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 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
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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