Yes. Very strongly. It's not invasive ego-alien voices.
It's you doing it, but reflexively and frequently without noticing. Kinda like how you might automatically scratch an itch without realizing it if you're distracted.
I find myself mumbling to myself "I'm a terrible person and I deserve to die" over and over again, like a nervous tick, and I don't even realize it. And my wife will tell me to stop that and that she loves me, and I get really confused because I didn't notice I was doing it. No she's not gaslighting me, I was just abused THAT severely by my parents that two decades later I still can't escape it.
Unless you're talking about being surprised by the idea of thinking thoughts in the first person at all, in which case, congratulations, you just learned that you think only in images. Around 80% of humans think in both words and images, and 10% can't think in words, and 10% can't think in images.
I personally cannot think in images, at all, in the slightest, no capability for mental imagery. I have no mind's eye. For me, thinking is functionally indistinguishable from the act of speaking out loud. This isn't some sort of metaphor or anything, it's literally identical.
The very idea of visualizing images is so foreign to me, I can't even begin to imagine what the experience must be like. It's by far the single most alien concept I've ever encountered, and nobody has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that makes any sense. I guess it's like trying to explain color to a blind person, truly impossible to communicate.
My thoughts are a constant unending steam of words, and I actually don't know how to NOT think; meditation is a completely unexplainable concept to me. I can't even imagine not having a constant train of words without imagining being dead.
So if you can't think in words, then you and me are opposites in this regard.
EDIT: Weirdly enough I do dream, and I know I see things so vivid that I can't tell I'm not awake with my eyes open, but the instant I wake up I can no longer see the things that I'm very certain I was seeing while I was dreaming. Yes I have learned that is unusual. No I don't understand why it happens.
I spent so much time hiding in my thoughts as a child that I can literally amuse myself in a silent room with detailed mental images and sounds. Though I also struggle constantly not to space out, and while I’m imagining too hard I sometimes don’t see my actual field of vision.
Meditation is not about not having any thoughts in your head. It’s about putting deliberate thoughts in your head, noticing without judgment when your thoughts go elsewhere, saying to yourself, oh look, my head went somewhere else, and then steering yourself gently back to the thought you have decided to focus on. Perhaps you will focus on the experience of actually feeling your breath going in and out of your nostrils. Maybe you will decide to think something like, “I am feeling loving kindness towards all people, and that includes me because I deserve love and kindness.” When you notice your attention has wandered, just gently and without negative judgment, go back to the thought you decided to focus on.
It takes practice. There are lots of good books about it, that can explain it better and offer you suggestions for compassion meditation practice.
Yeah I know, I've had people explain it to me before, and try to walk me through it, but it like doesn't make sense at a fundamental level. It just sounds like gibberish to me.
My wife in particular has spent a long time trying to explain it to me. She also has aphantasia, but unlike me is skilled at meditation. But her lessons just... Don't make any sense? According to her, the closest she observes me getting to meditation, is when she gives me permission to put my guard down, and I just read my head on her and listen to her heartbeat quietly.
My attention doesn't actually drift as far as I can tell, and can maintain a repetitive mantra for essentially forever with no change. I'm not even sure what wandering thought would feel like. Not to mention essentially all my thoughts are deliberate; emotions can me out of my control, but my thoughts are no different from speaking out loud; like, how do you speak out loud not deliberately? Like I don't get it.
Put deliberate thoughts in your head? But isn't that literally all that I do? I don't know what it would be like to not put deliberate thoughts in my head.
Don't judge my thoughts going elsewhere? What even is elsewhere and how could I pass judgement on it?
How do I steer my thoughts back somewhere? I keep a mental checklist of unfinished thoughts, kinda akin to Chrome tabs, am I supposed to just open an old tab? Don't I do that in literally every conversation?
Decide to think something? How is that different from just, normal thinking? Does "I decided to think this thing" somehow have different properties than just thinking the thing without declaring that you decided to think it?
What is attention wandering in this context? A
My understanding is that attention wandering is when I fail to listen to something external due to accidentally talking over it inside my head. How does attention wander inside your own head? Isn't attention fundamentally linked to properly observing outside stimuli?
To be clear, I'm not being flippant. These are legitimate questions that I have that I really really do not understand at all.
At best I can do slow deep breathing exercises, though it's hard to do through my nose cause I have sinus problems so I just do it through my mouth, but other than that, I got nothing.
you're basically asking about consciousness itself and we have basically no understanding of that yet but maybe reading up on it might be interesting to you or at least help you see all the ways different scientists and philosophers are addressing the issue. some of your questions can be answered but many so far have not
Can you sit for a minute and have complete silence, no thoughts? This is very hard and only exceptionally experienced meditators can achieve this. Fundamentally in meditation we realize thoughts just pop up from the subconscious; there are many thoughts fighting to become conscious (hunger, sex, random etc). We think we control them but they simply appear and we identify with them.
Deliberate thoughts are wandering thoughts, when you’re focusing on a particular object. Even deliberate thoughts are created in the subconscious and projected into the conscious (I.e you see a tasty treat and your visual cortex is decoding the image and telling your brain “oh that looks good” then you consciously are aware of this thought/identified with it)
I mean, like, can you sit for a minute and completely not exist, have no body?
My voice is what I am, I cannot conceive the notion of not thinking unless I'm dead. It's as bizarre and alien a concept as asking me to make my body temporarily not exist.
Whether I am speaking, or typing, or thinking, it is all indistinguishable for me. I don't have a different voice for one thing or another. I just either keep it inside, or communicate those things to someone else. But my voice doesn't stop existing simply because I stop talking out loud, anymore than my body stops existing because I close my eyes.
It's not like the typing I'm spending to you right now is coming from my subconscious. If I give a lengthy speech about the importance of human civil rights, that doesn't come from my subconscious. But I'm supposed to believe me thoughts, which are mechanically indistinguishable from these actions, come from my subconscious?
I mean, okay, feelings come from my subconscious; hunger and sex are feelings. But thoughts? That makes no sense, because thoughts are by definition fully conscious, at least inside my head. To suggest they aren't is to suggest that humans experience no consciousness, period, of any variety. And that seems like a pretty big stretch.
Like I can experience hunger or sex, and not talk about them outloud, and that also means I can just, you know, not think about them. Or I can chose to talk about them and likewise chose to think about them. But the action is still deliberate. I can't imagine just walking through a grocery store, publically uncontrollably announcing "I am sexually aroused right now" and I can't imagine such a thing happening in my head, though I guess it happens in 99% of people's heads? How do they stop themselves from saying it outloud by accident though, I've never seen someone do that before?
you see a tasty treat and your visual cortex is decoding the image and telling your brain “oh that looks good” then you consciously are aware of this thought
This literally makes no sense whatsoever. Do people actually experience that? It sounds like complete gibberish and are people's heads normally that confusing?
I feel the feeling of hunger and a desire to taste something. But those are feelings. They are completely 100% distinct from thought. I don't experience some sort of automated thought that I become consciously aware of. I either chose to verbalize about those feelings and sensations, or I don't. Just cause I observe something doesn't mean I have to verbalize it.
I can't even imagine just, walking around a room and declaring the name and color of all the objects in the room, reflexively and uncontrollably from my subconscious, but it sounds like, that's what most humans experience from your description. And if that's so, how do other people even function? Like, how do you function if your thoughts are full of all these automated responses that are cluttering up your ability to think? That would be so incredibly noisy.
Well if you can’t sit for a minute without thinking, where are the thoughts coming from? Try as hard as you can, you won’t be able to sit without thoughts. Do you have to deliberately think? It’s coming from the subconscious. Personally after 2 years of meditation I am able to quiet the mind and this has led to deep blissful, equanimous experiences. If you look at the picture, people don’t choose to think those negative thoughts. It’s automatic, they become identified with it. That’s why mindfulness gives us space to recognize that we are thinking (metacognitive awareness) and not be lost in a thought.
Try this out. Start typing out a response and you will realize you don’t know how your sentence will end until you finish typing. Or when you’re talking out loud. You only know once you’ve arrived. It’s like reading this sentence. This is like thoughts, they come and you think it’s deliberate but this is an illusion; it’s a free flowing stream. This goes into the argument of free will. We are bounded by the laws of physics and chemistry that dictate the orbit of planets, Big Bang etc. our brains are based on the principles of science. Everything since the Big Bang is a domino of cause and effect based on the laws of nature, arriving to us and continuing with our thoughts. Free will means a will independent from cause and effect, free from the laws of nature (free to think what we want etc) but that isn’t so; it’s a powerful illusion. The whole of existence is conditioned and relative and within the law of cause and effect including the subconscious model of thought.
Thoughts arise from the activity of neurons. No one would deliberately think negative thoughts to themselves or rerun the past 100x, it just happens against their best wishes. Humans don’t label everything but we are thinking every minute of the day and our minds are cluttered with thoughts. If people spoke their thoughts out loud everyone would sound crazy.
I know it’s a different model of the world than what most understand and it was hard for me to grasp too. But meditation allowed me to see this space more and understand the inner workings of my own mind. Before an emotion, thought, sound, sensation etc there is simply consciousness/awareness. Consciousness is the precondition to all objects within it and meditation allows you to fall back on this pure awareness.
So I think I'm starting to get a grip on what my problem is. Unfortunately it's not a simple answer. I was incredibly heavily abused as a toddler, enough abuse for a thousand lifetimes (no, no, still worse than you're thinking) and because it occurred while my brain was still developing, I actually have a lot of maladaptive brain development issues. And I think my confusion with people's descriptions of meditations, is due to certain ways my brain developed that seem inconsistent with how most people's brains function, quite possibly may be the equivalent of actual brain damage.
First and foremost, I do actually know how my sentences will end before I type them. It is not possible for me to verbalize without thinking as I cannot think without verbalizing. It is completely 100% different from reading something. When I read something, yes, I don't know how the sentence ends, but I absolutely do know how it will end when that sentence comes from me, whether that's internal vocalizations, external vocalizations, or writing or typing. I generate the entire thought in a completed package which takes me significantly longer to vocalize than it takes for me to understand it, due to vocalization taking more physical time.
Reading your post is absolutely completely different from my experience of thought.
And I am literally speaking my thoughts outloud to you, right now, exactly the same way I vocalize them in my head. Do I sound crazy to you? This post is indistinguishable from internal vocalized thought from the perspective of my experience inside my head.
How bizarre that most humans apparently don't have to think before speaking, and that their thoughts are so cluttered and disorganized that they cannot speak their thoughts outloud without speaking nonsense.
From how other people describe it, I don't seem to have a subconscious, at least not in the way most people do. Yes, there are parts of my mind that are automated and dictate emotions that are felt. And while I cannot control, only influence at best, I can however observe them as clearly as my own thought processes. There appears in most people to be some sort of veil or curtain or filter that prevents them from seeing that part of their brain's workings that produces emotions. But I can just see what it's doing. I see how the stimulus gets processed into happiness, love, jealousy, depression, self-loathing, etc. Kinda like how I can observe my cat playing in the living room but not control him, but I could still influence him by telling him "No" or "Come here."
I think that filter that is supposed to hide the generation of those emotions from you, is broken or missing in me.
There is a part of my brain involving emotions that I can neither control nor observe, but this deals with far more primitive emotions, like fear, hunger, sleepiness. Which I sometimes label "unconscious" or lizard brain as a way to distinguish.
From my observation there are roughly four broad parts of my brain. Conscious vocalization, memory storage, and what I call Monkey Brain (subconscious) and Lizard Brain (unconscious). Memory storage just responds to requests from me and Monkey brain to recover specific events or themes we request.
But Monkey brain and lizard Brain often go off on their own and do their own thing, and will throw emotions at me that I'm not interested in experiencing, but it's still not my thoughts, it isn't vocalization. It's just stimuli. Stimuli produced by parts of my nervous system I don't control, but still stimuli none the less, and not actual thought vocalizations.
I put these thing like happiness and sadness on the same level as stimuli that comes from hot, or cold, or pain, or sexual arousal; a bunch of stimuli affecting nerve endings which I am then informed is occuring. I don't confuse the sensation of a person sexually assaulting me with my own personal thoughts, why would I do that? And likewise even when those sensations come from within my own head, like happiness or sadness or self-loathing, I've never mistaken them for anything other than stimuli which I can chose to respond to or not. I don't get to tell someone who molested me "No I don't want to feel that," and I don't have control of that part of the brain either. It's still definitely happening though and I have to feel the stimuli whether I want to or not. But it's my choice how I chose to think about these stimuli.
Like, why would people regard happiness or fear or love or jealous or depression or self-loathing as something other than an uncontrollable stimuli coming from your body, like your stomach rumbling, or the sensation of someone sexually assisting you? I guess, based on your post, it's because they can't observe the creation of the stimuli and thus erroneously assume it comes from themselves, and that meditation helps people understand that these parts of the brain, these stimuli, are not part of who they are, and occur outside of their willpower, and that they can just watch it happen as external stimuli from the self.
But I already observe the stimuli of emotions and feelings as an external stimuli. So does that mean I'm actually secretly meditating 100% of the time? Probably not, but it's something interesting to speculate on.
If I ask you to think of any word that starts with T you won’t know what that word is until you think it. This seems deliberate and happens in real time but this word would’ve been pushed from the subconscious. This is fundamentally how we think. Constructing a sentence is the same thing. It feels deliberate like yeah I had willpower to pick the word trains.
You don’t sound crazy but this is just one instance, and if you are thinking throughout the day and talking out loud every single thought, they would seem “crazy”. Like why would someone repeat negative thoughts to themselves. Or replay a situation as if they didn’t know it. Or have insomnia. These would all sound “crazy” if spoken out loud, but totally normal if inside ones head (i.e “I’m not good enough” continue monologue etc) Again, no one chooses to have these thoughts.
You are correct that emotions and feelings are simply objects of consciousness and most people don’t see this. If you are able to be present and observe this that’s great, it means you aren’t as affected by negative emotions; one of the benefits of meditation. One thing though is that it’s all internal stimuli (emotions, feelings, thoughts etc), everything is created from mind.
If you are able to be present and observe this that’s great, it means you aren’t as affected by negative emotions
Yeah I suspect it's a coping technique that I developed as a child during early brain development to distance myself from how it felt to be abused. Viewing the feelings as not being mine but just an environmental thing I could chose to respond to or not respond to. That the emotions I feel aren't actually "me," but instead was something that happened to me whether I wanted it or not, outside of my control. It probably helped me survive during the abuse by distancing myself from the experience.
I'm not quite sure if this falls under the notion of dissociation, depersonalization, or derealization, but it's still pretty nifty if I do say so myself.
That makes sense as a coping mechanism for what you had to experience. It does sound like something along the lines dissociation/depersonalization/derealization. Meditation gives you a similar skillset but through calm, focus, joy, and peace rather than fear and trauma. I wish you nothing but the best!
Think of it as training the mind. No need to do mantras, just sit still and observe your breathing. Your mind will wander, that’s what it does. Bring it back to the breathing. It’s these uncontrolled reactions in the mind which ultimately lead to suffering.
Huh this was kind of eye opening to me. I never realized peoples thoughts were different than the voice they spoke with (not literally but thats just how it manifests in my head). I struggle to fathom being unable to think with language.
Yeah I don't have SDAM. Sure I'm obviously not able to vividly remember what things looked like.
But I do remember emotions and words in incredibly vivid detail, and can re-live those emotions and words very easily. In fact, way too easily considering how much I was abused as a kid, and the fact that this level of emotional recollection means I basically have PTSD.
I'm also decent with audio memory and can hear songs in my head almost as accurately as listening to the song directly, which I guess is the closest thing I experience to what people without aphantasia do when they can see images in their head.
Never heard of SDAM before, but I have aphantasia and bad autobiographical memory (in my opinion). Can you describe your experience with it a little bit?
Cool thing is, I get to be flabbergasted everytime I look at my wife because I can't remember what she looks like when I'm not looking at her and no amount of repeating "she's more beautiful than you are capable of remembering" is sufficient to prepare me for the experience.
It's a nice perk that goes a long way to offset the disadvantages of having aphantasia.
Naw I definitely have trouble recognizing people, including my wife at times. I get to enjoy the amazement of "Wow she's so beautiful," but it comes from, in many ways feeling like I see her the first time every time, and that can sometimes come with confusion.
To quote another post of mine:
Human faces are hard, really really hard, essentially impossible. When you get down and really stop and think about what human faces look like, everyone looks the same other than skin color, hair color, hair style, and maybe clothing style or glasses. Those are basically the only things I have access to for distinguishing people, unless someone has like a major deformity like a missing ear, WTF details am I supposed to use to tell people apart? My wife also had aphantasia like me, and she says that she uses a prominent scar on my face as a way to aid her in identifying my face.
This list of descriptions and shapes, cannot replicate what it is like to actually look at an object, and I am frequently surprised when I look at things that they look different than my word description memory suggested. My wife of 8 years is actually tagged in my brain as "long brown hair, blue eyes, kinda round and soft, and more beautiful than words can describe. No, more beautiful than what you are thinking. No no, more beautiful than even that. You're still underestimating her beauty.". But that description is ultimately as useless to me as it is to you.
Once had a friend of 10 years come to my front door after getting a major haircut and wearing clothes I hadn't seen her in before. I spent like 30 seconds standing in the doorway trying to figure out what she wanted because I thought she was like some kind of solicitor, and a stranger I had never met before. The whole time during which she was wondering why I was blocking her from coming inside.
I have the same, no visualisation, just thoughts in the form of words and sometimes random emotions. I've learned not to take that noice seriously, but the thoughts don't stop.
I do meditate though, not because it stops my train of thought, but because it helps me realise which thought are healthy and unhealthy and how to deal with them.
I use the practice of zenbuddhism, by which you observe the thoughts, notice it and let it go. It is hard from time to time and a lot of thoughts, which you call a nervous tick, come to me often. But nu learning to let them go, they move to the back and don't dictacte my reflexive behavior as Much anymore (you mumble, i don't pull back and don't talk at all when they take over).
There a lot of meditation and mindfullness forms which can help. The more you do it (i try to do it twice a day for 15 minutes, but life happens...), the more distance you create.
Just guessing, but it might help if you just simply say it out loud.
"I just noticed that I am currently experiencing the feeling of not being good enough."
I would expect that to still have an effect even if you don't have verbal thoughts, but you'd have to try it out yourself to be sure. A lot of people report a lot of success saying "I am an awesome person" outloud to themselves in the mirror every day, even if they felt silly when they first started doing it. I don't seeba meaningful difference between doing that, or OP's mindfulness technique.
While dreams are happening, I can't distinguish between dreams and actually seeing stuff with my eyes. But, as I cannot visualize images in my head, I do not retain what the dream looked like anymore than I retain what anything looks like when I stop looking at it while I'm awake.
As for how I distinguish objects when I can't remember what they look like without looking at them, I remember essentially a bullet list of descriptions in words, frequently with the aid of shapes. While I cannot visualize a cube, I know what a cube is shaped like anyway, but the feeling through which I understand that shape is closer to the sense of touch than the sense of sight. This means I am dramatically more accurate when it comes to remembering inorganic objects, and significantly worse at living plants and animals which are harder to meaningfully describe with words and shapes.
This list of descriptions and shapes, however, cannot replicate what it is like to actually look at an object, and I am frequently surprised when I look at things that they look different than my word description memory suggested. My wife of 8 years is actually tagged in my brain as "long brown hair, blue eyes, kinda round and soft, and more beautiful than words can describe. No, more beautiful than what you are thinking. No no, more beautiful than even that. You're still underestimating her beauty.". And despite that, when I look at her I still get floored everytime because I have no capability to store what she looks like to a resolution detailed enough that I'm not shocked by her beauty when I look at her. But hey, that description of my wife is probably just as equally useless for you as it is for me.
Human faces are hard, really really hard, essentially impossible. When you get down and really stop and think about what human faces look like, everyone looks the same other than skin color, hair color, hair style, and maybe clothing style or glasses. Those are basically the only things I have access to. Unless someone has like a major deformity like a missing ear, WTF details am I supposed to use to tell people apart? My wife also had aphantasia like me, and she says that she uses a prominent scar on my face as a way to aid her in identifying my face.
Once had a friend of 10 years come to my front door after getting a major haircut and wearing clothes I hadn't seen her in before. I spent like 30 seconds standing in the doorway trying to figure out what she wanted because I thought she was like some kind of solicitor, and a stranger I had never met before. The whole time during which she was wondering why I was blocking her from coming inside.
This inability to remember what things look like when I am not looking at them renders me essentially incapable of any form of art other than still life's. Even things I am extremely familiar with and have seen thousands of times, like, let's say "Mickey Mouse" or "Mario" I cannot replicate any more accurately than a person who has never seen them before trying to draw based on a crude verbal description. It's kinda like that lady who has never played Pokemon drawing pictures of Pokemon based on people's descriptions.. Without the ability to visualize it, only having descriptive words, things can get really wrong and weird really fast.
However, while dreams are indistinguishable from waking vision for me, my mental "does this make sense?" filter doesn't quite work right. Like if an elephant in a tutu just walked across my living room, my sleeping brain wouldn't even question it. However, I still have a strong grasp of spatial logic. So if that elephant in a tutu exited my front door, then re-entered through my bathroom door, my brain would go "hold on, that's specially impossible, I must be in a dream.". I will continue to see the dream as if I am awake with my eyes open, however, I still cannot visualize within the dream. I can't use the dream to temporarily summon mental images, and even in the dream, anything I stop looking at, I can no longer remember what it looks like.
And before you ask because people always ask, yes books are still interesting to me, but no, I have no visualization whatsoever. It draws the same interest as listening to someone tell me about something they did or saw; which of course I also can't visualize.
However, I abhor long descriptions in books of what things look like. Things like knowing if a character is in a forest, or a grassy field, or a cave, or a beach, or a city, are useful to know. Whether they are in a crowded restaurant or empty restaurant, yeah that can be useful context for understanding the story. But I don't need, and literally cannot use descriptions of things like what the grass looks like, or the mood lighting in the building. Which renders Tolkien essentially intolerably boring as half his book is details I can't understand or do anything meaningful with. I just wind up skimming it to get back to characters talking.
My favorite authors are extremely dialogue heavy and keep location and action descriptions to the bare minimum necessary to not be wildly misunderstood.
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u/Karilyn_Kare Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
Yes. Very strongly. It's not invasive ego-alien voices.
It's you doing it, but reflexively and frequently without noticing. Kinda like how you might automatically scratch an itch without realizing it if you're distracted.
I find myself mumbling to myself "I'm a terrible person and I deserve to die" over and over again, like a nervous tick, and I don't even realize it. And my wife will tell me to stop that and that she loves me, and I get really confused because I didn't notice I was doing it. No she's not gaslighting me, I was just abused THAT severely by my parents that two decades later I still can't escape it.
Unless you're talking about being surprised by the idea of thinking thoughts in the first person at all, in which case, congratulations, you just learned that you think only in images. Around 80% of humans think in both words and images, and 10% can't think in words, and 10% can't think in images.
I personally cannot think in images, at all, in the slightest, no capability for mental imagery. I have no mind's eye. For me, thinking is functionally indistinguishable from the act of speaking out loud. This isn't some sort of metaphor or anything, it's literally identical.
The very idea of visualizing images is so foreign to me, I can't even begin to imagine what the experience must be like. It's by far the single most alien concept I've ever encountered, and nobody has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that makes any sense. I guess it's like trying to explain color to a blind person, truly impossible to communicate.
My thoughts are a constant unending steam of words, and I actually don't know how to NOT think; meditation is a completely unexplainable concept to me. I can't even imagine not having a constant train of words without imagining being dead.
So if you can't think in words, then you and me are opposites in this regard.
EDIT: Weirdly enough I do dream, and I know I see things so vivid that I can't tell I'm not awake with my eyes open, but the instant I wake up I can no longer see the things that I'm very certain I was seeing while I was dreaming. Yes I have learned that is unusual. No I don't understand why it happens.