Psychogeek

Not everyone has an inner monologue

When you think do you hear like a voice in your head that suggest you what to do or your ideas and thought just come? Early this year, in a Reddit thread an user posted "Today, I told my mom that I have no internal monologue and she stared at me like I have three heads. Is having one common?". This thread opened a long conversion between lots of users sharing their experience. Some of them confessed they don’t have an internal monologue, while others were just surprised to discover that other people don’t. Inner experience can occur in different ways:

• Inner speech: speaking words in your own voice, but with no external sound or labial motion.
• Inner seeing: seeing something in imagination that is not actually present.
• Unsymbolized thinking: thinking a particular thought without the awareness of that thought’s being conveyed in words, images or any other symbols.
• Feeling: affective experiences, such as sadness, happiness, anxiety, fear, anger, etc.
• Sensory awareness: paying attention to a particular sensory aspect of the environment where that sensory experience is itself a primary theme.

These are all common phenomena of inner experience and they can occur also simultaneously. In their study, Heavy and Hubert discovered that the experience of thinking without inner speaking or any other symbols is quite common, but many people, including professional of consciousness, still believe that this phenomena is impossible. Above all, it is often ignored and unkown.

It’s very shocking to discover that people think in different ways than you do.
Several people, on the Reddit thread described that not having an internal monologue is like you just think what you say and feel in your mind what you feel from the outside. They read stuff in their head and organize what they need to say in a conversation as people with inner monologue do, of course. One redditer said “I definitely don't have an internal monologue, and my brain just processes each thing and the right one comes to the fore. It doesn't need words. I feel like describing the analysis would only slow the thoughts down honestly”.

On the other hand, people with inner voice often say something but what they are thinking is the opposite, like this user that said: “So if your boss asks you to do something right at the point you were planning to leave work, you don't think "Oh  f***ing s**t b*lls  what a pain!" in your head while saying "No problem at all boss." out loud?”.

In conclusion, how we all think is different: some people talk to them selves in their head, some people hear their mother’s voice, others can only see pictures or can’t translate their thoughts in real words and others don’t really have any of this.
What about you?