No Stupid Questions

I have imaginary conversations all the time where I simulate interactions with the people in my life and work. I’ll say something and then imagine their response and often go back and revise what I would say. This is how I prepare for conversations that might be delicate, where I want to get something across but not in a way that creates negative consequences.

Other people say that they verbalize literally everything, as in, “I need to throw this rock in a gentle arc if I want it to hit that other rock there, oh dear perhaps I should adjust my grip and throw underhand instead.” My opinion is that this is functionally impossible. You can’t drive a car by verbalizing every command as you go - put a blindfolded friend at the wheel and try it sometime! I think one of two things is happening to people who say their monologue is exhaustive: they are only counting verbal thoughts as thoughts and ignoring the sea of inchoate impulses that churns beneath them. Also, I think any time we turn our attention to our thoughts themselves, those thoughts become verbal. To say it another way, any thought you want to think about you have to first pin down and define. You render it in words by directing your attention to it. I believe this leads people to believe that all their thoughts are verbal because all the thoughts they’ve looked at are always verbal.

But I’d say this to those folks: have you ever forgotten the right word for something? There it is on the tip of your tongue but the word won’t come. This happens to everyone. And you’re clearly able to think about the whatness of the thing even in absence of the right word.

I can offer you a very small example of a difference in thinking that I experience.

I’m a grown ass man and I can’t easily tell my left from right. The best example of this is when I’m gaming and the tutorial tells me to press ‘left thumb stick’, I usually fuck it up. It took me a long time and a lot of thinking on it to realise what was going on. For me, left and right is not instinctive like up or down, but rather, it’s either a feeling, or not a feeling.

The reason for this is because when I was 5 I nearly lost my left index finger in an accident. It was reattached, but during the healing process I was constantly told my left finger was the one I hurt, so I literally learnt left from right as ‘injury’ or ‘no injury’, which I then attributed to as ‘hurt’ or ‘not hurt’.

So now, when I have to choose left or right, my brain has to remember an injury and where it was, then kind of feel that injury and tell myself that yes, I feel it so that’s left, or no, I feel nothing so that’s right. These steps take more time than a normal person’s automatic reaction to left or right direction.

Imagine someone touching you and saying, “does this hurt”. It takes time to figure out if it hurts or not and then reply. Thats what I’m doing every time I need to identify left or right, and if there’s no time for that, like “quick, make a right turn here”, I’m forced to guess.

And there is no way for me to unlearn this.

We do actually know quite a bit about the Internal Monologue and other forms of intrapersonal communication.

There isn’t one single use for it or benefit of it (in the same way water has many uses)

I have an external monologue!.. Yeah, I just never stop talking

Peasant...Go quadraphonic or go home!!!

Me, too! No I don’t! SHUT UP, STEVE. NO ONE ASKED YOU.

Yeah, language is an added analytical layer on top of our thoughts. We are clearly able to have thoughts without language (feral children for example are able to process their environment, plan and predict). But language adds a formality to it. Not to challenge Chomsky on his own turf but I don’t see how this can be separated from communication, since communication is how we acquire language. Does he really posit that even a feral child will have its own internal set of mouth sounds for organizing thoughts, even when it never speaks those to anyone? Seems backwards.

One of the "constantly" group here. It's a bit more like having someone to talk to all the time who is also me. I can turn it off, but it has to be a concentrated effort and as soon as I'm not concentrated on keeping it silent it comes back.

I've spent many years wondering at the nature of the little voice, especially after I learned that not everyone has it. It's not controlling or contradictory, it's a bit more like a narrator for my feelings and a driving point for logic.

I've come to the conclusion that what it actually is is my subconscious manifesting as a conversational partner. Kind of like an avatar that represents the part of me that isn't the literal point of consciousness inside my head. Make of that what you will.

Don't get me wrong, I still think in pictures and non-verbal inclinations. That doesn't really go away either. But it's like having a narrator alongside it that also speaks in the first person.

My experience is the same as yours. I have an inner monologue, but it is not constant. My thoughts do not always come in the form of words.

In fact, I would say that wordless thoughts are my default and the IM comes when I am trying to figure something out.

Same. Kind of both. When I'm doing like a Jimmy neutron brain blast, it's all pictures and like.. 3d models in my brain.

it never off, annoying af

Do you think we had internal monologue before having language?

So I'm one of those people without an internal monologue ( but I can choose to subvocalize if I want).

I don't know if this will help you understand but for me everything is quiet. All the time. I don't say to myself "I should take a bite of the apple" - I just take a bite. As I type this reply out I have not determined what the next world will be before writing it, I just write. If I need to build a mental image it is simply there.

When I need to make a decision, is made. I might have been pondering it for some time, but it's not a surface thought. Again I can subvocalize - but it's more speaking to the room as opposed to having an internal argument.

And when I say quiet, I mean quiet. I did not realize for most of my life that monologues in books where anything more then a story telling device.

By which you mean, it’s the part of our brain that we no longer really listen to, so it developed the ability to flat out tell us: “damn that’s a bad idea.” And “I told you so, idiot.”

That is very different from me, I can visualize but it breaks down if it gets just a bit complicated. For instance geometry or 3D relations.
But maybe that's not what you mean?

I'm somewhat similar, but I'm also extremely easily distracted. I can't hold multiple things in my mind for longer than two or three steps ahead. And then anything that comes along to break me out of it and I'm just done. It's super frustrating, especially because I have the kind of mind that bounces different perspectives around all the time. It's like I just want to reach out and grab a thought to think it through thouroughly before I get to the next but... nope

Consider looking into what was formerly called Asperger's. I resonate strongly with what you're saying and recently found out in my 30s, that I'm autistic. I have a good sense of humor and decent social skills so I never even thought to check, but 1) turns out I knew jack shit about what autism actually is, and 2) the ADHD was actually hiding quite a bit of it. If you have questions or want resources feel free to dm me.