Asklemmy

54843 readers

185 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS

How does your internal monologue work? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For me there's two separate participants, a 'talker' and a 'listener'. My mind identifies more with the talker, because that's the one that has agency. Since there are two participants, both of which are me, I talk in 1st person plural ('we've got to do ...', 'we thought about this earlier'). I stopped being afraid of being alone after I started having an internal dialogue around the age of 11, since having a second participant in the conversation meant I was always in company.

Edit: Wow, looks like there's a lot more diversity in this than I was expecting

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sunsofold@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

Layers of depth in a fluid is the best metaphor I have.

The 'top' 'layer' is the 'loudest.' It has the word-thoughts. If I want to solidify ideas and plans into an expressible form, it happens here. Almost everything that comes out of my mouth is formed into word-thoughts first, and then repeated aloud. If I want to 'rubber duck' a problem, I do it here. Sometimes 'bubbles' come from below and disrupt the structure of these thoughts.

The next 'lower' 'layer' is the image space. Things I am actively imagining are here. Images, 3D forms, music, conceptual mapping, etc.

The next 'lower' is the semi-conscious. Thoughts I haven't established fully into expressible thoughts or images are here in half-graspable form. Sometimes it feels like something lower pushes elements up into this space as 'important.' Sometimes those things are pushed up strongly enough they press into the layer above.

I can sometimes sense things happening deeper down, parts that are processing inputs in ways my metacognition can't perceive.

Across the whole space is a certain turbidity representing emotional disruptions and physical mental hindrances like lack of sleep, etc.