[HN Gopher] How to Quiet Your Mind Chatter (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
How to Quiet Your Mind Chatter (2021)
Author : Tomte
Score : 217 points
Date : 2022-04-25 07:35 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| LB232323 wrote:
| Prayer is a meditative activity.
|
| He will quiet the storm in your soul and give you peace eternal.
| bigbluedots wrote:
| It is, but better to focus on your breathing. There's no
| question that it exists.
| specialist wrote:
| Prayer is a form of rubber ducking for me.
| Zababa wrote:
| > In Chatter you talk about how you halted a particularly bad
| spiral by calling yourself by name. That's fascinating to me, the
| idea that what we call ourselves in the privacy of our own head
| has real discernible effects.
|
| I've found that it's very effective when trying to break negative
| self talk, for example when I'm getting anxious. Hearing my name
| always makes me stop for a small instant, and this also stops my
| thoughts. So when I'm starting to think that everything is
| terrible and things won't go well, just calling myself by my name
| stops that for a small moment, and I can try to get back to
| normal self talk.
| AccountAccount1 wrote:
| There are a lot of people doing "Carnivore Diets" right now, that
| is, to eat only meat and just meat all throughout the day. I
| think this is a very important idea, it's not that these people
| can only eat meat, but in other diets there's a particular food
| that is triggering an auto-immune response in their bodies and
| they just cannot pinpoint exactly which one is it.
|
| So if some food triggers an autoimmune response -- the solution
| is just to stop eating (well kind-of.) This idea is augmented and
| explored much more in oligoantigenic diets where you go about
| removing different specific food (e.g. bananas one week, eggs in
| another) from your diet each week until you can tell which one
| was causing side-effects.
|
| There is a mental health analogue for this: meditation. You
| remove everything, you sit completely still and you focus on
| nothing. This would be the carnivore diet, but you can also go
| the oligoantogenic route, go about removing bad habits that are
| causing side-effects maybe video-games, Tiktok, instagram, or
| what-have-you that is just too much too fast.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| elimination diets are productive and useful, if you do them
| with a dietician or other licensed doctor (though ones with a
| diet specialty tend to be better).
|
| eliminating everything but meat is a genuinely dumb tik tok
| trend.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| A gastroenterologist recently told me that I may not see
| improvements until I've eliminated all gluten for 4 months, I
| wish one week was enough (recently diagnosed celiac).
| AccountAccount1 wrote:
| Hey, that's really promising.
|
| I think that it's always a net positive to try different
| diets and see how different you perform with each one. (make
| sure to keep your macros at the same level.)
|
| I wish that you can stick with it through that period & that
| it brings you positive benefits.
| rvieira wrote:
| (Slightly OT) but I feel this Nomeansno classic is an accurate
| description of mind chatter.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIbZLOmGQSA
|
| (Potentially NSFW album cover)
| dav_Oz wrote:
| I wonder how "mind chatters" manifest in different people.
|
| There seem to be some who really experience an inner voice
| talking in full-fledged sentences and others with no inner
| monologue at all. My "mind chatter" as I am writing this down
| resides somewhere in the middle and mostly fragmented: I kind of
| "autocomplete" on various levels (grammar, semamtics, form ...)
| and writing/talking just initiates the process to tie up those
| loose ends into a (forced) linear fashion. So, when I'm finished
| with a sentence I see/hear it also for the first time; sometimes
| in amazement (good and bad).
|
| I find the evolution of human consciousness quite fascinating and
| the residues of that process still can be seen and infered from
| individual differences which can differ quite
| significantly/unexpectedly e.g. ranging from aphantasia to
| hyperphantasia.
|
| The famous/controversial concept of Jayens' bicameral
| mentality[0] in which "hearing voices"/"hearing commands" is
| meant quite literally and only later gets consolidated (through
| e.g. reinfored cultural practices) to an _own_ inner voice. In a
| similar vein it is conceivable that there exists a common (not
| pathological) spectrum between forms of clearly heard (inner)
| voices to faint unstructured (inner) monologue to no voice
| /monologue at all. [Of course to a degree open to modulation
| through different states of consciousness.]
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality
| Grimm665 wrote:
| I recently went through an upsetting few days in my life and
| noticed that my mental chatter could be broken down into four
| distinct voices, all talking about and questioning my situation
| in unique ways. I even started to label them to keep track. It
| was completely overwhelming at first, I could really feel like
| different parts of my brain were talking and arguing with each
| other, and that the "me" in my head was like a dinghy in a
| violent storm of other voices.
|
| After a day or two, when I started to relax and calm down, the
| voices re-coalesced back into one normal inner monologue. It
| was the first time I had experienced something like that, I've
| always had an inner monologue that would engage in chatter in
| times of trauma as the article describes (and maybe I've also
| had multiple voices arguing before) but I've never noticed to
| the point of creating labels for them before.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Apparently there are some people who do not think at all using
| language which is extremely bizarre to me. Also makes me wonder
| what mind chatter for a dog looks like.
|
| In terms of personal introspection I find it really interesting
| how ones "mind chatter" shifts when one is super tired or out
| of it or similar.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Apparently there are some people who do not think at all
| using language"_
|
| Oliver Sacks wrote a great book about this: _Seeing Voices_
| [1]
|
| In it he writes about all sorts of people who either never
| learned language or learned it late in life, and about what
| that transformation from a non-linguistic world to a
| linguistic world is like.
|
| Highly recommended.
|
| [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Voices-Oliver-
| Sacks/dp/0375704...
| KMag wrote:
| It would be very high overhead if different brain regions
| used an encoded form of spoken language as the communication
| protocol. For most of us, most of the time, the introspective
| portions of the brain responsible for consciousness may be
| re-interpreting the messages they observe as something
| language-like, but these portions of the brain almost
| certainly don't duplicate all of the language processing
| wiring necessary for the language centers of the brain to
| produce and interpret language.
|
| In short, I suspect that the "language" of thought is likely
| mostly a post-hoc rationalization/interpretation performed by
| some parts of the brain.
|
| Learning to read Chinese, I've many times had the experience
| of recognizing and understanding a character, but momentarily
| being unable to remember either the corresponding English or
| Mandarin words. (This usually happens when studying written
| Chinese tired after a long day of work.)
|
| I'm biased, but I think even more interesting than the inner
| voice of dogs would be the inner voice of infants and
| toddlers. My young son is too young to speak or walk, or even
| appear to understand even one word. (Though, it's hard to
| tell; maybe he understands a handful of words.) Yet, he's
| clearly very curious about the world and seems to understand
| social interactions.
| juanani wrote:
| sph wrote:
| I quiet my mind chatter by taking my dexamphetamine for ADHD.
| It's like there's so much space to think now, and it's lessened
| the ever present musical earworms that were infesting my mind.
|
| I recently had a fever, and the constant rumination reminded me
| of my worst ADHD days when there's never a moment of silence.
| darkteflon wrote:
| So I'm 42, and my 4 year-old son has recently received an ADHD
| diagnosis. We have a process in place and are working to ensure
| he gets support. But it has also made me look back over the
| particular challenges I faced - especially in my studies and my
| career - with fresh eyes. Would you be willing to share a bit
| about how you got to a diagnosis? Did you suspect beforehand?
| [deleted]
| bloqs wrote:
| A 4 year old cannot be diagnosed with ADHD. His personality
| hasnt finished developing yet (that comes at around the age
| of 6)
| tinsmith wrote:
| Give or take a few years. There are a number of subtle
| developmental differences between individuals. Not saying
| the doc is correct on diagnosing a 4 year old with ADHD, as
| some docs still like to jump the gun on that. However, so
| long as the diagnosis results in evidence-based treatments
| that do not involve drugs, it may still be beneficial. I
| say this as a 44 year old who was not diagnosed until 41,
| and that was after almost 10 years of trying to explain to
| docs what was happening to me, and the hell that it made my
| life. From my perspective, it becomes a question of which
| is worse; diagnosing and treating too early (sans drugs) or
| trying to fix a broken adult set in their ways?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| FWIW, 4 does sound a tad young to me. ADHD is supposed to
| be a diagnosis of last resort after all other possible
| explanations have been eliminated.
|
| Sometimes bright children are mistaken for having
| "attention" issues because they are underchallenged and
| bored.
|
| Unidentified health issues can look like "ants in the
| pants" and be mistaken for attention issues.
|
| Sadly, drugs are all too often advocated for as a
| convenience for adults dealing with the child. This can
| cause permanent impairment because they impact the still
| developing brain.
| projektfu wrote:
| The CDC collects statistics on ADHD diagnosis starting at 2
| years[1], breaking out the 2-5y subgroup, presumably
| because that is before 1st grade. The condition is
| definitely recognizable at that age and behavioral therapy
| might be indicated.
|
| 1. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html
| sph wrote:
| While I'm of the opinion that "curing" ADHD at a young age
| might be a bad idea [1], ADHD is a genetic difference in
| the brain that is present from birth. It's not a
| personality thing. It's not something that happens to you
| later in life.
|
| 1: as someone that got diagnosed in adult age, I am now
| aware of my talents and shortcomings, and all the things I
| have struggled with. I keep reading of kids on Ritalin that
| grow to hate their parents for having put them on
| medication, quit it, and find themselves completely lost in
| life. They have no idea how dysfunctional they are. They've
| never had a chance to experience how debilitating it can
| be.
| jcims wrote:
| Not the person you asked but here's an attempt from a 48yo
| diagnosed with adult adhd about six years ago.
|
| - imagine watching tv at a bar where _everyone_ had a remote
| control. That's the attention model in my head, i can start
| to form ideas and concepts then suddenly realize I'm thinking
| about something else
|
| - add 3-4 more tvs. That's the distraction model, external
| stimuli drag my attention
|
| - the 'hyperfocus' you hear about would be similar to the bar
| handing you a pair of noise canceling headphones and
| dedicating the tv directly in front of you to binging on an
| amazing new series. It's not just focus as much as it's a
| temporary obsession.
|
| Some ways it seems to manifest in my life:
|
| - i never ever ever finish a discretionary project, 80% at
| best. i completely lose interest and have zero drive.
| Projects for work require me to procrastinate to the point
| where my attention is fueled by adrenaline.
|
| - i can't read anything that requires more than one sitting.
| I'll read for three hours but the next time i have an
| opportunity to read i find i have no interest
|
| - i constantly lose shit
|
| - i constantly pack more and more activity into the period
| before i need to get ready for something, causing me to
| always be lateish and running in the airport
|
| - i think of great gifts for people but always end up last-
| minute scrambling for garbage
|
| - i can be a bit of an airhead at times
|
| - at work I'm a generalist. I've been at this a long time but
| i don't know anyone in my personal sphere that knows a bit
| about more domains than i do. On the other hand there isn't a
| single domain that i don't know someone that knows more than
| i do.
|
| The first time i had a 'quiet mind' was probably a week after
| i was prescribed Adderall. It was like a flashing cursor in
| my head and I became so overpowered with emotion that i just
| started crying. Like those videos where someone with color
| blindness tries on those glasses. It was incredible.
| sph wrote:
| > i never ever ever finish a discretionary project
|
| This is the exact thing I said that had my therapist wonder
| whether I have ADHD.
|
| I am a brilliant software engineer, my employers have
| always been pleased with my performance, yet my hard disk
| is full of hundreds of great ideas I have started and never
| finished. I have never in my life been able to stay on the
| same idea for more than 3 coding session. The last side
| project I worked on that I am proud of has been written 19
| years ago, as a teenager, while pumped full of alcohol,
| cigarettes and weed.
|
| I have started medication, and I am slowly starting to pick
| up the pieces, writing some code in my spare time (I just
| finished writing my first Emacs config) but unlearning that
| I am a failure at motivation will not be easy.
| deaps wrote:
| Jeez...this fits me to a T. I'm 40 and have been wondering
| what is wrong with me all my life. Thanks for this.
| chousuke wrote:
| I have diagnosed ADD and most of your list is very
| familiar.
|
| The way I things I usually end up binging through the
| entire book (or series) over several days. If, however, my
| reading spree is interrupted for whatever reason, I can
| just forget about what I was reading to the point where I
| return to it a year or two later to realize that I don't
| remember anything about it and have to restart.
|
| The same effect tends to happen with any other project or
| habit I have. Painstakingly form a swimming habit and stick
| to it religiously for half a year? Doable, though extremely
| vexing. Then skip swimming for a week for some reason and
| the routine is just _gone_. I 've had the opposite happen
| too though, where I just started doing workouts one day and
| consistently stuck to it for over 2 months with 0 effort
| (by which I mean I didn't have to struggle with choosing to
| do it. The actual physical exercise itself is a minor
| hurdle in comparison). Unfortunately, this habit also
| evaporated at some point.
| modelviewpotato wrote:
| 38, recently diagnosed with ADHD. Everything in here is
| absolutely true. Even the analogy about the TV: I used
| something very similar with my doctor when describing how
| my brain works...
| otikik wrote:
| 43, diagnosed one year ago. Let me add some items of my own
| to your very relatable list.
|
| - Growing up, it took me longer than the average to pick up
| social rules and customs "by mere contact". As a result I
| didn't make any friends at all during school, and only 3 at
| highschool. I only started "growing out of it" when I
| reached University. I still struggle with some social
| norms. I am a bit of a people pleaser, and I avoid conflict
| too much.
|
| - Keeping in touch with those few friends and even my own
| family is something I struggle with a lot - "Out of sight,
| out of mind" is more literal. I have to "plan" keeping in
| contact with people, including my mum.
|
| - I have "Time blindness". Time has an immaterial quality
| for everyone, but in my case it is quite literal. I was
| often late, and never can tell how much time things take. I
| need to use a physical object, like an agenda, to transform
| daily planning into "a puzzle", something I can "solve"
| with spatial skills. I must have my agenda open in front of
| me all the time.
| sph wrote:
| I don't know if the first one is strictly ADHD, sounds a
| bit more autism. Personally, I'm excellent at social cues
| and body language, far too much even. I'm really good at
| empathy, but sadly I'm very much an introvert.
|
| Everything else is the same as me. I have unconsciously
| learned to use anxiety to be on time. Any time I have
| something major planned the next day, I can't sleep. I am
| anxious all day until the moment comes, and then I ease
| up.
| otikik wrote:
| First of all, I am not a mental health professional, so I
| might be wrong here. My understanding is that ADHD
| manifests itself with a collection of symptoms and
| degrees. You get diagnosed when you reach a certain
| threshold of all the possible ones.
|
| The inattentive aspect, which is the one I predominantly
| have, seems to have "missing social cues" on its list of
| symptoms.
|
| There's also the indirect problem of children avoiding
| ADHD children and them getting less social practice as a
| result.
|
| This might be relevant
| https://www.foothillsacademy.org/community/articles/adhd-
| soc...
| 0xRolex wrote:
| Having recently been diagnosed with ADHD too I must say that
| the book "ADHD doesn't exist" helped me as it provides great
| tools to understand what it is but also how to live with it
| and where to look for its source as it's almost always a
| symptom in itself and thus can be cured.
| sph wrote:
| The idea that "ADHD can be cured" is misguided and borne
| out of the fact that there are plenty dopamine dysfunction
| syndromes that _present_ like ADHD, but it's not ADHD
| proper.
|
| For example, long term (drug) addiction presents itself as
| ADHD. To make confusion worse, plenty ADHD sufferers tend
| to abuse and get addicted to pleasurable activities (drugs,
| food, porn, etc.), worsening their condition. [1] It feels
| a bit like a chicken and egg situation but the point is:
| ADHD is a measurable difference in the pre frontal cortex
| that _needs_ to have been present since birth. There is no
| such thing as adult onset ADHD.
|
| 1: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/545e77cae4b0719cb
| 5ad4...
| 0xRolex wrote:
| You're right, phrased this way it's misguided.
|
| The point of this book is to emphathize how many
| conditions result in ADHD-like symptoms and how easily
| ADHD is diagnosed nowadays, often wrongly, resulting in
| heavy non-required treatments easily prescribed to people
| in need for something else.
| sph wrote:
| I was in a deep dark pit of depression, mostly life long that
| got worse in the past few years. Sought help, found a
| therapist, and after 2 years she asked me if I ever
| considered I might have ADHD. I looked into it in December,
| every fucking thing made sense, got diagnosed in January and
| started my medication in March.
|
| I'm still learning to live with it, but I've managed to
| understand how my brain ticks, why I'm in a constant search
| for pleasure, and now I have a theory why my life got so bad
| lately: I've quit my marijuana habit 8 years ago, I quit my
| smoking habit 2 years ago, and I've quit coffee because it
| doesn't play very nice with my anxiety and heart, and the
| more stimulants I've removed from my life, the less
| functional I've become, and even at my peak "drug" usage my
| motivation and focus was always outside my control, anyway.
| But at least I had the mental energy to do _things_. I was
| self medicating without knowing it.
|
| I did suspect, when I started using Reddit 15 years ago the
| ADHD thing was a meme everybody said "yeah, I have that." It
| remained a meme for me, until, guess what, I actually have a
| problem and I shouldn't be struggling that much. The
| medication doesn't turn me into that Limitless movie, it
| gives me the chemicals needed to pick up trash off the floor,
| make boring phone calls and be a productive member of
| society. What's ordinary for most people, for me is
| absolutely mind blowing.
| ascar wrote:
| I got diagnosed with 20+. I had the suspicion and went to a
| specialist. He diagnosed based on my history (e.g. teacher
| reports from elementary school describing hyperactivity), my
| explanations and an EEG. When that lined up we started with
| medical treatment with a slowly increasing dose and just
| observed how it affected me. My understanding was if there
| were no apparent negative effects, but the meds helped
| against the unwanted symptoms it was seen as proving the
| diagnosis correct by successful treatment. Some subconscious
| things that I never thought of as symptoms like rapidly
| moving my foot when otherwise sitting still just to "do
| something" completely went away while medicated.
|
| Personally I mostly do better without the drugs even though
| my mind is also in an always on state. But I do have them
| here and rarely (last time over a year ago) take them, if my
| very easily distracted mind collides with some very important
| and immovable deadline.
|
| I also feel though that my brain sometimes kicks me in a
| hyperproductive mode (like being in the zone on steroids) and
| I just get a shitton of difficult work done and I felt the
| meds prevented that too.
| cromulent wrote:
| Not the gp, but:
|
| The book _Delivered From Distraction_ has helped a few people
| I know understand that they are not neurotypical.
|
| This podcast opened my eyes:
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/nov/13/adrian-
| ch...
| sph wrote:
| Also this playlist of 5-minute long videos from Dr. Russell
| Barkley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=P
| LzBixSjmbc...
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| There is no time when I do not have an earworm, maybe the
| seconds before I fall asleep but I doubt it. So I take it that
| is not the case for everyone?
| sph wrote:
| I seem to understand it's not that incredibly common for most
| people. Also, great and relevant nickname.
| lemiffe wrote:
| Whenever I'm anxious it is not just one voice but almost an
| internal cacophony. I found that if I shout "STOOOP" at myself
| (internally), while clenching my fists, it almost always quietens
| the whole chorus down.
| cromulent wrote:
| > just the little voice we all have
|
| No, we don't, as Reddit famously made clear.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/exan65/t...
| proxygeek wrote:
| This is weird...I do have a "mental voice" - which is reading
| out as I'm typing this sentence. But i never had an actual
| conversation going on with myself that I can think of... Is
| that a thing?
|
| Sometimes, I can think of a series of logical steps needed to
| get something done. Like, okay: so, to build this feature, we'd
| need this and that and next something else.
|
| But it's always a rational thinking process, not a
| "conversation"...
| omega3 wrote:
| This is interesting, I have the same experience as you and
| have never even heard of this inner voice people have before
| opening the Reddit link.
| layer8 wrote:
| I don't think it's a conversation as in a dialogue, it's
| rather a monologue. But since you "hear" the monologue, you
| think about what you hear, and that thinking doesn't
| necessarily become part of the monologue (not immediately and
| directly), so the thinking and the monologue tend to bounce
| of each other to some degree.
| mach1ne wrote:
| Can you emulate personalities? Can you, for example, ask Elon
| Musk for an opinion on something you're currently working on?
| If you can, a routine discussion with internal monologue is
| most likely more of a habit than a neurological feature.
| proxygeek wrote:
| Interesting approach... Just tried it (Elon and Obama) and
| failed. I could visualise them, tried to think what they
| would think, but pretty much that.
| marcodiego wrote:
| When I'm on a high state of concentration, my internal voice
| shuts up. I like this because I feel that "the internal voice"
| eats processing resources from my brain to translate thoughts
| to language and vice-versa. When my internal voice shuts up, I
| feel like my brain is running compiled programs instead of
| interpreted languages.
| KMag wrote:
| I definitely have an issue where composing English sentences
| takes a little bit of working memory, and if I'm
| concentrating on a task that can't spare that one or two
| items of working memory, and someone insists on talking to
| me, I end up speaking a jumble of English words (and
| sometimes non-word English sounds) back to them and waving my
| hands to indicate I can't be distracted, and I'm aware that
| I'm not making sense. It's the only way I have come up with
| to try and convey that I'm not ignoring them to try and be
| rude, but composing a meaningful utterance will force me to
| throw away a lot of mental work.
|
| In college, I was once concentrating on some Mechanical
| Engineering homework in the fraternity library late at night.
| One of my fraternity brothers asked me "What did you just
| say?". Me: "nothing. I'm working". Him: "No, you said 'Noun?'
| and you said it like a question.". I'd apparently had a
| language center missfire while co-opting some language
| working memory to work on a 3d spatial reasoning problem.
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| Totally blew my mind a few years ago when a coworker revealed
| he didn't have one and had no idea what we were talking about.
| I always found him to be a little narcissistic and pretty
| unemphatic; always wondered if they were connected to the lack
| of an inner voice.
| WJW wrote:
| It wasn't until I was ~25 years old when I realized that some
| people really do have a "voice in their head" and it's not just
| a movie thing that they use for lazy storytelling. My own train
| of thought is more like a graph of concepts/shapes/colors that
| does not necessarily have words attached. I can consciously
| "talk to myself in my mind", but there is not anything like a
| subconscious voice.
| glenstein wrote:
| >when I realized that some people really do have a "voice in
| their head" and it's not just a movie thing that they use for
| lazy storytelling.
|
| For some of us it's quite literal, and goes by the term
| subvocalization.
|
| I know that I, for one, when speaking to myself, sometimes am
| doing it through little breathy throat quasi-vocalizations,
| like I'm beginning to say a word that I'm mentally saying.
|
| I wonder at my ability to carry on an internal mental monolog
| without it.
| KMag wrote:
| I've been told that it's likely that most people who could
| read still read out loud in the not-so-distant past. For
| instance, I've heard it said that the Apostle Paul knew
| what the Ethopian eunuch was reading in his chariot as he
| went along the road because the eunuch was almost certainly
| reading aloud to himself.
|
| We still teach children to read aloud, and it takes a bit
| of effort for them to switch over to reading silently,
| often with an intermediate phase of silently moving the
| lips.
| mypastself wrote:
| Yeah, I remember being annoyed by comic books as a kid when
| I'd see a person thinking in full sentences. I'm still not
| convinced verbalization is the default mode: how slow would a
| person's thought processes have to be if they had to spell
| everything out in internal monologues?
| LtWorf_ wrote:
| Do you read at the same speed of speech?
|
| Same thing.
| mypastself wrote:
| Surely there's a lower time limit at which verbalization
| is even possible. Split-second decisions cannot involve
| any words, let alone sentences, regardless of the speed
| at which they're produced.
| adolph wrote:
| I suspect the "words" are post-hoc rationalization for
| default mode network.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I don't know about other people, but I don't "have to". I
| can and do think in both verbal and nonverbal modes.
|
| Verbal is usually when mulling over options, like what to
| get for dinner.
| dsego wrote:
| Me too, my inner monologue sometimes helps keep me on
| track. But it's only a mode of thinking.
| mypastself wrote:
| Well, I guess we all verbalize internally in certain
| situations (I definitely do when I'm writing comments or
| deliberately organizing my thoughts). In that case, it
| seems the original Reddit thread is based on a
| misunderstanding of the definition and scope of "internal
| monologue". It's certainly nothing like aphantasia, which
| seems like a genuine condition.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| It's easy to prove, you can think about some graph or some
| physical object. If you can manipulate it in your mind and
| can answer questions about it, then you're probably not
| thinking verbally.
|
| Say, how to go from place A to place B, if you've never
| travelled that route. But you know how things are laid out.
| Some people really struggle with this by the way.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Definitely the default for me. I often do think in other
| ways - I have very vivid auditory imaging, especially with
| music training, but think visually for a especially
| anything spatial, navigation, etc., but often even narrate
| that to some extent (for example thinking through a route
| before driving and just narrating something in my mind like
| "yes, yes, yep, yeah, nope, no, ok, uh huh, yep" while I
| visualise each turn).
| JackFr wrote:
| Well most thought isn't done that way even for those of us
| with robust internal monologues. In fact that's the working
| definition of subconscious.
| candlemas wrote:
| >how slow would a person's thought processes have to be if
| they had to spell everything out in internal monologues?
|
| The verbalized "thoughts" come after the fact. They thought
| already exists and then you put it into words to yourself.
| The verbalization can be confused for thinking.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| This is a good point. I bet a lot of people who assume
| that since they process their thoughts verbally in their
| head that all of their thoughts are word based, but there
| had to be some function under that stringing the words
| together to express the thoughts verbally.
|
| It would be like your Operating System thinking that it
| performed the computations it needed to show this web
| browser on your screen without the help of the CPU.
| [deleted]
| FrozenVoid wrote:
| Could you explain what happens when you read text?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I think it's called 'chunking'. So 'Could you explain'
| (concept #1: explain -> describe / analyze) 'what happens'
| (concept #2: happens -> series of events, a process) 'when
| you read text' (concept #3: reading -> interpreting
| symbols).
|
| For me it's all visual / mechanical, kind of like playing
| with Legos. No 'inner voices' are involved; though
| sometimes I will sort of internally mutter to myself,
| 'okay, let's get to work' at the start. For example if I
| read the word 'seventy-two' I visualize the decimal numbers
| '72' as an image.
|
| I read a lot of scientific and technical literature, and
| I've found that trying to verbalize it isn't of much use
| and just leads to confusion. In contrast, I will 'hear
| voices' when reading a work of fiction but only when it's
| dialogue.
| mach1ne wrote:
| Interesting! Gauging from the original Reddit post, it
| seems that people exist on a spectrum regarding this for
| whatever reason.
|
| This could explain a lot about why some people learn
| certain stuff faster than others. For example, maths
| encoded into language is just a set of meaningless rules
| you have to memorize, but when you process it in concept-
| space the ideas behind maths make so much more sense. So,
| if you have someone who processes stuff mainly through
| language, their speed of learning math is significantly
| slower than someone who processes them in concept-space.
| flacebo wrote:
| I had this realization in the last couple of weeks slowly,
| starting from a discussion about who thinks in which language
| in my friend group. I've tried to convince them how thoughts
| aren't in any language, but nobody agreed, which made me
| think. I found these threads later when trying to research
| it.
|
| For me, thinking in words and sentences sounds like thoughs
| being weighed and slowed down. Seems very unnecessary. On the
| other hand, I did and always had the the issue of putting my
| thoughts into words properly. Like the translator is pretty
| bad and I always struggle and feel like most of the
| information is lost.
|
| I think there might be some correlation between this and
| being introverted, socializing is exhausting for me because
| the translator is not well trained as I don't use it while
| thinking, and it has to run at 100%. I've talked with my
| better half about this and she said it's easy for her because
| the sentences are already there and it takes zero effort to
| say them, which aligns with my theory.
|
| I do have a terrible "mind chatter" though, I'd rather
| describe it as white noise. Way too many thoughts going
| through at once, which makes it very hard to concentrate on
| anything. So even though not everyone is thinking in words
| and sentences, this issue can effect all of us.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| I find that I'm able to deliberately structure my thoughts
| in what feels like a string of real English words without
| much difficulty, yet I have a very similar feeling of being
| slowed down when I attempt to speak those thoughts out loud
| in real time.
|
| The extra effort required is strange, considering the
| research showing that internally vocalized thoughts are
| reflexively _subvocalized_ by the associated muscles. The
| only difference between thinking and speaking should thus
| be the increase in amplitude and precision of muscle
| movement required to make the vocalization intelligible. Is
| that alone enough to so greatly impact the ability to
| think? Or could the brain be deceiving itself in whether
| its vocalized thoughts are in fact complete English words?
|
| Perhaps there's something to be seen from the fact that I
| find myself automatically inserting filler words even when
| trying to dictate these raw thoughts to a recording. I'm
| fairly sure I don't use them in my internal thoughts, and
| whenever I use one when dictating those thoughts, it feels
| like my train of thought comes to a halt. Perhaps, when I
| need to take time to consider something abstract that
| cannot be vocalized, my internal vocalization is able to
| pause without me noticing, but audible speaking reflexively
| fills in the silence in a manner disruptive to thinking?
|
| This all contrasts with my writing of this comment, where
| my typing is far slower and more measured than my thinking,
| such that I'm jumping between sentences to insert new
| thoughts related to something I've already written and
| delete what now feels unimportant. And the process of
| handwriting is again different, being even slower and very
| limited in the ability to modify what's already written. I
| gather, then, that these are all distinct "modes" of the
| brain putting thoughts into language, each with different
| levels of perceived difficulty, actual words per minute,
| and resulting quality/linguistic register.
|
| Edit: clarity
| the_only_law wrote:
| > yet I have a very similar feeling of being slowed down
| when I attempt to speak those thoughts out loud in real
| time
|
| Yeah I sound like an idiot when I start talking because
| my brain will process thoughts much faster than I can
| speak them and it ends up with odd extended pauses while
| I catch up and such.
|
| I don't write particularly well either, often because I'm
| on a phone and my phone loves to make radical new words
| via autocorrect but at least I can read over a few times
| before posting.
| EricE wrote:
| I think most people experiencing that. And like anything,
| you can improve it with practice. One of the best
| training classes I took at work was a class on using a
| mind map to structure a presentation, then practice by
| recording myself giving it. Playing back the recording
| and watching it was eye opening. I always thought I was a
| bad public speaker because it felt like I a was inserting
| lots of pauses, "Um.." and other stuff like that. After
| watching the recording it turns out a lot of that filler
| stuff was in my head - I never really said it! Our brains
| are amazing; still learning how to live with mine after
| 50 years!
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It seems to me like most "intrapersonal communication" is
| not fully formed, but latent. Because everything is
| filled in as you go there, it seems like sentences are
| formed at a crazy speed and with superb proficiency.
| Minor errors don't matter because nothing is vocalized
| and the underlying processes "know what is meant"
| regardless. A little bit as-if internal speech is just a
| handle to move thoughts around, and not the actual
| thought itself.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| Yeah, when I speak or write out my thoughts I often find
| they weren't as fully formed as they seemed while they
| were just in my head, and maybe shouldn't have counted as
| thoughts in the first place. This is one reason it's
| beneficial in a work context to keep a project journal or
| regularly discuss work with other people.
| benlivengood wrote:
| It's like many/most of us have a little CLIP module running
| all the time to produce NLP interpretations of our internal
| experience, but some don't, or some require conscious
| effort to run.
| tk75x wrote:
| What do you mean by the acronym CLIP? Just curious
| benlivengood wrote:
| OpenAI's Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training model[0]
| used in constructing DALL-E family, but on its own
| generates NLP descriptions from images.
|
| [0] https://openai.com/blog/clip/
| stephen_g wrote:
| That's interesting, I basically always have a clearly
| English monologue going on, even while visually thinking
| about things or thinking about sounds or music at the same
| time. The monologue becomes more sparse and simple the
| harder I'm thinking in another way (sometimes just reducing
| to words of agreement or disagreement to the visualisation
| of something I'm designing or a route I'm planning). But
| then as soon as I stop doing that I just revert back to
| monologuing.
|
| I know a little Spanish and a tiny bit of German and I can
| purposely think in those languages, but I'm way too limited
| in what I can express that it takes a lot of conscious
| effort. The really fun thing that I'm not sure is normal is
| that I can very easily switch my monologue to different
| accents which sound (as I perceive it in my mind) identical
| to real ones I've heard for long enough to replicate. I'm
| quite good at doing different accents in real life so I
| expect that's linked.
| u2077 wrote:
| > I ... always have an (...) English monologue going on
| (..) The monologue becomes more sparse and simple the
| harder I'm thinking.
|
| This! I feel like I've been talking to myself
| (internally) my entire life, but some in this thread
| described their thoughts as relationships of topics and
| concepts, which I also experience.
| ascar wrote:
| The part about accents sounds interesting to me. I always
| believed I can't do accents because I absolutely can't
| fake/hear them in my head. I can even only speak my own
| accent with close family and switch to regular German
| with everyone else. I also can't hear/recall music from
| memory, so it's near impossible for me to sing freely,
| while singing along works fine.
|
| I can imitate different voices in my head when reading a
| novel and I can't even comprehend how one would read and
| comprehend without hearing everything spoken in ones
| head. It's just impossible for me.
|
| I do have a constant monologue though that is impossible
| to shut up. Even if I try to calm it or meditate I would
| think out loud "calm/meditate/don't think", so that
| doesn't work at all xD
|
| I did start thinking in English at some point. Before
| that I would translate all English to German, think about
| it and translate my German thoughts to English, if I
| needed to say something. By now I just think in English
| when I'm in an English context. It feels entirely
| natural.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > I can't even comprehend how one would read and
| comprehend without hearing everything spoken in ones head
|
| For me it's the inverse actually. I don't normally hear
| what I'm reading in my head, I can consciously do so if I
| want, but more often than not that distracts me because
| I'm thinking about the words rather than the concepts.
|
| The only time it's helpful is when I need to focus on a
| particular word for some reason; for example, if I'm
| struggling to recall what it means, or if I'm programming
| and trying to trace where a specific variable is
| referenced. Keeping the sound in my mind can help in
| those cases.
| tooltower wrote:
| FWIW, I'm pretty introverted too, but my internal monologue
| is pretty active. So that's one data point that's the
| opposite of the correlation you suggest.
|
| Not only that, my internal voice has become much quieter
| with age. And I have learned more and more extroverted
| behaviors during the same time.
| endofreach wrote:
| It has just been a few weeks ago that apparently it is
| unusual that i actively have to fight my thoughts to be
| able to talk or think thoroughly. Most times i am so busy
| fighting thoughts that i can only hear words. I ,,try to
| focus" on what people want from me and i it even feels like
| that is what my mind is focused on. But at the same time i
| can feel how my brainpower is actively used... It is like
| white-noise to me, too, but much louder and by now i am
| used to it so i don't really hear anything.
|
| I don't know why i wrote this, but your ,,mind-chatter" and
| ,,white noise" made me think here is a good place to jump
| in and see if anyone has anything to say to this... don't
| know... i am just exhausted...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| simonh wrote:
| >For me, thinking in words and sentences sounds like
| thoughs being weighed and slowed down.
|
| I'm a very 'verbal' thinker, but not all thoughts and
| mental processes are verbalised by a long shot. In fact
| it's probably a small minority, but a very noticeable one
| so it sometimes seems like a dominant mode when on
| reflection it really isn't. Much of the time it's more like
| a post-hoc commentary.
|
| I often think things through verbally when I'm working
| through a tricky problem or issue, but even then I'm not
| sure to what extent the verbalising is post-hoc
| construction. I suspect there's a kind of feedback loop in
| those cases where the mental model is essentially
| unconscious, it's output is processed to generate a
| verbalisation, that process imposes a kind of structure and
| grammatical formalisation of the idea or thought, and that
| informs further modification of the model.
|
| I've often said, and head it said, that if you have a
| tricky problem it helps to find someone and explain the
| problem to them. Often by the time you've explained it,
| you've figured out the solution. Having to structure the
| problem in such a way that you can explain it is a kind of
| analytical discipline that helps think it through. For me
| verbalising internally is helpful in that way, but it's not
| the only way I think. If it were playing reaction sports
| that require some strategising and analysis of your
| opponent's moves would be impossible because it would be
| too slow.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| blueprint wrote:
| > I do have a terrible "mind chatter" though, I'd rather
| describe it as white noise. Way too many thoughts going
| through at once, which makes it very hard to concentrate on
| anything.
|
| It could be related to your dopamine regulation or to
| anything traumatizing which happened to you in the past
| that you haven't fully integrated yet. Out of curiosity
| does this seem like a possibility?
|
| Suppose as you were growing up you and your feelings were
| always invalidated. You may have learned to try to repress
| them. But I hear that when we try to quiet our feelings
| they only get louder. The limbic system is said to want
| emotions. If you trained yourself to push down your
| feelings instead of e.g. inviting them with curiosity then
| they don't just disappear.. you may need to relate to them
| in an emotionally welcoming/safe state in order to resolve
| them. But it can be scary if you never felt safe feeling
| your own feelings, e.g. due to what may have been modeled
| for you by a parent.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I did and always had the the issue of putting my thoughts
| into words properly
|
| I'm the same in that respect, but I grew up bilangually, so
| I always wondered if that has caused my brain to think more
| independently of language than other people. On the other
| hand, I spend a lot of time mulling in my head what I will
| say/write to other people, which results in a lot of
| internal monologue.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > For me, thinking in words and sentences sounds like
| thoughs being weighed and slowed down. Seems very
| unnecessary. On the other hand, I did and always had the
| the issue of putting my thoughts into words properly. Like
| the translator is pretty bad and I always struggle and feel
| like most of the information is lost.
|
| Fwiw, while i do imagine thinking in words is slower than
| non-words, i myself have an inner monologue and it is far
| from... structured when typically active while i'm
| thinking. It sounds much more like the mutterings of an
| insane person. Ie while i'm chewing on a problem the
| majority of my thoughts are without form - but sprinkled in
| between them are voiced words. Sometimes a run of words,
| sometimes a single word, often nothing at all.
|
| Similarly while i think best when i talk out loud to
| myself, what i verbally express are structured quite
| similar to my inner voice ramblings. They are trains of
| thought weaving back and forth almost without meaning.
| Large gaps of jumps, usually cutting myself off mid
| sentence.
|
| > I think there might be some correlation between this and
| being introverted, socializing is exhausting for me because
| the translator is not well trained as I don't use it while
| thinking, and it has to run at 100%. I've talked with my
| better half about this and she said it's easy for her
| because the sentences are already there and it takes zero
| effort to say them, which aligns with my theory.
|
| I struggle immensely with socializing as well. Unsure if
| it's related, but i tend to talk _too_ much. It's like i
| always push the conversation, and i have to fight not to
| talk. That or i forget my points/etc. Despite talking
| heavily, i dislike most socialization. I often leave
| conversations wishing i had said nothing.
| electriclizard wrote:
| > thinking in words and sentences sounds like thoughts
| being weighed and slowed down
|
| This has been my experience as I've learned to stop
| thinking in words. I realized at one point that words are
| learned; which means that there was a point where you were
| thinking without them, before you learned language.
|
| I've done a lot of work on myself with therapy and
| meditation and learned to think without words. And what
| I've noticed is that when I think with words, they occur
| AFTER what I'd call sensational thinking; thinking without
| words is a full-body sensational experience for me and not
| something that only occurs in a slice of the mind like a
| vapid calculation.
|
| >mind chatter
|
| A few times I've experienced acting without any chatter. A
| pure quietness. It's wonderful.
|
| I've been working on myself to make this a permanent thing.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Have you ever spent a decent period of time (>3 months)
| being immersed in another language? When you do it becomes
| clear that there is a language component to your thoughts,
| even if you don't think in words.
|
| My personal experience is similar to GP. My thoughts are
| very non-linear a jumble of images, emotions, sensations,
| sounds, colors, and intuitions. Organization into anything
| resembling a coherent sentence takes conscious effort.
|
| But there are words mixed into that jumble somewhere, and I
| experienced a tipping point during language immersion /
| acquisition where I realized those words were no longer in
| my native tongue. It was around the time I started dreaming
| in the other language.
| psyc wrote:
| The only time I ever think in words is when I'm
| specifically thinking about how I would say or write
| something, and when holding Socratic dialogues with myself.
| Otherwise it's all pictures, usually 3D, and usually
| moving.
|
| Oh, unless it's musical. Then it's music. But I can
| visualize that too.
| red75prime wrote:
| Interesting. What picture do you have for something like
| "I promised to meet my nephew I never met before next
| Tuesday at 3 Av/E 117 St I never visited before."?
|
| When I shut down my internal monologue I have trouble
| thinking about things beyond routine procedures and
| memories.
| psyc wrote:
| It seems like when I read something like that, my
| imagination converts it into a movie scene. So I have a
| little live-action scene of meeting a person on a street.
| Its the same as when I read fiction.
|
| The "3 Av/E 117 St" part is a fact I have to memorize
| with some mnemonic. I think when I was young I would have
| been able to see it on the street sign, but my eidetic
| memory gets worse each year, and I'm pretty old.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I promised to meet my nephew I never met before next
| Tuesday at 3 Av/E 117 St I never visited before.
|
| You don't work with that as a single packet, it is just
| many tidbits of information. I learned you have a nephew,
| that you haven't seen this nephew before, that you never
| visited that place, that you promised to meet them at a
| specific location. So you add all of those things to your
| brain, that is equivalent to the sentence.
|
| Storing that as a single sentence instead of breaking it
| up and storing the chunks seems inefficient, how is your
| brain supposed to find information like "when was the
| first time X visited 3Av/E117 st?" when you haven't filed
| it properly? And if your brain files the information
| properly, why do you need that sentence?
|
| The recent cache can find those sentences, but your long
| term memories wont find it without proper indexing, you
| will forget a lot of things if you try remembering
| everything like that.
| quirino wrote:
| I've seen this "inner voice" thing on the internet a couple
| of times and I'm yet to find a source that convinces me
| there's a real difference between people in this respect.
|
| I can definitely relate more to the way you described your
| mind than to the usual "inner voice". But I suspect it's the
| same for all people, they just subconsciously abstract it in
| another way.
|
| I suspect a similar confusion happens when people talk about
| aphantasia. But I haven't really put in the work to discover
| how serious the research around these things is.
| electriclizard wrote:
| I can do both. Getting rid of the inner voice took a lot of
| therapy and meditation and I still struggle; I had it for
| most of my life.
|
| The "inner voice" is absolutely a real voice, as real as my
| own; and it's not necessarily the only voice. The voices
| are not auditory hallucinations--they are very distinctly
| discernible from sounds I'd hear with my ears.
|
| I have learned how to think without this voice and I prefer
| doing so immensely, as the voice is akin to vapid
| calculation, while thinking without it is a sensational
| experience with feelings and is a much more enjoyable
| experience, extending beyond the location of where I hear
| the inner voice and goes as far experiencing sensation
| throughout my entire body; this sensation can be as vivid
| as physical touch.
|
| In fact the voice is slower than sensational thinking. It
| occurs after the sensational thinking and the sensational
| thinking rarely can occur at the same time as the voice;
| they very easily become mutually exclusive and the inner
| voice tends to be the one that dominates.
|
| I hope to reverse this relationship with continued work.
| Thinking without an inner voice is a much more enjoyable
| life for me.
| Kharvok wrote:
| My thoughts work much like this. For example, if I'm
| discussing some kind of design or graph relationship, I
| actually see what I'm talking about vividly. The problem is
| it's really hard to make eye contact while doing this. It's
| not that I find eye contact uncomfortable in conversation.
| It's just that discussing many topics, especially technical
| ones, it's not possible to see my ideas while looking
| directly at someone.
|
| I find this most frustrating in work that is interrupted and
| explanation is sought. So for example, if I'm thinking
| through the most efficient way to accomplish X, taking into
| accounty Y and Z, and someone walks into my office and asks
| me what I'm working on it's frustrating stating my thought
| process on the spot because none of that reasoning was
| assembled using language.
|
| What are others experience with this?
| bhaak wrote:
| I have that too (minus colors, if you actually see colors in
| your mind, colors in my mind is only an conceptual attribute
| attached to a thing).
|
| How do you articulate speech? With me, the concepts in my
| mind just turn into vocalized words. It's note even an
| effort, it just happens when I want to speak. Like my
| thoughts move the muscles in my arms. I don't know how and I
| am surprised that my line of thought rarely stumbles and
| doesn't produce the correct words. I think it should be some
| kind of effort to turn that wordless cloud of abstract
| thoughts and concepts into words but it just isn't.
|
| I do have vocalization when I'm reading or when I'm preparing
| a text (like this one I'm just writing). But this is just to
| get the phrases and wordings the way I like them to be with
| the right effect.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'm the same, re not having internally-vocalised thought.
| Can you read without vocalising though? That was an idea I
| discovered on HN, in the context of speed reading.
|
| Seems we go from reading out loud, to reading in our heads
| (internally-vocalising), but you can continue and read
| without the internal-vocalisation. I can do it a bit, but
| under test conditions I only picked up about half of what I
| would do when I read to myself in my head.
|
| Amazing how different people's headspaces are.
| bhaak wrote:
| I also encountered the vocalising/non-vocalising thing
| when going into speedreading.
|
| I can supress the vocalising with a bit of conscious
| effort but it's not the vocalising that limits my reading
| speed. It's all the rest that goes on in my mind that
| processes the information I just read. If I'm looking for
| some specific words, not vocalising is helpful but if I
| need to remember and understand the text I'm reading, I
| do vocalising as that doesn't impact the rest that goes
| on in my mind.
|
| So I'm not a speedreader but it did help me to improve my
| glancing skills and if I need to I can count really fast
| now by visualizing the numbers turning into each other.
| sph wrote:
| There's a voice for me, but it makes no sound. It directly
| activates the speech centres in my brain. Like my aphantasia,
| that I can imagine things without seeing them.
| mach1ne wrote:
| I also deduced that my inner monologue isn't making any
| sound even though I 'hear' the words. For each word it's
| like the average of every time you have heard that word.
| But it's easy to mistake that into hearing the sounds,
| which is probably what is happening when most people claim
| to hear their inner monologue.
| technovader wrote:
| I think it's absurd to be talking about your inner
| monologue "making sounds"
|
| I just mean the idea itself is absurd. Obviously nothing in
| your mind is making sounds.
|
| If you just mean "imagining sounds" I would still question
| what it actually means.
|
| Maybe they're both the same thing (inner monologue that
| makes imagined sounds, vs inner monologue that doesnt make
| imagined sounds)
| riffraff wrote:
| I think in words, but I do not hear voices.
|
| I can tell the difference, because I can easily imagine
| voices too, it's like remembering them, but you make them
| say something else :)
|
| But normally my "inner monologue" is voiceless.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| My inner monologue can be visualized as phantasmal gray
| words floating in a blank black space. When I imagine what
| that monologue sounds like it is mostly has my own voice
| but occasionally has no definable voice, or it takes on the
| lilt of some unknown reader as if it were telling me a
| bedtime story or reading a poem that it knows by heart.
| mouzogu wrote:
| i call bs on this. i think everyone is able to summon a voice
| in their head. maybe these people think that this voice should
| make an audible sound.
|
| i dont know how you can formulate concrete thoughts using
| abstract or symbolic things. maybe they are neanderthals or
| some other species.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| Is an inner monologue supposed to be completely intelligible,
| or at the same speed as spoken conversation, or in complete
| sentences, or always on by default? Because I can, e.g. look
| at the painting on my wall and summon a voice and think "ok
| what do I think of this painting?", and then I start getting
| random ideas like "blue sky" and "leaf, leaf, leaf" and
| "that's a weird curve" and "I'm getting hungry". But it's not
| like a fully formatted paragraph with coherant thoughts, in
| fact the voices are almost always overlapping, like someone
| is speaking 3 or 4 things at once and I can sort of hone in
| on one or two of them at a time.
|
| Then when I stop thinking about it, my mind fades back into
| whatever it was on before, usually some music that's stuck in
| my head (which interestingly is always in the correct key and
| tempo even if it repeats the catchy bit more than it should
| if I'm not paying attention). The weirdest part is that when
| I'm actually listening to or playing music the narrative DOES
| actually collapse into a single spoken-conversation-speed
| track.
| ehnto wrote:
| Some people can't picture images in their head, while I can,
| it's not so hard to imagine some people can do images but not
| voice.
| mouzogu wrote:
| again, i think people are just being naive or faux-confused
| about what images in your head should look like. they think
| it should maybe clear and lucid as opposed to something
| much more ephemeral and difficult to grasp.
| ehnto wrote:
| There is a body of research on the topic already, so if
| you're truly skeptical it might be worth reading into it
| some more. I think you're being a bit unempathetic, in
| that you're unable to consider that anyone thinks any
| differently to you. If you really must in order to accept
| it, consider it a defect, just like some people can't
| remember faces, some people have no long-term memory,
| some people can't recognize letters or numbers, so on and
| so forth. It shouldn't be so hard to believe that our
| brains, as complex and unknown as they are, might perform
| differently. There are billions of brains, some of them
| are probably going to be wired weirdly.
| q3k wrote:
| Able to summon? Sure, but it feels unnatural. It sometimes
| happens when I gather all of my focus on a single task, eg. a
| debugging session. But then it's closer to talking to myself.
|
| My mind defaults to such a jumbled mess of simultanelous
| trains of thought that attempting to linearize them into a
| single voice is impossible.
| Lambdanaut wrote:
| Haha really? Because a good friend of mine has spent a large
| amount of his life _seeking_ an internal experience that he
| feels he so desperately needs in order to have lived a
| complete life.
|
| It's called complete aphantasia* and it's not too incredibly
| rare. I've met at least two people who would sit down and
| have a conversation with me about it.
|
| By the way, my aphantasic friend is a talented composer and
| an INCREDIBLY powerful writer. He's described composition as
| "sitting down at the piano and letting his hands do the
| work." He's never heard music in his mind because he's never
| had any internal experience whatsoever.
|
| * No dreams * No internal chatter * No internal recollection
| at all
|
| When asked to recall his life, he is able to tell a basic
| story, but it's not because he internally experiences
| remembering anything. Instead, he opens his mouth, and the
| story flows from him, as he has learned to say it.
|
| He's sought out psychedelic experiences just to feel
| _something_ that is not there, and even then on the most
| powerful psychedelics he sees nothing (though he does feel
| things from them).
|
| The range of internal experience is far vaster than many of
| us ever thought possible. Sometimes I wonder if what is
| cartoon to me, is the lived experience of some other human
| being out there.
|
| It certainly would explain somethings.
|
| * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
| bsedlm wrote:
| He seems like he's somehow split or fragmented or segmented
| away?
|
| Or possibly he just has a radically different way to bring
| all of his own self together.
|
| What if he were to sit in the morning to write down a plan
| of what he'll do in the afternoon with the idea that he'd
| do it?
|
| What if he didn't even write it?
| mach1ne wrote:
| I don't know if split-brain studies are familiar. In short,
| some people had the connections between their lobes cut off
| to combat epilepsy. As a result they had two separate
| brains, and if, for example, a funny image was shown to
| their left eye, they began to laugh, but when prompted why
| they were laughing, they couldn't answer.
|
| My point is, it is conceivable that your friend has some
| odd wiring to the parts of his brain which process
| language. It'd be interesting to get him to an fMRI and see
| whether the language is processed somewhere completely
| different to normal people - why not even in the
| cerebellum.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Has your friend heard of p-zombies, and if so, compared his
| experience to the description of them?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >i dont know how you can formulate concrete thoughts using
| abstract or symbolic things. //
|
| What are you saying here, thoughts are abstract, but to me
| seem purer and more varied than the (both abstract and
| symbolic) constraints of language. There are lots of things
| that come to mind that are almost impossible to describe
| fully and clearly -- thoughts would seem very constrained if
| you could only have them in a language you knew.
|
| Children often described things they don't really have the
| language for. I think that constraining thought to use
| language is only an appearance and must necessarily arrive
| with language learning.
|
| Side note: I suffer intrusive thoughts which are in the form
| of images and compulsions, they are never word based and I
| never choose to describe them to myself (perhaps I should?).
| mouzogu wrote:
| for example, how would you write a piece of code? using
| images in your head? are those images of code? if so, then
| that for me is dialogue.
|
| i dont think people have some kind of mental sign language
| to represent every possible concept they have ever
| experienced. thats what language is for.
| Jensson wrote:
| > how would you write a piece of code? using images in
| your head? are those images of code?
|
| You think about what you want to write, then you write
| it. No, not images, thoughts doesn't need to be images,
| its just thoughts. No, they aren't code, the thoughts are
| just representations of programming concepts and
| abstractions that I can't name or visualize. It is like,
| when you think about a person and their personality, how
| does those thoughts work? Do you get words that
| represents everything about that persons personality? No,
| of course not, you can't fully capture a person in words
| or images. Yet you can still think and reason about their
| personality. That is the pure way your thoughts works.
| You can think about everything using abstract thoughts
| like that, including math, programming etc.
|
| The fact that some people can't think about math or
| programming without translating that to language is very
| fascinating to me.
| bhaak wrote:
| Being able to summon a voice and having this voice as default
| (apparently some aren't even able to quiet this inner voice)
| are different things.
|
| Would you also call bullshit if some people told you that
| they don't see colors the way you do or that they can hear
| colors?
| alar44 wrote:
| Yes if fucking everyone started saying they can hear
| colors. Suddenly, half the population lacks a voice in
| their head or claims not to be able to imagine images.
|
| Not being "neurotypical" whatever the fuck that means, has
| become SUPER trendy. Out of nowhere, suddenly everyone has
| a mental disorder.
|
| I don't fucking buy it.
| bhaak wrote:
| It's not a mental disorder. The brain is a very complex
| machine. It would be quite surprising if every brain
| would work exactly the same.
|
| It's possible what people have talked about here is a
| pretty normal spectrum between the extremes of
| hyperphantasia and aphantasia. Especially aphantasia is
| not well researched yet.
| User23 wrote:
| I know with absolute certainty that others don't see colors
| the way I do. The reason is my left and right eyes see
| color slightly but observably differently. If my two eyes
| don't even agree with each other, they can't possibly agree
| with the eyes of others.
| [deleted]
| amatic wrote:
| In some cases it might be bs, and I think there could be a
| test for that. The idea is from Feynman, of all people, who
| once discovered that his colleague counts in "visual" numbers
| while he counted in "auditory", or maybe I mixed them up.
|
| The idea is to simultaneously do two tasks that would
| interfere with each other if they were of the same kind, and
| would be performed successfully if they are different. So,
| give a person a text to read out loud and make them perform a
| cognitive task that requires, in your opinion, verbal
| reasoning. If they can read and still solve the task in the
| same time as "normal" people, they could probably reason in
| non-verbal terms.
| bsedlm wrote:
| IMO, this is a skill that can be practiced (I feel the same way
| about Aphantasia).
|
| i.e. I believe that even people who don't have it could learn
| it.
|
| However I do concede that some some will barely feel like doing
| it and they'd be doing it well already. While others will
| really really have to work for it before they can achieve it.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| As a person with Aphantasia, I never knew that picturing
| something in your mind was literal. I dream in interactive
| images/video/whatever you want to call it, but when asked to
| picture something (the common example is a green apple), I do
| not "see" it, but instead have a database of words that
| describe it from the shape to the color to the waxy sheen of
| the skin. I also have a very hard time with faces if anything
| changes too (like a haircut or glasses or even basic aging),
| I watch a LOT of movies, a LOT a LOT, and I cannot remember
| what I know actors or actresses from even if I literally
| watched a movie with them that SAME day (with some major
| exceptions like Robert Downy Jr. or Brad Pitt).
| layer8 wrote:
| For me the "pictures" in my mind are very diffuse and can't
| hold much complexity. It's certainly very different from
| clear actual seeing with your eyes. I also have a hard time
| remembering faces if I don't see them frequently. But I
| wouldn't ever say that I can't/don't picture things in my
| mind. While there's probably a spectrum in how clear
| people's mind's eyes are, I wonder if there's also a
| difference in how people conceptualize their internal
| perceptions. I.e., I could conceivably imagine that someone
| with the same internal picturing capabilities as myself
| would deny that it constitutes "seeing" something in their
| mind.
| brimble wrote:
| I didn't have one until I was 10 or so and _tried_ to have
| one, just on a lark.
|
| At some point it became permanent. IMO it's net-negative but
| not enough so to be a big deal.
| bsedlm wrote:
| you're referring to an inner monologue?
|
| I wonder why you consider it a net-negative?
|
| In my own experience, having become more adept at using it,
| may I suggest you just need more practice?
|
| Personally, learning to "turn it off" (or giving a rest)
| and even moreso learning about the limitations of such
| language-centric mindsets; being able to "put the language
| down" and pick it back up when needed (so to say) has
| allowed me to cancel out the negative aspects.
| brimble wrote:
| > I wonder why you consider it a net-negative?
|
| No perceived benefit, and now there's chatter in my head.
| It's not exactly counterproductive, but I don't see how
| it's helpful.
|
| > In my own experience, having become more adept at using
| it, may I suggest you just need more practice?
|
| I'm coming up on 40 and again, it's not really that big a
| deal, so, heh, a little late. I don't even know what I'd
| "use it" for--I was great at language use, written
| composition, totally fine at speaking, creative play, all
| the things one might think it'd help with, before it, so
| it just seems like a tag-along that's not doing much
| good, or a little annoying at times, but nothing helpful.
| I can "use it" for things but I was fine at those before.
|
| > Personally, learning to "turn it off" (or giving a
| rest) and even moreso learning about the limitations of
| such language-centric mindsets; being able to "put the
| language down" and pick it back up when needed (so to
| say) has allowed me to cancel out the negative aspects.
|
| Yeah, the negatives aren't that bad, I just don't see any
| benefit, either.
| barefeg wrote:
| I find that I have a lot more monologues if I'm talking
| with people a lot during work. Or if there's some
| unresolved thing I want to discuss with someone. When I
| spend long times without speaking with anyone then I find
| the chatter goes away
| khofstadter wrote:
| The best thing that stills my mind is concentrating on work
| (which could be linked to Csikszentmihalyi's flow state) or doing
| meditation. There are many different states of mind meditation
| can help induce and maintain. I think the basic categorisation
| splits meditation into two types: (a) concentrative/active and
| (b) receptive/passive. The fastest and most efficient technique I
| found is the Wim Hof breathing technique:
| https://youtu.be/tybOi4hjZFQ
| amai wrote:
| Easy: do some exhaustive sports. Go running as far as you can. Or
| do some push-ups or pull-ups until exhaustion and beyond. Do
| burpees. Or simply do a hand stand as long as you can.
|
| Because "if your body is in pain, it simply stops your brain".
| pfrench42 wrote:
| Works for me. So far rock climbing and fly fishing require 100%
| of my concentration and voice chatter disappears completely.
| For me they are my meditation.
| taeric wrote:
| This... doesn't really work for me. I do enjoy long bike rides,
| but unless I specifically take steps to focus my thoughts, I
| will have just as chatty of a mind during exercise as I will at
| any other time. Probably more so, if my mind is not otherwise
| needed to make choices. (And, "keep going" isn't really an
| active choice that bothers my mind.)
| doliveira wrote:
| Maybe bike riding isn't really exhausting for you anymore?
|
| I used to cycle to work in the pre-2020 era, but during the
| first few months I remember how everything in my mind was
| about the bicycle and the road and forcing myself not to
| stop. After this first period the body adapted and the usual
| train of thoughts returned. When I noticed I was thinking of
| mundane things during the ride was when I considered that my
| body had adapted
| ehnto wrote:
| I can still lose my train of thought while mid maximum
| effort deadlift, or pinned on a chunky downhill MTB
| section. I think it's less about the effort and more about
| the familiarity. I tend to have a clear mind when I am
| taking in new information, like during a ride in new place.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| i mountain bike, and the climb, i have an internal monologue
| as much as normal. i try to focus on the woods instead but
| doesn't work.
|
| on the downhill though, silence. while skiing (downhill),
| silence. rock climbing same deal. those moments are bliss in
| many ways.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| Agreed. Other things to do to complement that:
|
| 1. Avoid excessive multi-tasking 2. Minimize activities that
| bring immediate reward signals to your brain like opening
| social networks 100s time/day. Taken to the extreme do a
| "dopamine detox" period 3. Try to set a routine for yourself in
| small steps
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Any meditative activities, including sports, drawing or writing
| help me quite a lot: https://sonnet.io/posts/ulysses/
| krono wrote:
| > The human mind didn't evolve to always be in the moment.
|
| Unless you're blessed with ADHD, in which case you're sometimes
| processing multiple moments simultaneously!
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The things I'd do to stop processing certain stuff. The worst
| of all is sound tbh. As much as I love music, I think I'd give
| up hearing for some silence.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Oh man, have you heard of misophonia? I didn't learn about it
| until my mid-30s but the knowledge helped me re-frame a lot
| of previously very puzzling bullshit.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| It seems to be hyperacusis as the sounds are mostly
| environmental. Afaik I know it relates to difficulty
| modulating stimuli which checks out with my other
| experiences.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| I have been increasingly tormented by repetitive music, whether
| it's something I heard recently or something my mind made up.
| it's got to the stage where it's practically incessant at every
| moment of every day. I also grind my teeth to the beat which
| dentists have commented on. on one hand I feel blessed that it's
| not voices but on the other I wish there was a pause button
| layer8 wrote:
| This likely won't help you, but I found that I can use the Star
| Wars Cantina Band piece, which used to be an earworm for me
| many years ago, to "cleanse" my mind from a new earworm. That
| is, whenever I have an annoying earworm, I can kill it by
| playing Cantina Band in my mind.
| kinghtown wrote:
| A musician buddy told me it's because your mind craves the
| pattern and to see the song through to the end to find out how
| the tonics and keys play out. Also, modern pop songs are
| designed to be catchy. It's not common to be able to hear music
| in your head, just like some people can't visualize. So be
| happy you got a talent most don't have.
|
| Thinking of these two ideas really mellowed songs playing in my
| head.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| thank you for your response
| ehnto wrote:
| > It's not common to be able to hear music in your head
|
| I did not know this, do you have any sources for somewhere to
| read about it? Not that I don't believe you, I'm just curious
| about just how unlikely it is to be able to do that.
|
| In music we call the above ability "audiation", and people
| who can't audiate are often not good at improvisation. It's
| more intuitive for people who can audiate, and more
| systematic for people who can't (ie instead of imagining new
| music, they are generating it from rules).
|
| I can recall and recite full pieces that I've only heard one
| or two times. I really struggle with remembering lyrics, but
| I will remember the full suite of instruments and what they
| played. I can also synthesize/imagine new songs in my head
| with those same instruments and voices, with totally new
| melodies and chords, I can do that for voices to. I can make
| anyone say anything in my head.
|
| I figured everyone could do some variant of that. Though
| remembering every note is probably a bit extra-curricular I
| wouldn't have expected it to be that unique.
|
| It's also possible that I don't remember as perfectly as I
| think I do, but because I can synthesize so well and have a
| fairly large musical exposure, I fill in the background
| instruments closely enough that it's the same vibe.
| kinghtown wrote:
| I don't have any hard data to point you towards but quite a
| few people self report that they cannot visualize images at
| all. Most people do but like all things related to the mind
| there is a spectrum where in the extreme you can find
| people who can fly by a city in a helicopter once who can
| reproduce the cityscape, remember the correct silhouettes
| of hundreds of buildings, with pencils or ink with extreme
| accuracy.
|
| It's not a stretch to suppose a similar spectrum exists
| with audiation (didn't know this word before BTW!) in the
| general public with most people can more or less hear some
| sound in their mind but having multiple channels of music
| playing in time.. probably not most. I suppose people who
| get songs stuck in their heads are more able than most in
| that regard for sure.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| the concept of audiation is interesting, I will explore
| further
|
| thank you for sharing your experience. I too find it hard
| to memorise lyrics, but can sometimes have a full orchestra
| playing in time and in tune
|
| I wonder if this audiation is a redirection for anxiety or
| depression, i.e. my brain's attempt at avoiding insanity
| kinghtown wrote:
| "my brain's attempt at avoiding insanity"
|
| Don't overthink it. Some people have a stronger ability
| than others to synthesize sensory data. It's more related
| to lucid dreaming, not insanity.
| besse wrote:
| Huh that happens to me too, tooth grinding and all. I never
| thought it might not be normal. In periods it's so bad I have
| to completely avoid music or I won't be able to sleep. I'll
| just lie in bed _jamming_ for hours. It 's incredibly annoying,
| and a bit scary to observe my mind going in circles like that.
|
| It's definitely stress/anxiety related for me, or at least
| coincident.
|
| I don't play an instrument, do you? Maybe it could "get it out
| of the system" somehow?
| 867-5309 wrote:
| it's slightly relieving to hear you experience similar and
| find it normal
|
| yes to it getting in the way of sleep and yes to probably
| anxiety related
|
| I used to listen to a lot of music and play a few instruments
| as a hobby, but have had no time to in recent years. I
| consider myself an incredibly musical person and wonder if
| recording the main offenders would expel them. I would love
| to find the time to turn this affliction into a creative
| process, both as a hobby and possible therapy
| mgdlbp wrote:
| I've noticed that whenever I find a bit music particularly
| enjoyable on the first listen, my enjoyment at listening to it
| declines sharply within a couple days and will never again as
| high. I guess it's like the idea of ruining a song for yourself
| by playing it too many times in rapid succession, but with this
| I find that regardless of whether I play the track only once or
| on repeat for hours (I've tried), every listen on that day is
| equally enjoyable, but a night or two of sleep and it loses its
| magic.
|
| Perhaps this is actually a more general phenomenon--you often
| hear people wishing they could experience some
| song/show/book/film 'for the first time again'. Regardless, it
| seems to fall into a category of topics about memory I see
| discussed frequently online: maybe there's some book out there
| with a grand theory relating the enjoyability of music to the
| brain's constant search for novel things to pattern match on,
| and how boredom evolved to spur on everything that we do. It'd
| probably also incorporate spaced repetition and the role of
| sleep in learning--wasn't there recently an HN thread about
| unexpectedly good performance when coming back to a skill
| that's languished for some time, and how you can temporarily
| perform _worse_ during nonstop practice?
| nemo1618 wrote:
| PROTIP: If you open a song in Audacity and tweak it slightly
| (I usually slow it down by 5%), you can trick your brain into
| processing it as a "new" song again. The returns are still
| diminishing, but I find I can eke a few more days out of a
| good song this way.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Another trick is to listen to your favorite songs at a very
| low volume -- loud enough so you can still hear them, but
| quiet enough so that you can't quite make out the lyrics or
| the melody. After a while of this kind of listening, your
| mind will fill in the gaps in a creative way.
|
| This is great for getting inspiration for music making, as
| what you hear will have a strong resemblance to what you
| already like, but will be different in subtle and
| interesting ways.
| garbanz0 wrote:
| I've found that when the constant music starts to get grating,
| that feeling of annoyance is actually just the onset of a
| headache disguising itself differently.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Sometimes I get stuck in loops of thought about "what I need to
| do", such as "I need to buy X, pick up Y, return Z". Writing this
| list down breaks the loop. I think that counts as mind chatter
| :-).
| davidhs wrote:
| I do concentration meditation. After about 15 minutes most of my
| mind chatter has dissipated.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I used to do "proper" mindfulness sitting practice in a
| Buddhist tradition (I'm no longer a Buddhist). What I found
| striking about that kind of practice was that it _doesn 't_
| stop the internal chatter; it's not supposed to. It renders it
| visible (and the speed of the stream of thoughts is startling).
|
| Commercial "mindfulness" training is sold as a way of calming
| the mind. I think it's unwise to approach mindfulness with that
| expectation. It can have the opposite effect; things can get
| stirred up, especially if you do longish sessions. Commercial
| mindfulness is also pitched as being completely safe for
| everyone. It's not, it can cause trouble, and it's advisable to
| have a good instructor on hand.
| davidhs wrote:
| To give a better context for my comment to OP, I began
| (again) practicing meditation early January this year by
| following the book The Mind Illuminated. I am now mostly
| working on stages 3 and 4 of the book. I noticed, in my mind,
| when I was using the technique Follow the Breath my mind
| chattering would mostly cease, not that I intentionally tried
| to suppress it. I still experience a kind of narration of
| what is happening in the moment.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| >> The goal is not to stop talking to ourselves. That would be a
| bad thing.
|
| This... has not been my experience at all. When the mind is able
| to be quiet, this is when inspiration and insight is most likely
| to occur. I have best been able to cultivate the environment for
| a quiet mind (still a daily practice...) by focusing all
| attention on one spot in the body, over and over again, as much
| as possible through the day during any activity.
| mekoka wrote:
| I found that quote strange, as well. Considering that so many
| of our problems can be traced directly to the constant inner
| dialogue (in one form or another), and considering how
| difficult it is to reach a state where you lose the habit, let
| alone the ability, I also think it was unnecessary. The most
| habitual meditators still have to work at quieting their minds.
| If you find yourself in the midst of a rainy storm and are
| looking for shelter, it'd be strange to first acknowledge the
| usefulness of water.
| tigerlily wrote:
| I don't have any mind chatter, but I have strong phantasia. To
| emulate an inner voice, I actually have to talk out loud, to
| myself. I've quite enjoyed this ever since I was a kid. Anyone
| else do anything similar?
| SemanticStrengh wrote:
| Talking out loud or writing significantly potentiate my
| otherwise weak inner voice. The question is: yes talking out
| loud is a very potent increase in inner voice quality of the
| thought and velocity. But how universal is that? Does everyone
| actually has a weak inner voice that has a hard time forming
| rich thought associations and rich sentences? Because it makes
| sense that talking out loud or writing leverage more neurons
| and therefore has more bandwidth. It even has some proof of
| universality for neurotypicals, see e.g rubber duck debugging.
| tigerlily wrote:
| I think it has reasonably high bandwidth, but it depends on
| the mode. A lot of the time I'm speaking to an acquaintance
| who is not present, and it's a little like rubber duck
| debugging what I am going to say when I next meet them.
| Sometimes I sound completely over the top, or too
| fantastical, so it's a good way for me to check my state of
| mind. The bandwidth starts to roll off once topics become
| circular, or there are too many repeats. Then I either just
| shut up or move onto another topic.
|
| Man I'm making myself sound insane. I hope I don't
| accidentally dox myself one day.
|
| I liked your mention of rubber duck debugging, I think it's
| the closest way to describe it :)
| nicoburns wrote:
| This seems common in children when learning to read. Most can
| initially only read out loud and have to later to learn to do
| so in their head.
| instakill wrote:
| I'm opposite. Aphantasia but can hear nearly perfectly in my
| mind's ear
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| Same in terms of not having a strong inner voice and using
| Otter.AI or writing down on paper to emulate an inner voice;
| phantasia doesn't seem to show much in Google so maybe there is
| a different term
| tigerlily wrote:
| Yeah I was using "phantasia" as an antonym for aphantasia, so
| just a placeholder term. I guess I mean I readily conjure
| images in my mind.
| kgbcia wrote:
| fasting
| joeberon wrote:
| photochemsyn wrote:
| My mind chatter is almost all symbols and images, and any time
| 'inner voices' pop up I just deliberately silence them. There are
| some useful little tricks for people who are always beating
| themselves up, though. For example, rather than saying to
| yourself "you really screwed that up, you idiot" just say "well,
| let's not do that again", or "next time, let's do a better job of
| it." Even so, schizophrenia is characterized by out-of-control
| inner voices, it's really not very healthy to wallow in that kind
| of thing.
|
| I read a little about schizophrenia; it seems rather like a case
| where you have a kind of mental fragmentation, like a bunch of
| people (i.e. divergent egos) in a maze (i.e. a single mind) who
| can only communicate with each other by shouting over the walls
| of the maze. In my area there it's not all that uncommon to
| encounter homeless people with this condition, they're often
| doing things like screaming 'shut the f*ck up' to noone in
| particular but I assume they're responding to the out-of-control
| voices in their head.
|
| It's too bad there aren't more tools available to help people
| with these conditions. I assume a lot of it is due to things like
| childhood trauma - people end up with very fragmented minds. Some
| kind of re-integration process seems necessary. Maybe psychedelic
| therapy? Feeding people tranquilizers just seems to mask the
| condition, and when they 'go off their meds' nothing has changed.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| The interviewee suggests referring to oneself in the internal
| monologue as 'you' or by name, but to this it turns out that I
| am, as they say, Pagliacci.
|
| (Alcohol and benzos can sometimes quiet things, but of course
| that's not sustainable)
| sheinsheish wrote:
| I do it to a degree while meditating. Also, when improvising or
| practicing piano.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| I found that fasting decreases my mental chatter.
| verisimi wrote:
| hungry demons are quiet demons?
| bell-cot wrote:
| When the (calorie) budget is looking tight, one of the first
| things to get cut is the peanut gallery.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-25 23:03 UTC)