2024, Health, Mysteries, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Gabbing From Ear to Ear

40 Comments

Today’s post comes to from Bill.

An article in National Geographic caught my attention recently. The headline read, “Do You Have an Inner Monologue?” It caught my attention because my response was, “Of course I have an inner monologue. Doesn’t everybody?” Turns out not everybody does.

I’m not on any of the social media platforms but I gather that the presence or lack of an inner monologue has been a topic of discussion there. Inner monologue has also been a recent focus of scientific study, one product of which is a name for the lack of one: anauralia. Those studies contend that fewer than half of all individuals—by some estimates only about 30%—possess an inner monologue.

If that is true, I am gobsmacked. My inner monologue never shuts up. It is so integral to who I am that I can’t imagine its absence. Persons who lack that relentless flow of words say they imagine having them would be overwhelming.

The National Geographic article portrayed the inner monologue as self-critical and self-evaluating, a voice that regulates and replays social interactions and situations. As such, the article suggests, it can be inhibiting and destructive to one’s confidence, a source of negative thoughts. That’s not my experience. My inner monologue is not, for the most part, focused on how I appear in social contexts. Rather it’s a source of enrichment and entertainment, whether it’s replaying a conversation I had with someone years ago (those just pop up unbidden), preliminarily composing a commentary like this one, working through matters of personal philosophy, or pondering questions that just pop up out of nowhere, like, “what is the commonality between taxicabs and taxidermy?” (It all goes back to the Greek “taxis”, which means “an arrangement” or “to put things in a certain order”) or “if you describe something as the color of mercurochrome, does it mean anything to anyone under about 40?” All of this mental conversation happens while I’m busy doing other unrelated things.

Another article addressing the inner monologue: https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/16/like-live-no-internal-monologue-20853880/

It provides a simpler and easier to parse way to test for an inner monologue. It asks, “When you read, do you hear the words read, (presumably in your own voice)?” Apparently, those with anauralia do not. That for me is incomprehensible.

Do you have an inner monologue? What does it tell you?

40 thoughts on “Gabbing From Ear to Ear”

  1. Yes. Definitely. I’m glad to know that others have this too. I guess I never thought of it before, but now I’ll be thinking of it all the time.

    My inner monologue does all the things you described. It can be very negative, self-critical, and depressing. It can also be constructive, again as you described, if I am planning something or doing something creative. It imagines possibilities quite often. Sometimes it obsesses on possibilities and imagines outcomes.

    I have thought to myself that I should try to control it more, but I have failed so far. I thought this was an introvert kind of thing.

    I have a friend who probably doesn’t have any inner monologue at all. She baffles me at times, and I’ve asked her about it. She didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

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  2. Oh yes! That thing about going over conversations, the critiquing, and anticipating how I’ll say something in the future… I’ve even had two voices – this came out in a journal entry from the 70s where one said basically “Leave her alone, she’s doing all right.”

    Sometimes it is creative, as Bill mentioned, but I’ll have to see if I can come up with an example of that.

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    1. Interesting. I would never seek to silence mine. It’s my companion, my muse, my entertainment. Without it, I don’t know where my sense of self would be.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    I have had a lifetime of inner dialogue of various quality. In my late 20s and early 30s I decided to change it because it had been so negative–really a reproduction of my mother’s incessant criticism. Later I realized that criticism was not accurate and it interfered with my own good sense. It took me many weeks and months of internal vigilance to address this initially, with the help of a therapist, then years to maintain a more positive train of thought that actually allowed my life to succeed. It was so much work and completely worth the effort.

    The most valuable message–listen to your own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, then take your time, carry out a plan. You will do just fine.

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  5. As he has become older, Husband verbalizes his internal monolog as he is trying to do something mechanical. It is sort of annoying.

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  6. This is my favorite monologue.

    You don’t need to know a lot about the particular people mentioned but it’s still a funny bit. And it was performed over a decade ago!

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  7. When I was consulting and making presentations, my inner monologue on the drive and or flight home was an analysis of the day, which after awhile I wanted to shut off, but often could not, but it was very important.
    transcendental meditation used to teach you to stop your monologue. How ridiculous. The mindfulness meditation I do says to just accept it, just bring your mind back, or sometimes make it part of the meditation.
    My son has a cartoon about being neurodivergent. You can go to social events and then afterwards beat yourself up for what you said and did, or you can stay home and beat yourself up for not going.

    I know that some people don’t have one, but I cannot imagine it. My annual staff kids used to escape study hall by coming to the back of my very large classroom which had a separate space for them. They would talk about the kids who sat in study hall for 50 minutes and did nothing. They would wonder what their minds were doing if anything at all.

    Clyde

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  8. I have the same reaction to inner monologue, not being a universal ability as I do to synesthesia, in which people see sounds or hear colors. It’s almost impossible for me to really grasp it. Like Bill, I have a considerable inner monologue and most of the time we are on good terms although there’s the occasional middle of the night where I can’t shut it down. And it’s interesting because then I use my inner monologue to lull myself back to sleep. Like battle of the inner monologues.

    My most common strategy is to recite the opening scene of Laura, an old Gene Tierney movie, in my head. “I’ll never forget the weekend that Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For Laura’s horrible death I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only person who really knew her.”

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    1. I silently name off countries in alphabetical order in order to get to sleep. At times, my internal monolog is the numbers 1-8 going up and down a musical scale.

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      1. Mine is a conversation… not sure what that means, if anything. I guess it’s a conversation between myself and me. Sometimes it’s run of the mill stuff, such as, I need to remember to do (whatever it is). Other times it’s negative rehashing of a failed interaction, a situation in which I don’t think I’ve been at my best.

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    3. I try not to give my inner monologue a job to do. If I’m lying in bed I try to empty my mind and then just let it go wherever it wants. When it gets really peculiar I know I’m almost asleep.

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      1. This is what I do when I can’t empty my mind in the middle of the night. It’s the quiet repetitiveness of it that tends to lull me back to sleep

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  10. Oh yes, I have an ongoing, lively inner monologue. It comments on anything and everything, I often have to reprimand it for being harsh and judgmental. I, too, find it impossible to grasp that some people don’t have an inner monologue; how is that even possible? Does that mean that if you’re not talking you’re not thinking? Does it mean that you don’t plan anything in advance, including choosing your words carefully before you speak?

    Listening to the woman in the video at the end of the blog, I’m wondering whether it’s a matter of semantics. The process she describes seems to be based on perceiving the world around her in terms of shapes and feelings rather than words. Fascinating rabbit hole to dive into.

    OT – I have a new domestic fairy cleaning our house today. She comes highly recommend by three friends. Though she speaks very little English, she knows more English than I know Spanish, so I’m hoping this works out for both of us.

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  11. Read this as rhymed metered verse, or sing it to the hymn tune “The Seven Joys of Mary”

    The noise around us all the time is matched by that within.
    Our chattered “thoughts and pray-ers” are as bad for us as sin.
    The quest for holy space and silence starts from someplace near:
    behind the eyes, above the nose, and smack between the ears.

    It doesn’t happen often, but that doesn’t mean “don’t try”.
    The grace to hear “the stillness that encloses all” is sly.
    As white contains all colors of the spectrum, and they’re still,
    the wordlessness within that claims all words is something filled.

    Text: David Alexander, 2024, CC BY SA NC 4.0
    Inspired by “The Silence of the Holy Place” in Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets, 1991
    Quote of the Day at http://www.frederickbuechner.com 2023/12/23

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    1. Brilliant! This is such a great song, written by Randy Newman, and covered by many different artists. Here’s a cover by Joe Cocker, and one by Randy Newman himself:

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  17. For me the inner monologue doesn’t stop all day. I think that’s why I have trouble meditating. Clearing my mind is not possible, so it’s more a matter of observing what I am thinking about, and trying to set aside things that seem stressful, but anything that’s stressing me invariably creeps in.

    Listening to music with familiar lyrics helps, because that’s sort of like turning over the steering wheel to someone else for awhile.

    When I read, I definitely hear a voice reading the words, but it’s not my own voice. Nor is it the voice of anyone I know It’s just a voice.

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