Your internal monologue

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If you think carefully about it, how would you describe the nature of your internal monologue?
Do you have one? Is it very active? Does it have a voice - and is that voice anything like your actual, outward speech (if you speak)? Or someone else's, perhaps formed from some other manner of speech and voice that you have been exposed to or chosen?

What is the structure of it: Does it seem to address an imaginary audience? Is there a sense that it addresses an individual? Purely yourself? Someone else, but not definite? A specific imaginary person? Do you have a sense that it is a monologue talking some time in the future, or even the past?


I realise I have at least two types - an imaginative one, which speaks as if dictating ideas or stories freely to an interviewer some time in the future, and a less imaginative one, which is far more common the older I get (and which has changed with exposure to the internet and the possibility of typing out ideas to strangers). The second kind is a rehearsal monologue. This post, for example, looped in various forms in my internal monologue about 10 to 20 times over 2 days. Something very important to me might repeat hundreds of times over a number of days. This rehearsal monologue is extremely repetitive and most of the subjects it monologues on never actually get expressed in reality. Any time I get the idea that I will have the opportunity to explain something to a real person in the real future, it will usually start to practice over and over again, wearing a groove for a conversation. On the occasions that I do express the monologued ideas in reality, they are absolutely nothing like the imaginary rehearsal and more often than not don't make full sense. Plus, they lose all their power through the quality of my actual voice.

My internal voice has a clarity and plainness that my physical voice doesn't. It is perhaps my ideal voice, which makes it much older than I actually am.

I wonder lately how much the internal monologue varies between people.

My internal monologue uses my own voice though it doesn't have the same deepness to it that my real voice does. When I remember conversations of others in my head they are only in my voice, I cannot remember what others have said in their own voice.

I find it difficult to think without speaking aloud, so I usually speak my thoughts aloud, though at a volume that no one else can hear me or what I am saying. I constantly have conversations as well as arguments with myself throughout the day.

I find it incredibly hard to tune out irrelevant noise or other people's voices so I often have to read in complete silence to be able to think. I have repetitive thoughts from my OCD for which I use white noise to drown out my own internal dialogue each night so that I can sleep.

I also have two internal monologues: one rehearsing and one imaginative. The rehearsing one is much more clear-cut than the imaginative one.

My imaginative one doesn't play a very active role in my life. I usually "imagine" with images and concepts. Osscasionally, I'll have an internal commentary.

My rehearsing one plays conversations multiple times before I actually have the conversations. However, it also rehearses conversations that I likely will never have, but I rehearse it just in case I need to use it in the future.

My internal monologue changes accents, depending on what I've been listening to. However, my real voice does not change as easily.

Hello. My "internal monologue" is really an external monologue. I speak to myself out loud all the time. Like, my internal thoughts are mainly spoken out loud, not in my mind. It happens probably once every 5 minutes at the minimum. Maybe even more often. The voice is my own, since I speak. I monologue mainly to myself, but sometimes to my imaginary friend Kate when I'm really down. My monologues are about anything really. Many are anxiety driven sadly, like calling myself "stupid" because of social mistakes I've made or doing something wrong as examples. But others are just how to get through a math question as an example or something I need to do in the day.

Sadly, since my internal monologue isn't internal for me, many people notice and judge me for it. People tend to ignore me now. I honestly thought no one noticed until I started to do it when I made a mistake during a game with a group of people (mainly strangers) and they didn't hear what I was saying so they asked and a friend answered them saying that I'm just talking to myself and ignore me. I didn't realize people noticed until that moment . I sometimes do wish that mine was actually internal, but for things like solving a math problem, I have a few memory issues, but have a really good, superior verbal memory so speaking to myself helps me remember what I'm doing.

I'm also a visual learner though, so my mind likes pictures.