Asklemmy

My internal monologue is constant. Unless I'm using my language processing capacity for something else (e.g. listening to a podcast or reading text) then my brain is full of verbal diarrhoea. I'll count each step on my way up a staircase just to fill the dead air in my head.

My base thoughts are non-verbal. Sometimes I describe it like shapes in a hyperdimensional vector space.

My internal monologue is basically just practicing translating these base thoughts into language, to explain concepts to others.

I don't have one...

Sometimes the monologue is so loud I end up accidentally vocalising (whispering) it. I think it might be partially caused by the fact I have ADHD and a monologue like this is a way to keep my brain stimulated (thought wise, but also socially) when there's no input from the outside.

No monologue for me. Just image and sound. For example, when thinking about a situation, I’ll just imagine it as a moving picture, but there’s no internal narration to it. I don’t think in sentences. I just think about the image or feeling and then process it somehow.

I’ve discussed this topic with others before, and they don’t really get it lol. Well it’s equally weird for me to think about it their way, constantly having an internal monologue.

Mine is just constant words. Constant narration of everything. With occasional music breaks, because there's always pop music going through my head too.

I don't have one. No sound and no detailed images.

When I'm not thinking about anything, it just plays music, all the time.

When I'm thinking, it's kinda like the reasoning of an LLM, it talks about possible ways to solve something, how things could end, and says things like "oh right, if I do X, I need to do Y".

The strangest thing is that despite me being italian, most of my inner monologue is in english, especially when I'm playing games or programming; and it's not in my voice, it's a generic male voice that kinda sounds like Morgan Freeman.

For me the internal monologue is exactly the same as my 'external' monologue when I tell people about myself or do something together with someone and explain my actions. So it's always first person singular, for example: "I've reflected on this multiple times but still don't quite understand it", "Okay, I need to turn right now" or "God I'm so freaking tired of this shit! I'm done. Fuck them all". There's no internal split and if I was saying what I'm thinking out loud in front of someone, it'd sound completely normal.

Insults, low humor and slurs are screeched at full volume in the cadence and rhyme scheme of a one hit wonder song from thirty years ago and I just smartly choose to not externalize any of it.

My mind is mostly pretty quiet. My internal monologue is used for figuring stuff out and making observations/giving myself a warning (ie: that person is lying). It doesn’t narrate anything. I only speak first person with myself. I have difficulty remembering my internal monologue so I’ve made it a habit to write down my observations and then synthesize them. Also my internal monologue is quiet and any kind of noise interrupts it.

My internal monologue is usually just like a commentary of my own voice, or at random times I just talk it out loud cause I find it nice to just speak, but I can mimic others people voices in my internal monologue if I felt like it; sometimes, my mind never talks at all and uses visual to think which what I do most of the time, it's quite peaceful to have a break from the noise.

I probably shouldn't answer this tbh.

I have three main "voices", plus a couple of situational ones. As you say, a talker that's mostly "me", my conscious self. A listener that isn't just a listener that's essentially my subconscious throwing up images and memory in response to my conscious self. Then there's the other self, the third thoughts, the meta mind, whatever you want to call it.

That third voice is observing the "conversation", and making commentary and corrections as needed. Like "that's not how that really happened" when images flash up that are nebulous. Or "no, that's not who you want to be, stop being a dick" when my conscious self is under stress. Or "go fuck yourself" when thoughts triggered by mental health issues come up.

Plus, and this isn't some kind of bullshit DID¹ thing, I have fictional characters in my head. There's this thing I do when I write or DM where I kinda spool up a virtual machine in my head where a character "lives". These aren't real entities, they aren't split off from me, they're just a construct that's useful. They can be "deleted", they don't take over, nothing like that.

I can, however, have conversations with them if I do a bit of mental prep work to sort of fake forget that it's just my imagination playing a game with itself. I used to participate in some Mastodon writing prompt hashtags and I'd sort of interview my characters with them sometimes surprising me with what they said. Alas, the instance I used shut down without warning, and I didn't have a recent backup, so I lost most of it.

While I was writing that paragraph, one of my characters got switched on for a second and grumped at me. I know it's not a person, it's all imagination. But it is a fucking trip anyway.

Yeeeears ago, I was running a game. It included a deity coming back to life. During the process, I had been wrapping my head around what they'd be like, and one of the players had communed with the deity a good bit. During a session, the player had their character call on the god to manifest. My ass just started talking as the deity. Full on zero conscious control over what came out. It felt creepy but cool. This imaginary part of myself took over, my voice changed, I stood up and moved around, but none of it was "me". My conscious mind was starting to freak the fuck out a little because it felt like the imaginary thing was taking over.

That wasn't the last time it happened, but I've never been able to make it happen. Well, not to that degree anyway.

I guess what I'm saying is that my internal monologue isn't a monologue. Shit gets loud up in here.

Edit: ¹

My bullshit DID thing, I don't mean that did isn't real. I mean that it isn't me pretending to have DID or some other dissociative disorder. People do that, and it's fucking weird

No monologue, no images, no sound. Just... concepts. It's a bit weird.

Even weirder is that I can actually conjure images while asleep (or about to sleep, or barely just woke up).

I loved books as a kid, but never understood why people preferred them to movies where you could actually picture what is happening on the page. It took me until my mid 20s to figure out my experience was different to other people's.

I can get lost in my imagination, it's just not visual or auditory

I hadn't thought about it much, but mine is just first person, same as the way I type or talk. In fact I think much of my internal monologue is actually pretend or planning conversations.

Just me, internally wording things i want to say/write.

Wow, looks like there's a lot more diversity in this than I was expecting

Yeah, different brains work surprisingly different.

Verbal internal dialogue where the talker refers to me as separate from itself.

It's layered.

At the base level it's just a mix of a kind of old tv static and what sounds like a creek bubbling. It's the pre-verbalization soup- textured with sub-thoughts, half-impulses, emotional currents. It's noticeable background noise but not particularly loud.

Above that is another layer of multiple streams of wordage. Just kind of nonsensical whispers that flow around non-stop. Sometimes there are also impressions of images but nothing definitive. Emotional tones are strongest here.

Above that is the focused wordage, or the internal monologue. Usually it's proposed point or observation by one "me" and counter-point or add-on by another "me". There's no set number of "me"s. Occasionally it's a construct of some other people I know. Just tangential rambling in incomplete sentences mostly unless I am really trying to sort something out, then it's more structured. There's a part of my mind that seems to calculate the conclusion to what I am mentally verbalizing that is one step ahead of the words so often there isn't a need to complete a thought. This is also where the music and images play.

There is one more layer above all that, the working space, when I really focus, all the other layers fade from consciousness, words are clear, sharp, and coherent and the back-and-forth feels more like a unified "me", it's also where I deliberately create and manipulate mental images, movies, concoct scenarios and music plays the clearest.

Stream of consciousness, very much like Ulysses but even less readable.

Just one monologue. The voice is completely different from my RL voice.

80% song lyrics, 10% how I would respond if I wanted to invite conflict, 5% random shit, 5% schemes/ideas.

For me it's like there's a council in my head, but they're all me. One takes the center and the rest are all around, in the "room" in my head. Each one is a specialist at a different thing, which includes one of them who is always putting on a performance of a song.

So far I've identified:

• A singer
• A problem-solving orchestrator (gets all the others to collaborate)
• A lover (occasionally pines for affection, loves being cutesy)
• A joker (shouts jokes over the rest of the voices)
• 3-5 non specialists that just deliberate about things
• A writer (functions as my inner monologue when I'm writing something)

My wife will poke fun at me because sometimes I'll end up narrating my own thought processes with "we" and she's like "Got a mouse in your purse?"

It depends, if it's a problem I'm trying to solve, if it's a presentation that I'm going to do, if I need to communicate with someone. Like I thought about responding this, while trying to observe how it works.

Normally there are a lot of monologues happening at the same time and I'm probably listening to music too, so I'm like 30 seconds thinking about something, pass to another something and then the good part of the music comes. I took ADHD meds once and damn, this completely disappeared hahahaha.

But, depending on the thing, if it's a concept I'm trying to tackle, normally it's just me alone passing through it, its ramifications, consequences, basis, etc. If I'm trying to talk to someone, I like to imagine them and interact with myself playing as them. Sometimes it's like yours, two of me separated from me "debating".

My monologue hums.. And when there's some event /work/(or anything like late for a bus or work or something), it starts narrating the environment and condition with counting repetations(like steps, seconds) sometimes counting up and sometimes oscillatiory count(like in evens; 1-2--1-2--1-2--1...)

Its only there if I need to work out something for talking about with somebody or for a written output, but generally my thoughts are visual or concepts without language attached.

Depends on what I'm doing. It's usually one voice, but if I'm trying to think through something or if my ADHD is turned up, I get what I call "the committee." For thinking through something, different perspectives all chime in, and I like to imagine it like some kind of round table debate. I "talk" with myself through ideas, and sometimes I change my mind about what I do because ultimately I know the most sensible talking point is the right one.

If my ADHD is behind it, though, then it's more like a room full of people all pointing out different things at the same time. One's complaining that the noise outside is too loud. Another's distracted by the birds out the window. Another voice is debating what I should eat next (even if I'm not hungry.) Yet another is trying to remember the lyrics to a random song. Then the "responsible adult" of the group is trying to get everyone else to STFU and focus on the task at hand.

I find that caffeine goes a long way in getting the committee to chill and listen to each other. It's not too surprising that stimulants get them all in line, but it's still interesting to experience.

If I'm awake late at night, thinking of an uncomfortable conversation I need to have with someone I can have an entire conversation with them in my head knowing mostly how they'll reply and the best response to it.

I guess it's like I'm two people talking 1 is me the other is me with that other person's personality.

Other times it's like my anxiety is giving me a hidden vision to scare me slightly at the look of my phone on the edge of the table falling over, and I instantly decide to move it. I guess that part is why I'm afraid of heights, cause my Anxiety tells me I'm going to fall. Also why I can't watch Horror movies, my anxiety latches onto those gruesome deaths and spends decades reminding me of it when I'm in a similar looking area.

For me, well its a pre-verbalization of anything I am about to do or say.

Even typing this out I am speaking each word.

If I am getting into bed, I think "I need to do xyz".

sometimes its inquisitive, such as when I debate over choices ranking them over each other, or when I am processing what someone says or does.

"Why did they do that? It could be this or that".

When I was younger I had developed a minor personality split in order to compensate for neglect and bullying. They were nice to talk to, and helped me processs emotions and feel not alone. They merged back into my main personality sometime in highschool.