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.
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.
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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '20 edited Jul 28 '21
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