- Location
- St Louis
Yes. I almost constantly talk with myself or think up stories as I go about my day. This occurs almost second nature now unless I am actively doing something else.
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I Have No Voice In My Head: The NPC Phenomena
- Thread starter Kokurokoki
- Start date
- Discussion
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- Tags
- psychological
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
This is really interesting to me. I've always been able to generate photo-realistic images of things in my head, even of things I've never seen if I put effort into it. This thread makes it seem like some people can't do that? Weird.
The idea of people not being able to talk to themselves sounds ridiculous though. How would people handle generation of hypothetical scenarios without inner narration and taking the speaking parts of multiple individuals? Do they just, not create simulations of things? That seems... Really odd. I can't go 5 seconds without starting a mental scenario if there isn't anything interesting going on. Then again people do call me absent-minded... Do some people have to pay attention to reality because there are no other channels, so to speak? It would explain how that 'work ethic' thing is supposed to function if that was the case - they literally can do things that don't entertain them without going off into an imaginary story. I always wondered what was up with that.
EDIT: If most people were only paying attention to reality instead of the infinite worlds inside their own heads that would explain so much about why I have trouble with some things. Can I get confirmation on whether this is the case or not?
The idea of people not being able to talk to themselves sounds ridiculous though. How would people handle generation of hypothetical scenarios without inner narration and taking the speaking parts of multiple individuals? Do they just, not create simulations of things? That seems... Really odd. I can't go 5 seconds without starting a mental scenario if there isn't anything interesting going on. Then again people do call me absent-minded... Do some people have to pay attention to reality because there are no other channels, so to speak? It would explain how that 'work ethic' thing is supposed to function if that was the case - they literally can do things that don't entertain them without going off into an imaginary story. I always wondered what was up with that.
EDIT: If most people were only paying attention to reality instead of the infinite worlds inside their own heads that would explain so much about why I have trouble with some things. Can I get confirmation on whether this is the case or not?
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The_Letter_K
Certified Character
- Location
- ...IJ_LM...
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, this is definitely something I've noticed. It's actually kinda annoying, but I get bored when I stop. The process of thinking without internal narration is so much faster and more efficient, basically a paragraph's worth of thought in the time it takes to narrate a short word, that I inevitably start it up again to entertain myself. The world feels much more empty without it. This problem diminishes when drinking alcohol. I can feel my non-narrative thoughts becoming much slower by comparing them to the narrative ones. I assume that's the reaction time taking a nose-dive. Part of why I don't do it very often, nice as it is to slow down once in a while, I don't like feeling actively dumber.
I've also noticed that using internal narration while talking helps focus me on the conversation, and keeps me from tripping over my tongue, but actually makes recovering from a verbal slip much harder, when what I'm saying and what I'm narrating are suddenly out of sync. My narration is all "Crap, this is dumb. We look stupid! Try again!" and my poor mouth is stumbling over "mismanagement" or something, whereas without narration, a misstep, though slightly more common, is usually corrected on the first try.
I'm working on my aphantasia in my spare time, with only a very little progress. It's one of the reasons I can't abide Tolkien, though. He puts all this effort into describing a vivid setting, but without the ability to visualize it, it's wasted text for me, getting in the way of the parts I can actually interact with.
EDIT: I wonder if this is related to learning styles in any way? You know, visual learning, auditory learning, learn-by-doing? It certainly explains why I never got anything out of flash cards. Someone who can visualize the flash cards might find them much more useful than the textbook, whereas to me, the narration of reading the text is the same either way, and making and looking at them never helped at all.
I've also noticed that using internal narration while talking helps focus me on the conversation, and keeps me from tripping over my tongue, but actually makes recovering from a verbal slip much harder, when what I'm saying and what I'm narrating are suddenly out of sync. My narration is all "Crap, this is dumb. We look stupid! Try again!" and my poor mouth is stumbling over "mismanagement" or something, whereas without narration, a misstep, though slightly more common, is usually corrected on the first try.
I'm working on my aphantasia in my spare time, with only a very little progress. It's one of the reasons I can't abide Tolkien, though. He puts all this effort into describing a vivid setting, but without the ability to visualize it, it's wasted text for me, getting in the way of the parts I can actually interact with.
EDIT: I wonder if this is related to learning styles in any way? You know, visual learning, auditory learning, learn-by-doing? It certainly explains why I never got anything out of flash cards. Someone who can visualize the flash cards might find them much more useful than the textbook, whereas to me, the narration of reading the text is the same either way, and making and looking at them never helped at all.
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Aperture lemon
Eat this and you will get super powers or tumors
- Location
- Canada
To explain my thoughts. I have a third eye and third ear that can only hear and see my thoughts. The closest my regular eyes and ears can see or hear my thoughts is when I hallucinate like when I'm between awake and sleeping, though when that happens i don't have control over what I see or hear, so I guess they aren't my conscience thoughts.
Axslashel
I am a pessimist not a realist.
- Location
- Land of the Midnight Sun
I have problems with this too but for the opposite reason. I can visualise a setting fine and do. The problem is that I do that without the author having to tell me what it looks like. A vague description is usually fine but too much description and it starts to conflict with my own image of it. Really annoying.
- Location
- Just passing through.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This, so much this.
I'm hyper aware of my inner voice thanks to the fact that it "speaks" in English most of the time and I'm Venezuelan.
So my thoughts usually are: English thoughts, Spanish thoughts, non-narrative thoughts that I do automatically. I can create and change voices in my head without problem and hear melodies of songs too, if they have lyrics is easier. But smells? No way, which is curious because I don't have that problem with flavors, though isn't as easy as with sounds.
And for images? Yup can create them without problems. Feelings are a little more tricky though, usually the stronger a feeling becomes, the harder is for me to not narrate it in my head, I just immediately start thinking about why I'm feeling like that.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Not exactly in front of my eyes. It "exists" for me about the same place as if I put a hand in front of my face and then raise it just enough that it's completely out of my normal line of sight. It's only psuedo-3D, like looking at a screen; it has the illusion of depth, not the actuality. This all actually changes if I close my eyes: it moves "down" and "closer"; still above the center of my normal line of sight, but at least partially in it, and more 3D. Both of them are actually a little wider than my normal field of view, too.
By contrast unless I'm writing, reading, trying to write, or trying to visualize something I have not actually seen that is a continuous sequence rather than a still image, I don't have much narration going on. That last one in particular is frustrating because it's not uncommon for the narration to override the visualization and it all devolves into wordswordswords while I'm trying to block out and play through the scene.
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- Location
- Just passing through.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No wait, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I do have a problem.
I have problems visualizing two or more people together. Like, I can picture two character in the same space but individually, if I try to put them together they become slightly blurrier and lose details.
For example: I can imagine someone punching another person, and I can imagine the person being punched, but picturing both at the same time makes them difficult to visualize.
WTF!?
This has always been confusing for me, closing my eyes actually makes it more difficult for me to visualize things, it's weird.
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
You're conflating "does not have an inner monologue in the normal course of thought", "cannot audiate imaginary conversations with other people", and "cannot predict the nature of the responses of other people". These are three separate states.
- Location
- The Chaos Timeline
Like Terry Pratchett's Second (and Third) Thoughts?
- Location
- Russia
I seem to be capable of all forms of mental visualization, from audio, to video, to sensory, to emotions, to unformed "thought-stuff". But, and it's a huge one, all of them have a varying degree of difficulty to them, going somewhat like "Thoughts, Audio, Sensory, Video, Emotions" from easiest to hardest.
Video is rather difficult to me, as it is the one I have the least control over. I can consciously visualize something, but it tends to be momentary, but if it happens by itself it can last for however long it wants. In addition, I very, very rarely have dreams.
Audio is the most advanced and the easiest to me, I would say, in that I'd often noticed that my thoughts can often be indistinguishable from actual sounds. It's gotten to the point that I'd ended up learning to differentiate between auditory hallucinations and actual sounds (specifically, hallucinations feel like they're coming from the inside, while actual sounds come from the outside). In addition, I constantly have a "music channel" in my head, and it never stops playing music. It's essentially separate to my actual thought process, and I can intentionally make any thought I have have "voice".
But by default, all of my thoughts tend to be a weird case of "text but no letters, sounds, but no voice". I also have a rather strong sensory imagination, but it tends to resonate to the actual sensory organs at hand, rather than stay in my brain. My emotions aren't necessarily strong in the first place, and I seem to be near-incapable of "feeling" or at least recognizing anger, but I do still feel them, and I can usually recreate them in my thoughts, whether via intentional memory stimulation or just remembering the state.
Video is rather difficult to me, as it is the one I have the least control over. I can consciously visualize something, but it tends to be momentary, but if it happens by itself it can last for however long it wants. In addition, I very, very rarely have dreams.
Audio is the most advanced and the easiest to me, I would say, in that I'd often noticed that my thoughts can often be indistinguishable from actual sounds. It's gotten to the point that I'd ended up learning to differentiate between auditory hallucinations and actual sounds (specifically, hallucinations feel like they're coming from the inside, while actual sounds come from the outside). In addition, I constantly have a "music channel" in my head, and it never stops playing music. It's essentially separate to my actual thought process, and I can intentionally make any thought I have have "voice".
But by default, all of my thoughts tend to be a weird case of "text but no letters, sounds, but no voice". I also have a rather strong sensory imagination, but it tends to resonate to the actual sensory organs at hand, rather than stay in my brain. My emotions aren't necessarily strong in the first place, and I seem to be near-incapable of "feeling" or at least recognizing anger, but I do still feel them, and I can usually recreate them in my thoughts, whether via intentional memory stimulation or just remembering the state.
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Aperture lemon
Eat this and you will get super powers or tumors
- Location
- Canada
One thing I noticed is if I have a good sleep, I am much more likely to have dreams. So try sleeping 8 or more hours, to see if you have more dreams.
- Location
- Russia
It's usually the opposite way for me. The less I sleep, the more likely am I to wake up in the middle of having a dream, and then, during the spooling-up process, I keep on having that dream until I fully wake up.
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA USA
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have noticed I dream more when my blood sugar is lower, because I sleep less deeply then.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
I have a relentless narrative/voice in my head, though doesn't have all the... characteristics of sound. I know what's being narratives, but it never sounds like sound? I'm one of the ones who can't quiet it. Honestly one of the reasons I listen to so many audiobooks is that it lets me damp it out for a while. When I'm upset or depressed the voice makes it impossible to get to sleep. It's just too... loud in my head.
Not great at 'inner seeing.' I can sometimes do it, but it doesn't come naturally, and it usually isn't that clear at all. I don't know what it's like to have it easily, so I may fall into the 'not' range as I don't know what the 'is' range feels like.
I do have unsymbolized thinking, I don't vocalize everything. But I can loop around to having a narrative about things I haven't 'talked' about. Honestly the narrative device seems to be what dominates my thoughts.
I'm not always... aware of my emotions honestly. I can be mad, and it takes a minute for me to realize how mad I am. I've been aware I was down, but then I suddenly burst into tears. Sometime emotion is obvious, but not always.
Sensory awareness seems the default to me. It's weird to think you can be unaware of all of that. Though I can tune it out if I have a distraction.
Not great at 'inner seeing.' I can sometimes do it, but it doesn't come naturally, and it usually isn't that clear at all. I don't know what it's like to have it easily, so I may fall into the 'not' range as I don't know what the 'is' range feels like.
I do have unsymbolized thinking, I don't vocalize everything. But I can loop around to having a narrative about things I haven't 'talked' about. Honestly the narrative device seems to be what dominates my thoughts.
I'm not always... aware of my emotions honestly. I can be mad, and it takes a minute for me to realize how mad I am. I've been aware I was down, but then I suddenly burst into tears. Sometime emotion is obvious, but not always.
Sensory awareness seems the default to me. It's weird to think you can be unaware of all of that. Though I can tune it out if I have a distraction.
E73S
I've updated my journal.
- Location
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Psych major here and hard no. Like, a no so hard that a diamond-tipped drill ain't gettin' through that. Dissociative Identity Disorder is incredibly different from being able to audiate and visualize.
ltmauve
"Excuse me?"
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Um, maybe? Language is very bad at this because you're trying to translate an experience in your brain into something we could understand with the experiences in our brains and it's probably not going to work.
But on to your actual question: I'm pretty sure it depends TM. Basically, there are probably people who visualize the same way you auditate (only when about to sleep, and then vividly) but for me personally no.
To understand sorta what my visualization is like, I'd have to talk about my normal vision. See, my vision exists in space. It's tied to my propiception and balance and touch. My visualization is like normal vision, except it doesn't exist in space. It has its own space in the same way my vision alone has space, but it's not actually part of the space. I can't visualize AR elements on my vision. (Is that a thing that people can do?
The human vision system is built on caching and pretending things are the same as they usually am. Your conscious mind doesn't know how much data you don't have, and will happily take the best guess. No formal brain knowledge here, but with that in mind your situation makes sense.