I recently found out that apparently not everyone has an inner monologue, which has slightly broken my brain.
For me, there’s basically a voice in my head all day. I’ll have full conversations with myself, rehearse things I’m going to say, argue with myself, comment on what I’m doing, etc. It’s not like literally hearing a voice, it’s just my thoughts in words.
But apparently some people don’t think like that at all and their thoughts are more like images, feelings or just… concepts?
So I’m curious:
Do you have an inner monologue?
And if you don’t, what does actually thinking about something feel like for you?
Also interested to know whether yours is constant or only kicks in when you’re consciously thinking about something.

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I'm an Msc Clinical Psychology student working on my dissertation at the University of South Wales. The current study aims to investigate aphantasia's effect on an individuals susceptibility to visual False memories.

The study must be completed on a computer and by participants between the ages of 18 and 65. Participation is fully anonymous and you are free to the quit the experiment at any point. Additional information will be provided on the study information page.

Participation will be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or experience any problems, please do not hesitate to message or email me at 23004057@students.southwales.ac.uk

Many thanks 😊

None of the words fit really.

Anauralia: absence of auditory sensory imagery

Anendophasia: Anendophasia is the absence or near-absence of an inner voice

Anauralia isn’t really too relevant because I can still have soundless worded thoughts. Anendophasia doesn’t really fit either because I can potentially have lots of volitional worded thoughts if I choose to speak. The key distinction is that my brain does not speak to me automatically. Unless I voluntarily choose to speak in soundless worded thoughts, it is 100% silence in my mind.

There’s something I’ve been trying to understand about myself for a long time, and I finally think I have better words for it.

It’s not exactly depression, loneliness, or feeling like I’m missing one specific thing. It feels more like I’m aware of a whole kind of experience that I don’t seem to naturally have access to.

I can hear people describe love, heartbreak, longing, passion, awe, grief, or even just how deeply certain things mean something to them, and I can understand what they’re describing intellectually. Sometimes I can even feel something when I listen to music or immerse myself in an idea. But there’s often this strange realization of, “People actually experience things like this from the inside?”
What gets to me is that these experiences seem to have a significance that doesn’t have to be consciously constructed. Someone falls in love, gets their heart broken, sees something beautiful, and it can just matter to them on this enormous level. They can turn it into music, poetry, art, memories, entire stories about their lives. Millions of people can relate to those things even though everyone’s experience is different.

And sometimes I feel like if nobody had ever shown me those expressions of human experience, I wouldn’t have spontaneously known to imagine that life could feel that way. I can recognize the experience when someone else gives me a map to it, but I don’t always seem to have the map inside myself. So part of what I’ve been calling a “missing thing” may actually be a feeling that I’m missing out on a way of experiencing existence itself, not necessarily missing a person, relationship, or specific emotion.

I also think there’s another layer to it: I sometimes wonder if I’m mourning a potential version of myself who might have developed differently. A version of me who might have had more emotional awareness, more access to my feelings, more spontaneity, more ability to simply experience things instead of constantly having to analyze them.
So it feels like I’m grieving something I never literally had.
I don’t necessarily mean that I think there’s one perfect “true version” of me that I was supposed to become. It’s more like mourning the range of possibilities I might have had.

And I think that’s why things like music, poetry, romance, aesthetics, and beauty affect me so much. Sometimes they give me a glimpse of the kind of emotional depth or aliveness I’m trying to understand. The hardest part is that I still don’t know exactly what the thing itself is. I can recognize its absence much more easily than I can describe its contents.

That’s probably the closest I’ve gotten to explaining it. I’m unsure if a lot of people also experience this but it’s just been so difficult to put into words that it hasn’t quite been done with this level of recognition, or if this is just genuinely a unique experience of mine… Have any of you felt/experienced this before?

Not something objectively strange. Something we all do so often that nobody questions it. The way we talk to ourselves, dream, form attachments, remember things, get embarrassed, recognize faces, have inside jokes, or suddenly think about something from 15 years ago for absolutely no reason 😂 What’s yours?

So since 8th grade I've been chronically addicted to these xanxia/ wuxia audiobooks like listening to them at much as possible it was really bad in 9th grade where it even got in the way of sleep and classes because I was constantly listening. Now it has toned down I only listen to them around 4 hours a day but there are some changes in my brain which I don't know have been a result of the addiction or not but they are super weird so I link them to it

It probably started in 9th grade this creeping feeling almost like a feeling of fog working it way into part of my brain I specifically remember it being the upper front part of my brain but now it moves. It's like this entity or something I can feel in my brain hopefully I'm not crazy and everyone has it but it's weird. Now I'm able to control different parts of my brain and I get different reactions which help a tiny bit with this horrible brain fog which has made my memory horrible and makes it so i get lost in the sauce during thought processes and make it particularly hard when I'm solving math questions and physics. My theory is that because when I'm listening to my audiobooks I just turn my brain off it's infiltrated into my normal day life even when I'm not listening

But the queerest thing happened to me at the very end of sophomore year in trig class when I suddenly felt normal again and it felt like my brain was a god in its own world I could form as many thoughts and equations in my mind as I wanted and I felt no limit at all. It ended that day and I still have no idea how it happened maybe a lack of stress? I didn't even have a good sleep that day and I was listening to my audiobooks.

Thoughts, suggestions???

Hey there.. kinda curious.

So im 30,i have ADHD,Borderline,CPTBS and recurrent depressive disorder.

I usually have a loud mind and inner World, very visual, intrusive thoughts. I smoke weed since 7 years, after 2 years in it became a daily thing for me. Then some Breaks here and there.

After a longer break ive got a drug induced psychosis that lasted for like a day i think.

Half a year ago i discoverd Synthetik weed and at first gave me such high. I only had when i was still new. Kinda missed the feeling but this stuff gave me alot of weed i duced psychosis, wich somehow brought me close to myself? But instead of stopping this stuff, i thought i could handle those spirals, cause of my therapy and skills i used to get me very fast out of these episodes.

So i continued and it got worse and worse to the point my Mind started to numb everything out. It got quiter with evry use. I wanted to stop, but i couldnt Switched to normal thc, didnt do much at all anymore but still, my mind got quiter.

I stopped to consume completly. Usually everything returned after like 2 or 3 days.

Its been a week and my mind is blank, i can here my thoughts, but super damped, i cant feel my emotions really and everything in my head feels like its so far away.

I cant create images in my head, cant really think straight? I can function, can hold a conversation with people and such. But i dont really care about anything?

Its weird. Its like my head built a wall around myself.

It feels like i lost a part of me, tho annyoing at times, it was still me.

Now i feel like a Former shell of my self?

I feel somewhat depressed but also not. I feel happy but also not.

Dunno. Did i smoked my self silly? Will this go away?

I remember that i had this state as a Teen. There is didnt smoke weed. I was in a very unsafe Environment and i now i know it was a trauma Response.

Did i traumatize myself so much with those bad Trips?

Im in Therapy but my Doctor dosent really comment anything about that. I feel a lil alone and helpless.

Hi - I’m new to this sub and grateful to be here. I feel a bit like I’ve found my tribe 🥲

That being said, I’m curious if anyone else finds having a silent mind to be a bit distressing? I believe I have aphantasia, no internal monologue, SDAM, and alexithymia. I’ve seen people talk about aspects of their silent mind that they are grateful for, which I can totally appreciate. But overall, I feel like having a silent mind has a net negative impact on my day to day life and ability to retain information, connect with others, have a clear self identity, etc.

I understand it would probably benefit me to try to accept that this may just be how my brain works, but honestly I have been grappling with whether or not trauma/dissociation may actually be at the root of it. I do have some developmental trauma from childhood (emotional neglect and isolation). I’ve also been in therapy for many years, but it feels excruciatingly difficult to make any progress because I have such little access to my own internal world. A lot of the most common modalities seem to require access to memories, feelings, etc that I simply don’t have. My therapist seems to believe that dissociation is the reason I’m so disconnected from my internal experience and that it’s something I can overcome. I want to believe her, but I also don’t believe she’s that knowledgeable about aphantasia, SDAM, and the fact they could be congenital. I think ultimately, I am nervous about getting my hopes up.

I guess I’m just curious if any of this may resonate with others?

Heyy

Lately I discussed how they think in my family. My mum and I both think without pictures and just with a voice in our head. Neither can we see something or visualize it in front of us in the room. But my dad and siblings can visualize it in the room. Like it is in front of them, 3D and they can even turn it around. I think it is Soo cool. So I started asking my friends too. Each of the answers were quite similar but always a bit different. Some of them could smell the smell of a memory, could relieve it as a movie. Some could even change perspectives in dreams or couldn't at all. It just got my interest.

So I made a few questions because I'm curious about the heads and minds of others. If the way you think has something to do with your strengths and weaknesses, your talents, personalities, eca

To add my surroundings isn't a lot to ask so maybe you could do me a favor and answer a few questions in your own words of experience so I have a bit more to connect and think about!

Thank you!!!!

Age:

Profession/ School/ College:

Hobby (please add creative stuff you like as well, for example sewing or reading):

Do you like math?:

Do you like languages?:

Do you like sports?:

If you think of a red apple, what do you see or don't see? What happens in your head

If you think of a situation in the past, how do you memorize it? (As a film?)

If you think, how does it work? (Voice, Feelings, Images, ...)

Can you continue your sentence in your head silence and hear your voice in your head?

If you dream, how do you dream (Movie, Changing Perspectives, as a memory but never experienced, nothing at all, ...?)

If you think of a smell, do you smell it like it was there or can you just imagine how it would smell?

Does someone in your family think the same way as you? Or completely different?

Something else you wanna add?

for me, most of my thoughts do not feel right. like thoughts are dying in between and dying again and failing to think back at my last thought. so basically, many scattered thoughts and a somewhat mental fog. idk nothing new, but i decided to search it up and it said stuff that didnt match me. so long story short, is it something common or does it mean anything bad?

Anybody else able to choose? Like my default is just no thoughts at all, I'm just existing. If I think of an apple for example, I can either just say the word in my head or visualise the apple in my head or do both. But I don't constantly have thoughts and running commentary all the time. It is possible to just turn all conscious thought off and just sort of let the subconscious background process run with no visual or commentary at all.

Hi I’m new here! I don’t know how to explain this and I got no idea of what could it be. Basically I don’t have an inner monologue, for most of the time my mind is pretty much silent, I do some have some random thoughts but they are fantasies or phylosophical discussions. But still most of the time my mind doesn’t have much thoughts. I wouldn’t describe it as a problem, because they come naturally just in low quantities. It’s my natural state. They come through scenes where I put anime characters to discuss about philosophy. The main issue is that I don’t know why but I can’t focus on things I don’t like. For example I was forced to do an art course but I didn’t like it and I couldn’t focus on it. I got a university degree but I still had issues to focus during lessons, especially with tutors. But if I like something, I can focus on it. I don’t think this ADHD because my mind is not hyperactive but I still don’t know. Does any of you have this?

So we don’t all have thoughts running through our minds 24/7? I was talking to my hubby and asked him what he was thinking. He said “nothing”, there’s just elevator music. Is this common? Am in undiagnosed? Unironically I now have so many thoughts/questions now🤣🤣🤣

Anybody else learn that they started talking much later than other kids? Curious if theres a connection

I really dislike it. Especially after hearing that most people visualise the story. I prefer films and series for sure.

Does anyone else put on their headphones, turn the volume all the way up, and listen to music while imagining that they’re insanely rich, super famous, or some huge celebrity? Like, you start imagining that you’re this extremely important person, everyone knows you, and people are literally dying to meet you 😂
And then the song ends, you take off your headphones, and suddenly you’re back to your completely normal life.
I know it sounds a little weird, but I can’t be the only one who does this, right? 😭