How to Quiet Your Mind Chatter (2021)

Verbal is usually when mulling over options, like what to get for dinner.

Same thing.

Say, how to go from place A to place B, if you've never travelled that route. But you know how things are laid out. Some people really struggle with this by the way.

The verbalized "thoughts" come after the fact. They thought already exists and then you put it into words to yourself. The verbalization can be confused for thinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network

I know a little Spanish and a tiny bit of German and I can purposely think in those languages, but I’m way too limited in what I can express that it takes a lot of conscious effort. The really fun thing that I’m not sure is normal is that I can very easily switch my monologue to different accents which sound (as I perceive it in my mind) identical to real ones I’ve heard for long enough to replicate. I’m quite good at doing different accents in real life so I expect that’s linked.

The extra effort required is strange, considering the research showing that internally vocalized thoughts are reflexively subvocalized by the associated muscles. The only difference between thinking and speaking should thus be the increase in amplitude and precision of muscle movement required to make the vocalization intelligible. Is that alone enough to so greatly impact the ability to think? Or could the brain be deceiving itself in whether its vocalized thoughts are in fact complete English words?

Perhaps there's something to be seen from the fact that I find myself automatically inserting filler words even when trying to dictate these raw thoughts to a recording. I'm fairly sure I don't use them in my internal thoughts, and whenever I use one when dictating those thoughts, it feels like my train of thought comes to a halt. Perhaps, when I need to take time to consider something abstract that cannot be vocalized, my internal vocalization is able to pause without me noticing, but audible speaking reflexively fills in the silence in a manner disruptive to thinking?

This all contrasts with my writing of this comment, where my typing is far slower and more measured than my thinking, such that I'm jumping between sentences to insert new thoughts related to something I've already written and delete what now feels unimportant. And the process of handwriting is again different, being even slower and very limited in the ability to modify what's already written. I gather, then, that these are all distinct "modes" of the brain putting thoughts into language, each with different levels of perceived difficulty, actual words per minute, and resulting quality/linguistic register.

Edit: clarity

Oh, unless it’s musical. Then it’s music. But I can visualize that too.

My personal experience is similar to GP. My thoughts are very non-linear a jumble of images, emotions, sensations, sounds, colors, and intuitions. Organization into anything resembling a coherent sentence takes conscious effort.

But there are words mixed into that jumble somewhere, and I experienced a tipping point during language immersion / acquisition where I realized those words were no longer in my native tongue. It was around the time I started dreaming in the other language.

It could be related to your dopamine regulation or to anything traumatizing which happened to you in the past that you haven't fully integrated yet. Out of curiosity does this seem like a possibility?

Suppose as you were growing up you and your feelings were always invalidated. You may have learned to try to repress them. But I hear that when we try to quiet our feelings they only get louder. The limbic system is said to want emotions. If you trained yourself to push down your feelings instead of e.g. inviting them with curiosity then they don't just disappear.. you may need to relate to them in an emotionally welcoming/safe state in order to resolve them. But it can be scary if you never felt safe feeling your own feelings, e.g. due to what may have been modeled for you by a parent.

Not only that, my internal voice has become much quieter with age. And I have learned more and more extroverted behaviors during the same time.

I’m the same in that respect, but I grew up bilangually, so I always wondered if that has caused my brain to think more independently of language than other people. On the other hand, I spend a lot of time mulling in my head what I will say/write to other people, which results in a lot of internal monologue.

This has been my experience as I've learned to stop thinking in words. I realized at one point that words are learned; which means that there was a point where you were thinking without them, before you learned language.

I've done a lot of work on myself with therapy and meditation and learned to think without words. And what I've noticed is that when I think with words, they occur AFTER what I'd call sensational thinking; thinking without words is a full-body sensational experience for me and not something that only occurs in a slice of the mind like a vapid calculation.

>mind chatter

A few times I've experienced acting without any chatter. A pure quietness. It's wonderful.

I've been working on myself to make this a permanent thing.

I'm a very 'verbal' thinker, but not all thoughts and mental processes are verbalised by a long shot. In fact it's probably a small minority, but a very noticeable one so it sometimes seems like a dominant mode when on reflection it really isn't. Much of the time it's more like a post-hoc commentary.

I often think things through verbally when I'm working through a tricky problem or issue, but even then I'm not sure to what extent the verbalising is post-hoc construction. I suspect there's a kind of feedback loop in those cases where the mental model is essentially unconscious, it's output is processed to generate a verbalisation, that process imposes a kind of structure and grammatical formalisation of the idea or thought, and that informs further modification of the model.

I've often said, and head it said, that if you have a tricky problem it helps to find someone and explain the problem to them. Often by the time you've explained it, you've figured out the solution. Having to structure the problem in such a way that you can explain it is a kind of analytical discipline that helps think it through. For me verbalising internally is helpful in that way, but it's not the only way I think. If it were playing reaction sports that require some strategising and analysis of your opponent's moves would be impossible because it would be too slow.

I don‘t know why i wrote this, but your „mind-chatter“ and „white noise“ made me think here is a good place to jump in and see if anyone has anything to say to this… don‘t know… i am just exhausted…

Fwiw, while i do imagine thinking in words is slower than non-words, i myself have an inner monologue and it is far from... structured when typically active while i'm thinking. It sounds much more like the mutterings of an insane person. Ie while i'm chewing on a problem the majority of my thoughts are without form - but sprinkled in between them are voiced words. Sometimes a run of words, sometimes a single word, often nothing at all.

Similarly while i think best when i talk out loud to myself, what i verbally express are structured quite similar to my inner voice ramblings. They are trains of thought weaving back and forth almost without meaning. Large gaps of jumps, usually cutting myself off mid sentence.

> I think there might be some correlation between this and being introverted, socializing is exhausting for me because the translator is not well trained as I don't use it while thinking, and it has to run at 100%. I've talked with my better half about this and she said it's easy for her because the sentences are already there and it takes zero effort to say them, which aligns with my theory.

I struggle immensely with socializing as well. Unsure if it's related, but i tend to talk _too_ much. It's like i always push the conversation, and i have to fight not to talk. That or i forget my points/etc. Despite talking heavily, i dislike most socialization. I often leave conversations wishing i had said nothing.

Seems we go from reading out loud, to reading in our heads (internally-vocalising), but you can continue and read without the internal-vocalisation. I can do it a bit, but under test conditions I only picked up about half of what I would do when I read to myself in my head.

Amazing how different people's headspaces are.

I just mean the idea itself is absurd. Obviously nothing in your mind is making sounds.

If you just mean "imagining sounds" I would still question what it actually means.

Maybe they're both the same thing (inner monologue that makes imagined sounds, vs inner monologue that doesnt make imagined sounds)

For me it's all visual / mechanical, kind of like playing with Legos. No 'inner voices' are involved; though sometimes I will sort of internally mutter to myself, 'okay, let's get to work' at the start. For example if I read the word 'seventy-two' I visualize the decimal numbers '72' as an image.

I read a lot of scientific and technical literature, and I've found that trying to verbalize it isn't of much use and just leads to confusion. In contrast, I will 'hear voices' when reading a work of fiction but only when it's dialogue.

The "inner voice" is absolutely a real voice, as real as my own; and it's not necessarily the only voice. The voices are not auditory hallucinations—they are very distinctly discernible from sounds I'd hear with my ears.

I have learned how to think without this voice and I prefer doing so immensely, as the voice is akin to vapid calculation, while thinking without it is a sensational experience with feelings and is a much more enjoyable experience, extending beyond the location of where I hear the inner voice and goes as far experiencing sensation throughout my entire body; this sensation can be as vivid as physical touch.

In fact the voice is slower than sensational thinking. It occurs after the sensational thinking and the sensational thinking rarely can occur at the same time as the voice; they very easily become mutually exclusive and the inner voice tends to be the one that dominates.

I hope to reverse this relationship with continued work. Thinking without an inner voice is a much more enjoyable life for me.

We still teach children to read aloud, and it takes a bit of effort for them to switch over to reading silently, often with an intermediate phase of silently moving the lips.

Not being "neurotypical" whatever the fuck that means, has become SUPER trendy. Out of nowhere, suddenly everyone has a mental disorder.

I don't fucking buy it.

i dont think people have some kind of mental sign language to represent every possible concept they have ever experienced. thats what language is for.

Or possibly he just has a radically different way to bring all of his own self together.

What if he were to sit in the morning to write down a plan of what he'll do in the afternoon with the idea that he'd do it?

What if he didn't even write it?

My point is, it is conceivable that your friend has some odd wiring to the parts of his brain which process language. It'd be interesting to get him to an fMRI and see whether the language is processed somewhere completely different to normal people - why not even in the cerebellum.

I wonder why you consider it a net-negative?

In my own experience, having become more adept at using it, may I suggest you just need more practice?

Personally, learning to "turn it off" (or giving a rest) and even moreso learning about the limitations of such language-centric mindsets; being able to "put the language down" and pick it back up when needed (so to say) has allowed me to cancel out the negative aspects.

1: as someone that got diagnosed in adult age, I am now aware of my talents and shortcomings, and all the things I have struggled with. I keep reading of kids on Ritalin that grow to hate their parents for having put them on medication, quit it, and find themselves completely lost in life. They have no idea how dysfunctional they are. They've never had a chance to experience how debilitating it can be.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html

This is the exact thing I said that had my therapist wonder whether I have ADHD.

I am a brilliant software engineer, my employers have always been pleased with my performance, yet my hard disk is full of hundreds of great ideas I have started and never finished. I have never in my life been able to stay on the same idea for more than 3 coding session. The last side project I worked on that I am proud of has been written 19 years ago, as a teenager, while pumped full of alcohol, cigarettes and weed.

I have started medication, and I am slowly starting to pick up the pieces, writing some code in my spare time (I just finished writing my first Emacs config) but unlearning that I am a failure at motivation will not be easy.

- Growing up, it took me longer than the average to pick up social rules and customs "by mere contact". As a result I didn't make any friends at all during school, and only 3 at highschool. I only started "growing out of it" when I reached University. I still struggle with some social norms. I am a bit of a people pleaser, and I avoid conflict too much.

- Keeping in touch with those few friends and even my own family is something I struggle with a lot - "Out of sight, out of mind" is more literal. I have to "plan" keeping in contact with people, including my mum.

- I have "Time blindness". Time has an immaterial quality for everyone, but in my case it is quite literal. I was often late, and never can tell how much time things take. I need to use a physical object, like an agenda, to transform daily planning into "a puzzle", something I can "solve" with spatial skills. I must have my agenda open in front of me all the time.

The way I things I usually end up binging through the entire book (or series) over several days. If, however, my reading spree is interrupted for whatever reason, I can just forget about what I was reading to the point where I return to it a year or two later to realize that I don't remember anything about it and have to restart.

The same effect tends to happen with any other project or habit I have. Painstakingly form a swimming habit and stick to it religiously for half a year? Doable, though extremely vexing. Then skip swimming for a week for some reason and the routine is just gone. I've had the opposite happen too though, where I just started doing workouts one day and consistently stuck to it for over 2 months with 0 effort (by which I mean I didn't have to struggle with choosing to do it. The actual physical exercise itself is a minor hurdle in comparison). Unfortunately, this habit also evaporated at some point.

For example, long term (drug) addiction presents itself as ADHD. To make confusion worse, plenty ADHD sufferers tend to abuse and get addicted to pleasurable activities (drugs, food, porn, etc.), worsening their condition. [1] It feels a bit like a chicken and egg situation but the point is: ADHD is a measurable difference in the pre frontal cortex that _needs_ to have been present since birth. There is no such thing as adult onset ADHD.

1: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/545e77cae4b0719cb5ad4...

thank you for sharing your experience. I too find it hard to memorise lyrics, but can sometimes have a full orchestra playing in time and in tune

I wonder if this audiation is a redirection for anxiety or depression, i.e. my brain's attempt at avoiding insanity

It’s not a stretch to suppose a similar spectrum exists with audiation (didn’t know this word before BTW!) in the general public with most people can more or less hear some sound in their mind but having multiple channels of music playing in time.. probably not most. I suppose people who get songs stuck in their heads are more able than most in that regard for sure.

This is great for getting inspiration for music making, as what you hear will have a strong resemblance to what you already like, but will be different in subtle and interesting ways.

Probably different back when I did this daily. But right now... Dead.