this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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As per title, I am curious. How does your mind / your thoughts work? I only ever experienced my own thoughts, so I'm curious how it works for other people.

I for one feel like my thoughts sometimes are like me talking to myself silently. Sometimes I can even let out a random short sound, which I've come to start disguising by laughing kinda quietly or coughing or whatever. Like it was part of something, and not like an inner monologue almost leaking out.

So, how do your thoughts work?

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[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

My mind works by talking to itself, but it's more like I'm the wordless overseer of that voice. There is a lesser maybe faux alter ego's voice that's employed to bounce ideas off of or used for introspection, to humble myself, conceptualization, etcetera, but it can only talk to myself even out loud. If there's another person present they're only talking to primary.

Where I differ from many minds like other self talkers here it seems is that I have full control over the two voices employed by my ego, and if I stop talking it's silent in my skull. Since I also have Total Aphantasia it's a true void in here besides my emotions and hind brain/instincts unless I'm using the voice(s). No real distinction between thinking in my head and speaking out loud.

The unconscious mind passes stuff it processes to the voices to think about. More nuance is far more paragraphs than worth, so I'll leave it there.

[–] lemmyknow@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wow, I too can silence my mind. I think. Since I often think consciously, I can just stop and enjoy nothingness, which surely is interesting. Sometimes the contrast between thinking a lot and just plain nothing is quite interesting. Can go badly, though, when someone expects me to say something and I don't have anything to say. They must be on their own side just waiting, thinking I'm crafting something. Meanwhile, if anything, I'm on my side thinking of not thinking, or just plain empty, experiencing the akwardness. It's been some of the most awkward situations, when I'm done speaking and they wait in silence, like I'm not done yet. Yeah, my answer wasn't very long, and you may want more, but I'm just done on my side. Do I need to vocalise an End of Line character?

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Two of my friends have insomnia because of racing thoughts, which is just a totally alien concept to me. One mitigates it somewhat with meditation, but the way he describes it seems like my natural state of being lol.

Wow, I too can silence my mind

It's nice to meet another who can!

or just plain empty, experiencing the akwardness.

Yeah it's a fucking awful feeling, can relate. I loathe traditional dates especially.

[–] lemmyknow@lemmy.today 4 points 18 hours ago

Well, sometimes if my mind is too active, I can have a hard time falling asleep. I end up thinking too much or too "hard" and my brain can't rest. I sometimes just listen to music to fall asleep. As I focus on a song, my mind can drift asleep. Either that or I try and just not think, so my mind can rest. Sometimes I legit gotta go "welp, time to sleep. Silence, now" and just be quiet to try and sleep