Comment by lonleythrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lonleythrowaway | Hacker News Reader

lonleythrowaway

I would consider myself pretty lonely, and I do have a very prominent inner monologue. A normal day I have dozens of imagined debates, presentations or conversations on varying topics. Some particular topics have been on the docket for years at a time, before enacting them in real life (finally clearing them away).

The intensity seems to vary based on my mood and wether I'm alone. I went on a week long roadtrip with some friends, and realised after a day or two that I wasn't thinking nearly as much. It was as if I couldn't. Even if I wasn't with them for a few hours. My regular dark hole of "I'll just work for 50 years and then die alone" was not accessible, even if I tried.

I've also had almost the same exact feeling when on a pretty strong acid trip, not being able to hear my inner monologue. That time it was more scary, but also really interesting and relaxing. Microdosing LSD brought most of that feeling back (not sure if placebo though), making me more focused and less sad.

I'm guessing getting to that state is a part of what mediation is all about, but I haven't really figured that out yet.

I’m on the autism spectrum and I harness this ability to have conversations in my mind to improve my social interactions. I simulate all kinds of permutations of events and branches of conversations. When I get the chance some of these get tested in the real world and the information I gather from that is fed in to my next round of simulations. Ten years ago I couldn’t socialise at all. Now I can pass as normal in a lot of different situations. I think I’ve managed to build up some kind of subconscious model of how other people work.

Even when I’m not actively doing this, my thoughts take the form of conversations.

Ditto for my partner. She is constantly doing exactly what you described, and has diagnosed ASD.

I wouldn't say her inner dialogue is centered reminiscing or longing, which is what the article mentions in this study about those who are lonely; more so she's constantly running a post mortem on every social interaction she remembers to build a more robust "model" about how people work.

Before she was diagnosed, this tended to veer more towards paranoia and constant second guessing of herself, and often resulted in a feeling of loneliness.

Post diagnosis she is much more comfortable with these thoughts, and has used mindfulness practice as a means to stop herself from obsessing when it goes a little too far.

I've realized that the inner monologue does get in the way of me actually following through on intentions, and socializing does cure it, but also, social contact doesn't naturally lead to the conversations I want to have, which causes that buildup of rumination you speak of.

The thing that has helped me most with this kind of persistent rumination is to vocalise it out loud. I just use the recorder app on my phone as a "rubber duck". I say something out loud, and it's like it's been cleared out. I didn't need to address another person. Then when I do have the conversation, I'm in control of myself: the topics I bring up are more deliberate and purposeful, because I don't have a backlog to clear, and I often have my ideas prepared in articulated form, so I am a more engaging conversation partner.

I found the book "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle helpful in controlling or getting rid of harmful inner dialog.

This all sounds very familiar, the same inner monologue, imagined interaction later, unfortunate fear and the suppression of those thoughts/ fears on the occasion I do get to do something.

I’ve had a bit of a different experience on psychedelics though. They’ve tended to explode those fears but vomit them up in a way that makes me reflect on them that I would normally subconsciously suppress. Not a very pleasant experience, but incredibly interesting, but due to other side effects I rarely try it.

I'm super curious, could you explain more what kind of experience you had where you couldn't hear your inner monologue? Were you unable to access the inner voice at all, or somehow unable to think in words at all? I'm not familiar with meditation, though I've always been able to blank out my thoughts for a little while. But that's never been my experience on acid, I can hardly stop the racing thoughts for a few seconds!

Do you always have a monologe going on? Say you now put down your phone or close your laptop and just stare out of your head and look at what's in front of you.

Will you have linguistically formulated sentences "coming to you" without pause?

Not while sober, no, I can pause. At least for a few minutes, until my impatience takes over and I go do something else.

I can think without formulating sentences in my head, but that's atypical for me. I'll even 'argue' in my head to help me make decisions!

I've never been in a situation where I couldn't use my inner voice, thought.

I pretty much do. It's not entirely without pause, any sort of flow state will completely usurp it, and I can definitely zone out, but both of those situations are noticeably outside the norm.

Notably, when I'm my loosest and "most authentic" socially, it just feels like the inner voice is speaking directly out, whereas most times it's more like the inner voice is giving instructions to a much less verbose underling.

It's obviously hard to describe, but yes, I had a very hard time thinking in words, but simultaneously I also had intermittently very racing thoughts. But as an example, imagine you're sitting home alone deciding what to eat for dinner. I have quite a verbose thought process where I almost pose questions and answer them to myself, like "Pizza? Naah, I had it yesterday, and it's quite fattening, I haven't worked out all week, I should get a sallad instead".

That was totally impossible to do. I could speak those things out aloud, but I couldn't really do them inside my head. If someone asked me a question, I couldn't prepare an answer in my mind before speaking. And those existentially depressing places my thoguths sometimes goes to were also not accessible.

I expressed it to those around me as "I can't think", which was obviously not completely true, but I think I was so focused/grounded in the pretty overwhelming experience that my mind couldn't really waste CPU cycles on wandering or evaluating what the best answer was to a question.

I too have a very prominent inner monologue, it went away for the first time when i tripped with acid, I think meditation is will give me the same effect but i don't know how to start that habit, every time i try, it works for a minute or two and then its back. When the inner monologue shut up i was so pleased, but a concern i have is its impact on creativity.

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