Asklemmy

I have a voice that declares something as fact. Then I have a voice that is skeptical. Then I have another voice that is skeptical of the skeptic. Finally I have a voice that wants more info/evidence. I do not make it through all four voices with every thought, and the first voice fucking hates me

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.

No monologue, no images, no sound. Just... concepts. It's a bit weird.

Even weirder is that I can actually conjure images while asleep (or about to sleep, or barely just woke up).

I loved books as a kid, but never understood why people preferred them to movies where you could actually picture what is happening on the page. It took me until my mid 20s to figure out my experience was different to other people's.

I can get lost in my imagination, it's just not visual or auditory

When I forget what I'm doing my brain makes a sound like an engaged phoneline from the 1990s

I usually stop thinking so the voices argue with each other instead of me

Stream of consciousness, very much like Ulysses but even less readable.

Sometimes I just talk to myself.

Sometimes I talk with a random character. I can feel agency (or illusion of Independent agency) from anyome at this point, whether I want an anime waifu to "talk back" or to play out a dialogue I'm supposed to have with an IRL person soon.

And sometimes I talk with my inner companions. There are a few characters I have built stable, genuine relationships with over years.

Btw. at some point I started seeing my mind as a process rather than an entity (or set of entities). And like in other complex processes, it would be strange if we couldn't observe any internal contradictions in it.

For me the internal monologue is exactly the same as my 'external' monologue when I tell people about myself or do something together with someone and explain my actions. So it's always first person singular, for example: "I've reflected on this multiple times but still don't quite understand it", "Okay, I need to turn right now" or "God I'm so freaking tired of this shit! I'm done. Fuck them all". There's no internal split and if I was saying what I'm thinking out loud in front of someone, it'd sound completely normal.

Insults, low humor and slurs are screeched at full volume in the cadence and rhyme scheme of a one hit wonder song from thirty years ago and I just smartly choose to not externalize any of it.

No monologue for me. Just image and sound. For example, when thinking about a situation, I’ll just imagine it as a moving picture, but there’s no internal narration to it. I don’t think in sentences. I just think about the image or feeling and then process it somehow.

I’ve discussed this topic with others before, and they don’t really get it lol. Well it’s equally weird for me to think about it their way, constantly having an internal monologue.

My internal monologue is constant. Unless I'm using my language processing capacity for something else (e.g. listening to a podcast or reading text) then my brain is full of verbal diarrhoea. I'll count each step on my way up a staircase just to fill the dead air in my head.

It's layered.

At the base level it's just a mix of a kind of old tv static and what sounds like a creek bubbling. It's the pre-verbalization soup- textured with sub-thoughts, half-impulses, emotional currents. It's noticeable background noise but not particularly loud.

Above that is another layer of multiple streams of wordage. Just kind of nonsensical whispers that flow around non-stop. Sometimes there are also impressions of images but nothing definitive. Emotional tones are strongest here.

Above that is the focused wordage, or the internal monologue. Usually it's proposed point or observation by one "me" and counter-point or add-on by another "me". There's no set number of "me"s. Occasionally it's a construct of some other people I know. Just tangential rambling in incomplete sentences mostly unless I am really trying to sort something out, then it's more structured. There's a part of my mind that seems to calculate the conclusion to what I am mentally verbalizing that is one step ahead of the words so often there isn't a need to complete a thought. This is also where the music and images play.

There is one more layer above all that, the working space, when I really focus, all the other layers fade from consciousness, words are clear, sharp, and coherent and the back-and-forth feels more like a unified "me", it's also where I deliberately create and manipulate mental images, movies, concoct scenarios and music plays the clearest.

When I'm not thinking about anything, it just plays music, all the time.

When I'm thinking, it's kinda like the reasoning of an LLM, it talks about possible ways to solve something, how things could end, and says things like "oh right, if I do X, I need to do Y".

The strangest thing is that despite me being italian, most of my inner monologue is in english, especially when I'm playing games or programming; and it's not in my voice, it's a generic male voice that kinda sounds like Morgan Freeman.

Just me, internally wording things i want to say/write.

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

Yeah, different brains work surprisingly different.

My base thoughts are non-verbal. Sometimes I describe it like shapes in a hyperdimensional vector space.

My internal monologue is basically just practicing translating these base thoughts into language, to explain concepts to others.

I don't have one...

Sometimes the monologue is so loud I end up accidentally vocalising (whispering) it. I think it might be partially caused by the fact I have ADHD and a monologue like this is a way to keep my brain stimulated (thought wise, but also socially) when there's no input from the outside.

80% song lyrics, 10% how I would respond if I wanted to invite conflict, 5% random shit, 5% schemes/ideas.

For me it's like there's a council in my head, but they're all me. One takes the center and the rest are all around, in the "room" in my head. Each one is a specialist at a different thing, which includes one of them who is always putting on a performance of a song.

So far I've identified:

• A singer
• A problem-solving orchestrator (gets all the others to collaborate)
• A lover (occasionally pines for affection, loves being cutesy)
• A joker (shouts jokes over the rest of the voices)
• 3-5 non specialists that just deliberate about things
• A writer (functions as my inner monologue when I'm writing something)

My wife will poke fun at me because sometimes I'll end up narrating my own thought processes with "we" and she's like "Got a mouse in your purse?"

For me, well its a pre-verbalization of anything I am about to do or say.

Even typing this out I am speaking each word.

If I am getting into bed, I think "I need to do xyz".

sometimes its inquisitive, such as when I debate over choices ranking them over each other, or when I am processing what someone says or does.

"Why did they do that? It could be this or that".

When I was younger I had developed a minor personality split in order to compensate for neglect and bullying. They were nice to talk to, and helped me processs emotions and feel not alone. They merged back into my main personality sometime in highschool.

Mine is just constant words. Constant narration of everything. With occasional music breaks, because there's always pop music going through my head too.

My mind is mostly pretty quiet. My internal monologue is used for figuring stuff out and making observations/giving myself a warning (ie: that person is lying). It doesn’t narrate anything. I only speak first person with myself. I have difficulty remembering my internal monologue so I’ve made it a habit to write down my observations and then synthesize them. Also my internal monologue is quiet and any kind of noise interrupts it.

My internal monologue is usually just like a commentary of my own voice, or at random times I just talk it out loud cause I find it nice to just speak, but I can mimic others people voices in my internal monologue if I felt like it; sometimes, my mind never talks at all and uses visual to think which what I do most of the time, it's quite peaceful to have a break from the noise.

I don't have one. No sound and no detailed images.

Depends on what I'm doing. It's usually one voice, but if I'm trying to think through something or if my ADHD is turned up, I get what I call "the committee." For thinking through something, different perspectives all chime in, and I like to imagine it like some kind of round table debate. I "talk" with myself through ideas, and sometimes I change my mind about what I do because ultimately I know the most sensible talking point is the right one.

If my ADHD is behind it, though, then it's more like a room full of people all pointing out different things at the same time. One's complaining that the noise outside is too loud. Another's distracted by the birds out the window. Another voice is debating what I should eat next (even if I'm not hungry.) Yet another is trying to remember the lyrics to a random song. Then the "responsible adult" of the group is trying to get everyone else to STFU and focus on the task at hand.

I find that caffeine goes a long way in getting the committee to chill and listen to each other. It's not too surprising that stimulants get them all in line, but it's still interesting to experience.

I have an internal mindscape. It's closer to a layered interactive data stream than anything else.

One of the 'nodes' on that is my speech center. Unless I block it, it tries to turn the data stream into a word stream. They then loops into the auditory 'node'. That then tries to process it the same as someone else talking to me. It lets me use all the filters and processing tools I built up as a child. It is excellent at finding holes in my ideas, the same way I would mentally pull apart what I was being told by someone else. It also lets me crystallise ideas into a form that can be passed to someone else.

I can suppress my inner monologue (unless I actively require it, e.g. for writing this message) but generally I don't. It's useful when I need to deep dive a problem. My brain can outrun my word stream, and dropping it can let me attack problems without the limitations of language caging me.

Just one monologue. The voice is completely different from my RL voice.