this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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[–] blarth@thelemmy.club 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe I’m an idiot, but I can’t figure out what it is people are calling an inner voice. I just have thoughts; they aren’t internal vocalizations and often aren’t comprised of words. I don’t know how to describe them. It’s like a chaotic flow of imagery and sometimes words that forms a whole diorama of moving images and the logic that pairs with them.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I have both forms. The inner monologue voice is a common learned way of thinking. For me it's a way of testing how things sound, before using it in public. It also formalises ideas for memory.

Below that, I have my mindstream. It's the active amalgamation of ideas, images and concepts that forms my intellect. It's difficult to map to language, since it's not bound by language.

The inner monologue is useful, but not required for intellectual thought. In fact, it can be a detriment. It's hard to process things, when you don't have the language for it. It is, however quite useful for presenting ideas. An inner monologue lets you practice what you will say, and how you will explain things to someone else. I'm autistic, so I often need to preprocess what I am about to say. My inner monologue lets me test if it's "socially inappropriate" (aka batshit insane) before it comes out my mouth.