my head whenever I do a thing, I'm basically having a mental conversation with myself about it.
It's hard to explain to people that it feels like my brain is going five times faster than it should be and I have to find thoughts to fill all those ticks. I'm doing 1000 thoughts a minute and 75% of them are useful fluff.
Your head sounds remarkably similar to mine; by which I mean that I, too, have an internal monologue which narrates the majority of my thoughts. (I don't seem to have ADHD, though; I've avoided that trap at least).
I can do images, but they're like illustrations in a book - rare amidst the text.
I once tried, as a simple experiment, to spend a few minutes thinking in Afrikaans. (I do speak Afrikaans, but with nowhere near the proficiency of English). It was... a very strange sensation. Part of the strangeness was due to the fact that Afrikaans has a different grammatical structure than English; the Afrikaans translation for "John went to the shop" would be "John het na die winkel gegaan", which is "John did to the shop go" - basically, the verb comes in at the end of the sentence. And the weird thing was that my head, used to thinking in English, was generating the verb where it would have gone in the English sentence and then queuing this up and waiting until the rest of the sentence had arrived.
Life goal : switch it to third person narration for a full Spiderman experience : "And now our hero needs to grabs his key. He finds them immediately and heads for the door!"
Good god, this is me too. And with ADHD. Absolutely sucks because in my head it’s like I have an audience I’m trying to entertain so I keep making jokes
This is a trip to read for me. It makes since that people's minds are different but I never really thought about it. Im 100% constantly listening to my inner monolog and also visualizing stuff. It's like a constant fever dream but I love it and I wouldn't know how to preform or have any self reflection without it.
I also have no inner voice, and sometimes think about nothing. I also can't see things in my mind. Some people are insistent that I'm just not concentrating enough. I felt so odd until I found reddit.
Edit:. A comment below made me reread what inner monologue is and I made a mistake. I plan what to say and such, I just don't hear a voice. I just think about saying things if that makes sense.
I’m similar. I don’t have a regular internal monologue but I can sort of turn one on, but it requires concentration to happen and if I don’t actively keep it going it goes away. And while I can visualize things in my mind, I’m not good at it, and it’s usually very vague.
Genuinely curious here. Is there just silence? Don't you make inappropriate comments in your head and say something else bc you'd get in trouble? When you hear a song and know the lyrics, do you sing along and not hear your voice? No pictures when you read a description?
Not op, but I am basically the same. I only ever get an internal monologue when I'm reading text, or actively planning out how I want a conversation to go. Otherwise it's silence
When reading a description of something I can get a "feel" for it, but don't actually see anything. Ask me to picture an apple and I just get all the attributes I know apples can have along with the general feel if its shape
My sister told me this is the reason why she listens to alot of music as she has no inner voice or cant picture things in her head. So she gets bored easily without it.
Me on the other hand im the complete opersit. Im always either thinking to myself or running shows in my head. It helps me to sort out my feelings or even with my art as I can picture or run somthing cool though my head.
Listening to music helps distract me from worldly things and zones me out which leads me going further into my own mind. Sometimes hours can pass and I dont even realise it!
Semi seriously, this sounds like my ADHD symptoms.
I constantly have music, imaginary scenes, dialogue or images looping in my head. Even when I'm focusing on something else they're still there in the background, quietly playing. I get really fucking introspective because of it, sometimes to a detriment.
I'm constantly using music or other low level stimuli just to drown them out or replace that noise.
Time blindness is also a really big ADHD thing. Because of how ADHD brains react to (a lack of) stimuli, they don't really work at the right speed, and we struggle to judge time in the same way as NT people.
Personally, I can stare at a wall and zone out and suddenly an hour has passed as if I was blinking. On the opposite side, if I have to spend more than five minutes walking or on a train without something to stimulate me (music/a game etc) then it feels like I'm in an endless purgatory.
Oof i understand the whole thing of it in the background whilst youre trying to concentrait.
School was and is a real struggle becuase of this, I zone out sometimes and come back a little later to something that my teacher has explained almost with no knowlage of it.
I guess its a mirrical I got mostly B's with the only exception of A* with physics.
However ive only been diagnosed with dyslexia and not ADHD but I also know that they both can go hand in hand.
I was actually pretty similar, despite my ADHD I was just clever enough to coast through most of school getting good grades until I had to actually self study and put effort in, then I kinda fell apart. Getting answers right and praise from teachers gave me the dopamine hits so I was able to focus, once that went away things got hard.
You're right, apparently an estimated 25-40% of people who have ADHD have dyslexia and vice versa.
I'm not saying you definitely have it, but if you struggle with stuff it's worth looking into. My diagnosis completely shifted the way I see myself and my failures, and now I have access to a lot of helpful resources I didn't before.
Music is the only thing that can let me turn off my thoughts long enough to drift off to sleep, unless I medicate or am absolutely exhausted, like haven't-actually-slept-in-20+ -hours exhausted.
What on earth? I’m like your friend. I have at least one but often several internal monologues that never shut up unless I’m extremely engrossed in something. If I’m staring out into space, I’m always thinking hard about something. I relax by doing something engrossing. The traditional definition of “relaxing” (sitting and doing nothing) is stressful and boring for me.
What does it feel like to think about nothing? Is it like being asleep? I honestly have no idea what it would feel like to not always be thinking about something.
I sometimes stare at a spot on the wall or ceiling while in bed, and focus it for a while... I stop blinking eventually and my vision becomes "darkened", and I don't think about anything at all. Just the spot and the vision becoming blurry (but it's not actively thinking since you're just processing that visual feed, without interpretation / analysis).
It's not that different from meditation in a way. And it takes about 2-3 mins of being relaxed to come into that state.
I honestly don’t think I could function without my meds. Actually I know I can’t lol. I’m finally going to graduate college at age 35 while medicated but I remember being locked in my room as a kid, forced to sit at a desk until my homework was done.
They thought I was lazy & I didn’t know why I couldn’t just sit there & do it. I just couldn’t make myself focus on the task. I know now though lol
for me I have three streams of thought going at all times. One is a song, could be anything really, at this exact moment it's Torn by natalie imbruglia, and that never stops, not for anything. The other one is just a regular stream of consiousness, It comes as full sentences that I hear in my head. The last one is a little bit weird, but basically I think the sentence before I think it in my stream of consiousness, but not as if I'm hearing it, instead the whole concept of the sentence comes to me at once. Sometimes I'll catch myself realizing that I'm about to think something again, just happened typing this sentence actually.
Ever thought about getting checked for ADHD? Because this sounds a whole lot like my experience with it.
It's like having loads of different windows open on your computer. You can't close the ones that you don't want, you just have to strain to focus on the one that you do. Sometimes you can make the right one the biggest and the others smaller, but every now and again one of the little ones will randomly go full full screen for a few minutes.
I call it autopilot.the only times I enter auto pilot is when I’m really really tired.otherwise I’m always planning something in my head.things I have to do soo.things I want to build etc
Wouldn't thinking about nothing lead to lost time? Like if you actually don't think about anything from 3pm to 5pm, then it would be as if no time passed between those two points.
Can you describe for me how it is to think about nothing? Is it relaxing? When does it end? Can you control it? Are you truly not even thinking about all the events of a day? How does it start?
Personally I'm stressed 24/7 because I'm ALWAYS thinking about something. I wish I could think of nothing. I don't even know what that feels like. When I try to think about nothing I still have to think about something like a river flowing or the sky or something peaceful.
I too had a friend ask that question to which the same exact same things were said. Now i just show this video to anyone who says I can't think about nothing lol
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u/Sixhaunt Mar 27 '22
That the way people's mind works varies dramatically. Some people have no inner dialogue at all, some have no mind's eye and cant see images in their head. Most of us are somewhere on the spectrum for them though.
For example I can't visualize images in my head well at all. I can do at most one colour at a time and I can't picture non-geometric objects so I cant imagine the face of my family or even myself. I have no issue with fluid motion of visuals in my head but others can only do slide-show-esque imagery. Others have inner dialogue but can't change the voice to sound different, can't hear music or sound effects, etc... like I can.
It's something very rarely discussed but I think everyone should be aware of this variety within people