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Comment by felooboolooomba | Hacker News Reader

> I often construct full sentences in my head

I've only ever heard that associated with schizophrenia, but I don't even know if that's true or not.

Haha, I found this genuinely funny. It’s called an internal monologue. Google tells me that it’s the majority position with 30 to 50 percent not having one.

Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how people could not think in words, like you were speaking to another person. Obviously you also have mental imagery and sound etc, so not everything is just words. Internal speech is one channel of thought, but for anything complex I would have thought it was mandatory.

> Obviously you also have mental imagery

I personally don't since I suffer from aphantasia. Perhaps I also suffer from not having an internal monologue?! I do think in words but not in complete sentences, it kind of happens much faster.

Look into "worded thinking", "unworded speech", "partially worded speech": https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/codebook.html

See also papers from Hurlburt and others on "unsymbolized thinking" and surrounding topics

"There is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a depth of formless feeling untouched by thought." - Rilke

I have done this for my entire life (no diagnosis) ... but I also find it easy to write stories and books.

Your comment made me pause in the "wait, other people don't do that?" way.

It might be correlated with neurodivergence. But it’s also just correlated with high verbal ability in general, presumably. I find it quite natural to think in complete structured sentences, and it’s often perplexed me why other people seem to find this concept so alien. And no I’m not schizophrenic.

> And no I’m not schizophrenic.

Which of you? :)

Then again, different people’s minds work very differently. My verbal SAT was low 790’s, yet some of my best thinking is purely kinesthetic.

I think I've got this from growing up with a narcissist. Thoughts are constructed and seemingly endlessly whittled to try and create a sentence that can avoid getting belittled.

It's hard to talk in groups, because you have to have a sentence mentally critiqued by 3/4 people in turn, so the topic has usually changed before you can say your piece.

What? It's never occurred to me that this isn't entirely normal, I've done it all my life. I thought people without an inner monologue were the unusual ones.

I'm not wading into the schizophrenia part, but inner monologue doesn't necessarily imply constructing a fully formed sentence you then repeat to yourself.

I think there is a difference between having an inner monologue, and imagining a conversation with another person in your head.

Created a throwaway for this, but is this not what people do?

Not so much imagining a conversation in your head, but playing through a conversation with "the other side" of the coin (be it an idea, plan, problem, solution etc) which are both yourself if that makes sense.

Is this not what the inner monologue to yourself is? Your inner is conversing with your outer monologue. Hard to explain.

Would consider myself to be both physically and mentally stable, no conditions etc.

I can only speak for myself... but my inner monologue is just a runaway train of thoughts that I vocalize in my head as I work through them. There is no other person in there, abstract or otherwise. Have you ever seen the Death Note anime? Similar to that.

I do what the person you're replying to and for me its just one voice or a faint imagination of them speaking. Its me roleplaying as the other person, not like there is a different entity in my brain.

> Created a throwaway for this, but is this not what people do?

I think it's okay, unless you converse online with your throwaways.

No, I've hacked other peoples account to do that.

For people who think in words maybe? I don’t have an internal monologue, so it’s quite foreign to me.

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