People without internal monologue

[GreekDemiGod]

I think people with absolutely no internal monologue are low IQ. But at the same time, excessive overthinking and rumination is a high serotonin state.

 

[TheSir]

Interesting. Seems we have complete opposite ways of thinking. The thing you described about intentionally verbalising is my default way of thinking without effort. It constantly streams through me and I now realise could be a source of stress and tension. "Energetically expensive" may just mean that using the brain's least used regions is more costly due to its lack of efficiency. I know the more connections a brain has, the more efficient it becomes. It seems I have been feeding the verbal region of my brain for decades and only recently came to the conclusion that other people may not think this way. I'm interested to know how you read at all without verbalisation? Do you just scan the sentence with your eyes and form images? Also. Any tips on how to engage the visual part? I've managed to observe it at low stress states but it is as fleeting to me as the linguistic side is to you. I can't make that part stick for me despite how peaceful it makes me feel.

Hah, we seem to be exact mirrors of each other, in good and bad.

Regarding reading, it's as you said: I look at the words and it automatically connects with the visual/abstract part of my mind. You probably do the same but it connects with the aural part of your mind instead. So one reads by seeing and the other by hearing. Unsurprisingly perhaps, my comprehension when listening to someone talk is weaker versus seeing a text and reading it. Are you the opposite?

I suspect that neither of us will be able to give any tips to the other. For me the visual part just happens and for you the same is true for the aural part. If the automatic stream of visual/aural thought is not there, it's not there. My advice would be like a coach telling an athlete to "just run faster".

It's definitely true that a good metabolic state makes it easier to utilize the weaker mode of thought, but who knows if it will ever become automatic. And even then we must ask whether acquiring a second mode of automatic thought is preferable to eliminating even the one you already have.

 

[Greyfox]

Hah, we seem to be exact mirrors of each other, in good and bad.

Regarding reading, it's as you said: I look at the words and it automatically connects with the visual/abstract part of my mind. You probably do the same but it connects with the aural part of your mind instead. So one reads by seeing and the other by hearing. Unsurprisingly perhaps, my comprehension when listening to someone talk is weaker versus seeing a text and reading it. Are you the opposite?

I suspect that neither of us will be able to give any tips to the other. For me the visual part just happens and for you the same is true for the aural part. If the automatic stream of visual/aural thought is not there, it's not there. My advice would be like a coach telling an athlete to "just run faster".

It's definitely true that a good metabolic state makes it easier to utilize the weaker mode of thought, but who knows if it will ever become automatic. And even then we must ask whether acquiring a second mode of automatic thought is preferable to eliminating even the one you already have.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, my comprehension when listening to someone talk is weaker versus seeing a text and reading it. Are you the opposite?

When I was having bad reactions to starches (brain fog) I struggled to extrapolate meaning from what others were telling me to do in real time. I had to adapt by pretending to understand what was being said, then re-playing what was said in my mind and then reverse engineering it to avoid embarassment. It's not so bad starch free but it seems I really struggled with translating words into practical application. My practical abilities are weak, I struggle with excessive clumsiness and an inability to orient myself effectively in 3d space, especially when I am deferring to the experience of other people. I think this is caused by some form of ADHD. The things that I can't seem to get meaning from are always the most boring and my brain seems to just switch off despite it being detrimental socially. When It comes to concepts and theoretical ideas, there is very little I can't understand, even in a compromised state. It's the domain I'm most adapted to and the one I always had a natural affinity for. However, I'm certainly interested in cultivating the more visual aspect since it does seem to yield creativity, imagination and peace. Living like an encyclopedia seems to be a burden. I'd rather live like a projector.

"I suspect that neither of us will be able to give any tips to the other. For me the visual part just happens and for you the same is true for the aural part. If the automatic stream of visual/aural thought is not there, it's not there. My advice would be like a coach telling an athlete to "just run faster"."
I get you. It would essentially be the gradual unmaking of a personality. It would be sweet if we could switch modes at will.

 

[animalcule]

Well there are a sizable number of people who are suffering from blank mind and have lost their internal monologue completely after taking psychiatric medication.

My internal monologue has become damaged after a bad reaction to several substances and is heavily muffled to the point words sound distorted in my mind. I have to move facial and internal muscles to sound words out in my head. It's very uncomfortable

I've experienced this as well, when I was living in a moldy environment. I also took fluvoxamine for a few months and felt like a zombie. Internal monologue shut off, except for a few repeated phrases (always negative). That was at my worst. I'm still not back to where I was, before. In fact, I often feel a distinct sense of something being blocked or deadened in the center of my brain, or the top front of my head. It's scary. I know from an imaging I had done a few years ago that my pineal gland is calcified. I haven't drunk non-filtered water in about 10 years, so if it's calcified due to fluoride, the fluoride must have been from the few months I took fluvoxamine (I think).

I was very verbal when I was younger, but mostly in my head or in writing -- I didn't communicate through speech very well. But as my health declined, my words started to leave me. Instead I would get the sensations of like ... shapes of thoughts, or urges of thoughts, but no words came along to communicate them. I felt like I must be reverting to some more primitive way of thinking, due to my brain being dulled by depression or toxins. Now, I don't know if it's more primitive or just more efficient, as someone else put forward. I didn't have the energy to come up with an internal monologue, so instead I just got these shapes of feelings.

It's made me find the whole NPC discourse pretty distasteful, tbh. It just gives people an easy way to think they're better than others, a quick litmus test to chuck someone into the "NPC" pile and move on. Or the way that people who ARE very verbal are quick to judge people who don't communicate well verbally and look down on them (and I used to be one of them). There's nothing like experiencing, firsthand, someone dismissing you because you're literally brain damaged and stressed, struggling to put words together, and watching that person slot you into the box of people who don't deserve to be taken seriously. Humbling.

 

[Runenight201]

I've experienced this as well, when I was living in a moldy environment. I also took fluvoxamine for a few months and felt like a zombie. Internal monologue shut off, except for a few repeated phrases (always negative). That was at my worst. I'm still not back to where I was, before. In fact, I often feel a distinct sense of something being blocked or deadened in the center of my brain, or the top front of my head. It's scary. I know from an imaging I had done a few years ago that my pineal gland is calcified. I haven't drunk non-filtered water in about 10 years, so if it's calcified due to fluoride, the fluoride must have been from the few months I took fluvoxamine (I think).

I was very verbal when I was younger, but mostly in my head or in writing -- I didn't communicate through speech very well. But as my health declined, my words started to leave me. Instead I would get the sensations of like ... shapes of thoughts, or urges of thoughts, but no words came along to communicate them. I felt like I must be reverting to some more primitive way of thinking, due to my brain being dulled by depression or toxins. Now, I don't know if it's more primitive or just more efficient, as someone else put forward. I didn't have the energy to come up with an internal monologue, so instead I just got these shapes of feelings.

It's made me find the whole NPC discourse pretty distasteful, tbh. It just gives people an easy way to think they're better than others, a quick litmus test to chuck someone into the "NPC" pile and move on. Or the way that people who ARE very verbal are quick to judge people who don't communicate well verbally and look down on them (and I used to be one of them). There's nothing like experiencing, firsthand, someone dismissing you because you're literally brain damaged and stressed, struggling to put words together, and watching that person slot you into the box of people who don't deserve to be taken seriously. Humbling.

Very interesting perspective. The prefrontal cortex, which is associated with our modern, evolved Homo sapiens brain, is responsible for processing and producing speech.

One of our big evolutionary advantages was precisely the ability to very effectively communicate with each other, which led to better cooperation, teamwork, and thus ability to acquire resources necessary to our survival and propagation. For all the hate the human gets these days, we have to remember that we are the most successful species to have inhabited the earth. No other animal to my knowledge had quite been able to understand and take advantage of their environment like the human has.

I Can thus understand why there would be a tremendous judgement placed on those unable to communicate effectively. With effective communication, an individual is essentially a more capable human, better able to understand, learn, and manipulate the world around them. Naturally, we want to associate ourselves with better team players, who can aid us in our survival journal. Nature can be cruel, and survival of the fittest thus leads people to associate with those of equal caliber.

But, we are not just cruel selfish creatures, for we have developed empathetic drives built into our being. Just imagine, with modern marvels of our scientific understanding of the brain and biology, we can properly heal and develop those with ineffective prefrontal cortexes, to become the rational, forward thinking, linguistic beings that each one of us have coded into our DNA! How much better of our world would be, should we be applying the correct medicinal approaches…

 

[Lokzo]

I like this thread.

 

[Tidal]

I've experienced this as well, when I was living in a moldy environment. I also took fluvoxamine for a few months and felt like a zombie. Internal monologue shut off, except for a few repeated phrases (always negative). That was at my worst. I'm still not back to where I was, before. In fact, I often feel a distinct sense of something being blocked or deadened in the center of my brain, or the top front of my head. It's scary. I know from an imaging I had done a few years ago that my pineal gland is calcified. I haven't drunk non-filtered water in about 10 years, so if it's calcified due to fluoride, the fluoride must have been from the few months I took fluvoxamine (I think).

I was very verbal when I was younger, but mostly in my head or in writing -- I didn't communicate through speech very well. But as my health declined, my words started to leave me. Instead I would get the sensations of like ... shapes of thoughts, or urges of thoughts, but no words came along to communicate them. I felt like I must be reverting to some more primitive way of thinking, due to my brain being dulled by depression or toxins. Now, I don't know if it's more primitive or just more efficient, as someone else put forward. I didn't have the energy to come up with an internal monologue, so instead I just got these shapes of feelings.

It's made me find the whole NPC discourse pretty distasteful, tbh. It just gives people an easy way to think they're better than others, a quick litmus test to chuck someone into the "NPC" pile and move on. Or the way that people who ARE very verbal are quick to judge people who don't communicate well verbally and look down on them (and I used to be one of them). There's nothing like experiencing, firsthand, someone dismissing you because you're literally brain damaged and stressed, struggling to put words together, and watching that person slot you into the box of people who don't deserve to be taken seriously. Humbling.

It sounds like you have the blank mind type of monologue problem. I don't have that so I don't know what it's like.
My monologue is still with me but the verbal aspect is strangled or like the speech is being pushed down. Certain words I can't say internally now because I keep getting an inner bouncing sensation where they just can't pass.

That occurred from taking d ribose 3 days after macrobid.

Taking Myo inositol worsened the problem greatly. I'd describe it as pushing the internal monologue into the mouth and vocal muscles.

Inositol was just pure poison for me. But I already have permanent problems from taking antidepressants such as emotional numbness/anhedonia.

My brain is a mess