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My partner is one of the most optimistic and positive people I have ever met. One day we discussed negative self talk, and she was like "nope, don't have that", as I was trying to explain the negative self talk. Then she was like "oohhhhh, you mean my brainstorm partner!!!!". Floored me. She just _doesn't_ do negative self talk, instead it's a collaborative problem solving approach. Amazing.

I'm the same way, in that I don't have negative self talk (or an inner voice). I just don't generally stress about what others think of me. I try to improve myself when I can and do the best I can, and think it's entirely pointless to worry about it if you're doing your best (because there's nothing else you can do).

Yeah, I don't really understand how people can have an inner voice. I vocalize text when I read, but it isn't like there is a voice in my head saying "I shall now go to the store", rather I just imagine myself going to the store or taking a shower etc, there is no voice I use to reason about problems etc. It would be so strange to talk to myself rather than just imagine the situations, why would you do that?

And then if you talk to yourself about everything, how do you think about things you can't talk about? When I imagine going to the store I can imagine all the different routes etc in a second, there is no way I can talk about the different routes in a second in an inner voice, so to me the inner voice seems utterly useless at best or it hurts your ability to think at worst.

Yeah I can't tell if we actually think differently, or if we just observe our minds differently. If I frame the question to myself as "do I know the words for what I'm thinking?" then the words for what I'm thinking about instantly start arriving. But if I frame the question to myself of "what do these thoughts feel like?" then my thoughts feel a bit formless and instinctive. (Or if I catch myself daydreaming, I can't remember any "inner language" for hours).

I'm not convinced our minds are actually different in kind, as opposed to just having quality differences in how we perceive ourselves. We can run the experiment right now. Does anyone actually have an internal voice narrating the feeling you get watching a sunset?

Personally, my inner voice doesn’t narrate; it only makes logical arguments or explanations. But it does occasionally seem to ‘go on autopilot’: my conscious focus is on some pressing but mindless task, and then I catch my inner voice in the middle of explaining some random trivial thing.

At other times, when I’m in a relaxed and unfocused state, particularly in the shower, my inner voice goes in circles and explains the same thing over and over. This tends to happen when I find an explanation really logically satisfying or interesting. This is perhaps a less interesting situation than the last one, because going through an argument repeatedly to understand it better is probably something that everyone does. But when it goes in circles too many times, I get sick of the topic, and there’s a distinct sense of “will you just shut up already”. Then I have to actively come up with something else to think about.

In both situations, my inner voice is becoming slightly intrusive, acting like a distinct entity from my conscious focus; and it always comes in the form of words even if I’m not actively seeking words. I think that goes beyond just “do I know the words for what I’m thinking”.

> And then if you talk to yourself about everything, how do you think about things you can't talk about?

The same way you do, presumably.

The voice doesn't think, the voice just narrates the thought. It's optional filler.

I guess that makes sense. But it seems like many thinks that the voice is their thinking rather than just a narrator? Like, I have heard that people can't imagine solving a math problem without thinking in words.

Yes, AFAIK many people who have a narrator don't realize that's not what's doing the thinking.

I'm pretty new to doing proofs, and I constantly think in words while doing them. Are you saying that there may be a point when I won't think like that? That would be amazing.

I was originally going to try to explain what it's like to handle mundane things like going to the grocery store, but then I realized I haven't gone to a grocery store in 10 years because it's so anxiety-inducing. Maybe my inner voice is part of the problem.

Mine's not even normally restricted to being an inner voice. I live by myself, and I talk to myself out loud constantly. It's mostly just narration, but I think being explicit about things helps my executive function weaknesses.

"Alright, smeej. Up from the couch. Let's put the dishes away. Grab those two first. Then let's shower because it's getting kind of late this morning."

I catch myself muttering out loud in hardware stores (which are somehow less overwhelming than grocery stores), but who hasn't seen somebody looking for something and muttering to themselves? I'm just that person!

I thought I didn’t have an inner voice for the longest time because I couldn’t hear it being vocalised. Then one day, while I was narrating how I reacted to an incident to my shrink, she exclaimed, “You have an inner critic!”

I thought about it and tried to develop awareness, because I was aware that my mind generated feelings of guilt, shame, fear, etc. out of seemingly nowhere.

Guess what. I found the inner voice. And it was harshly critical. It constantly contradicted things I did and tried to put me down.

Moreover, I recognised it as the “voice of my family”. I somehow likened it to the way my family members responded when they were at their most critical. While they are not always like that, my voice was always like that. It was like the worst of them in my head all the time.

That reminds me of a saying I heard a few years ago: "Be careful how you talk to your children. In their darker moments, thats the voice they'll use to talk to themselves".

Some parents will constantly narrate the world as they imagine it from their babies perspective. Like they are standing in for consciousness that has not developed yet. Makes me wonder if the differences in how parents do this could effect inner voice later on.

I started going by a nickname as an adult and that was what made me realize the voice in my head that constantly told me I wasn't good enough wasn't mine, but my narcissistic father's.

It still called me by the name he gave me, not the name I call myself.

So now it's under the same restrictions he is. It doesn't have my permission to speak to me anymore.

Does that work? When you tell that voice to shut up, does it fall silent?

No more than my actual father's voice does, but that doesn't mean I have to hear it.

From my family members who are still in touch with him, I hear that my dad sends me angry or manipulative messages fairly frequently, but just like I have all my electronic forms of communication set to delete his messages without opening them because I've firmly decided I don't care what they say, the rest of my mind dismisses his voice in my head as pathetic, irrelevant, and not even worth hearing.

Once I realized the opinions of that voice deserved to be regarded with contempt--specifically contempt, and _very_ occasionally pity--it became much easier not to be their victim.

> I know now I do have an inner critic. It just speaks in my body with emotions like guilt and gut wrenching shame.

This is not exact science, I would say. It is good to have a basic understanding of plenitude of voices, some of them being delicate and fragile, some aggressive and dominating in nature and try to make ever better distinctions (which is which? which part of my behavior is which voice?). It is not that there is only me and my Inner Critic inside me. It is most likely that shame you're feeling after performance comes from a delicate self, which can be called your Vulnerable Child, rather than from your Inner Critic. Lots of sadness, anxiety, shame, retraction comes from such child-like selves (developed during your childhood and still existing functionally in the repertoire of your CNS). These emotions coming from this child like energy are very often accompanied by internalized aggressive energies critical of ourselves. The picture is nuanced, with many parts inside us, interacting with each other.

Accessing this Inner Child energy directly in conversation (sometimes with less words, more like evoking it and just being with it, especially at the beginning) is a profound experience with far reaching consequences (including, once you see it a separate entity inside you, possibility of taking care of this Inner Child by yourself, inside yourself - you just start to take care of this child, which is in fact you... taking care of... you.) It sounds ridiculous, but it is very real.

> Some of my most interesting thoughts I don’t have the words for at all.

That's a really interesting idea, I wonder if leaning so heavily on language can limit our available thought-space. Certainly a Sapir–Whorf tie-in there!

I find when I over-do it with coding I can't stop thinking about everything in terms of coding related concepts and it drives me nuts because I can tell it's gumming up my clarity of understanding

> I wonder if leaning so heavily on language can limit our available thought-space.

Where would new words come from, then?

> “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought.

thats your inner voice!

Not quite ... there's (ironically) a language gap here. Those words are what I get when I lend my capacity for words to my thoughts, like I'm doing now. But thats a translation. The thoughts don't seem to start in language.

Maybe another way to describe it is - I understand my thoughts before I know the right words to use to describe my thoughts out loud. In conversation I sometimes find I'll start explaining something; only to notice that the words aren't the right translation for the concept in my head. "Sorry, thats not quite right - its more like ... this".

The other day I had a feeling which was a mix between boredom and anger. Like, a sort of judgemental boredom. I don't think english has a word for that feeling; but neither "boredom" nor "anger" would be a sufficient translation of what I felt. Its like that.

Or another example - I was practicing drawing yesterday. I drew a character's nose, but my line looked wrong and I had to rub it out and redraw it. I don't have any words for the shape my wonky line made. I couldn't tell you in words how it made the face look, or how it needed to be fixed. I could try, but any words I use would be an awkward approximation. I know exactly what was wrong with the shape. But words to describe it would be a sketch compared to my mind's photograph. (Except its not like a photograph either! Aah its happening now too.)

Lots of thoughts work the same way. At least for me. Is it really not the same for everyone?

I think it is the same for most people. Consider a child that is experiencing these ”thoughts” but do not have language for them. Anchoring your thoughts in words is a useful tool in order to prepare yourself to communicate them, possibly to yourself. How much you use that tool is what I believe is the variable here.

> “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought.

If you've thought "Hah maybe I don't have an inner critic", how did this come about if not through an inner voice?

Thanks for putting this into words. It made so much sense to me that I had to save it for future reference.

Might you have any additional takeaways since gaining that perspective?

It brings up an interesting idea about the relationship between consciousness and written/vocalized words. In my case during the many occasions where I suffered from shame and pain, it actually helps a lot to admit to myself that the feeling being felt is painful, and thus I can actually move on to learn the lesson instead of being trapped by the shameful feelings and my eternal battle of trying to suppress it.

yes, note that nearly all of our thoughts are subvocal/subconscious. some folks have a more active and/or efficient surfacing mechanism than others though.

and a few folks have an overactive vocalization system where most of their subvocal thoughts actually come out of their mouths. i'm always partly fascinated by these folks (just walked past one today), since i tend to be relatively economical in my vocalized thoughts.

I think this is about subvocal but conscious thoughts.

I probably look like those people, but I wonder if their experience actually is as you say or if it's like mine.

I do talk to myself out loud, constantly, but it's still actually only a very tiny percentage of the thoughts that are in my mind. I wonder if it would look like most of my thoughts were coming out of my mouth from the outside.

At any given time there are at least 6 tracks running in my head, sometimes twice that many, thinking about all kinds of different things at varying levels of depth.

The mouth can only give voice to one of them at a time, though, so it helps me prioritize. It normally directs my actual actions so that the voice that gets the practical life things done can be heard over all the other ones just running in circles around problems until they finally break open.

> At any given time there are at least 6 tracks running in my head, sometimes twice that many, thinking about all kinds of different things at varying levels of depth.

This sounds interesting. Can these tracks all proceed fine in parallel, can you collect and write down the simultaneous lines of thought afterwards if you wish? I feel like I have just one execution pipeline, which I consider to be my conscious self. Bit similar to how I literally can't talk and watch a movie at the same time (even though that is about I/O I suppose), one action takes the whole processing capability.

It's more like background processes. They very rarely reach a critical point all at the same time, but I make progress toward several conclusions at once, including while I'm sleeping (I'm also a lucid dreamer, but I don't know if that's related.)

When one of them does reach an important point, it's like it pops up a notification and reminds me about itself, so then I'll either write down what needs to be done or just take the action if it's quick.

It's rare that they alert at the same time, but yes, when they do, I can just record the statuses consecutively as quickly as I can.

For example, in college, I'd often compose whole papers in my head over the course of weeks for several subjects at once, and then just sit down and write them down in an afternoon.

This was extremely frustrating to my thesis advisor, who wanted to see "progress" at various checkpoints, but I didn't have anything deliverable until I pressed the metaphorical "print" button in my head and wrote 100 pages in the final week.

The whole project was in my head already. It just didn't exist in discrete, completed form until it was finished processing. I didn't write the chapters separately.