Is this normal or do I need to seek help?

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What the title says. Every time I gain a new hyperfixation/spinterest I experience this phenomenon where (if it is a media and not a concept/hobby) I talk to the characters in my head and we have full blown conversations and stuff. When I was little I used to have imaginary friends up until I was about 11 or 12 years old (which caused teachers to be concerned about me but I was not diagnosed with autism until age 15) and I would physically talk to them out loud. I realized that I’m basically doing the same thing but in my head, and I occasionally do talk to myself quietly, volleying the conversation between me and “them”. Is this strictly an autism thing or do I need to potentially look back into getting professional help for this??? Now before anyone asks, I don’t think it’s plurality because these characters can’t gain control of me, I just talk to them and they talk to me. But yeah. Anyone else experience the same thing? Sorry if this whole thing sounds weird, I’m having trouble wording this properly (+ please ask me to further elaborate if needed).

I'm not sure it's quite normal, but unless it's interfering with your ability to function it's probably not something you need to seek help for.

I wouldn't bring this up to a psychologist unless it's interfering in your life or there are disturbing voices. This is probably just a method of thinking. I regularly narrate things like I'm giving a presentation or explaining them to people.

This sort of thing is automatically an issue.

Imaginary friends can be a sign of schizophrenia, a mental illness that affects about 1% of the population.
The movie "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash may be the most accurate portrayal of this disease.

John Nash was able to function without medications in an appropriate environment that was set up for him.
He won a Nobel Prize for his contributions in game theory.

I might've.
It's a part of my own maladaptive daydreaming symptoms.

Dealt with it since age 8, ended at 28.

And yes, this includes talking outloud to said whatever characters.

The fixations itself, that looked like obsessions but it's not, it's a way my brain chosen to dissociate from whatever crap and it's not conscious and voluntary.

To me, it's a defense mechanism of some emotional hung up in early childhood.

That's just one possibility, and one that needed professional help.
... Unless you're the type who can deep dive into your own subconscious to end the seemingly never ending stories yourself.


Else; no. I had dreams of it, but never hallucinations; visual, auditory or otherwise.
Nor delusions and beliefs that mixed up fantasy from reality.

Because, deep down, I'm not a fan of anything. I do not identify as one of those types who are actually into fandoms.

Thus I never labeled any of those imaginary interactions as bonding, never truly have an actual attachment -- never considered any of them as imaginary friends regardless of how it made me feel -- but my head did, and it's what it chose to distract itself from the root of the problem.

Just louder and chattering voices in my mind that I can choose not and not to interact like a self insert, but cannot fully shut off as my own head make their own stories; until the story making "behavior" (more like self generated) the head does truly, truly ends, along with the residual habits that developed with it.

The dysfunctional issue to me is how distracting it is, how it basically made me fight habits and behaviors that fuels it (chronically watching/reading and all the time spent instead of studying/working/anything else).

Not even depression, burnout to a point of losing actual special interests and exhaustion itself stopped it in my own case.

But something that people would warrant to actually need therapy for if it's almost as bad as mine did.

I just can DIY it my own, which is how I solved mine (as opposed to "long term better and consistent management", nothing triggers it anymore -- like, I can finally watch anything I actually like without my head starting to obsess over it and start making self inserts, generating fanfictions, controlling and interacting with characters; stealing my processing space and attentional resources), something I won't recommend to just anyone.



Again that's just one possibility.

Another possibility is that's really how you process things.

The main reason why I didn't because processing words are unnatural to me. Even reading isn't good for me no matter how much my head likes it, I don't like it and I've gotten so sick of stories.

So if words are your forte and story telling aligns with your interests and processes, that might be the case.

You just had to figure how to manage it into your own advantage.
And author types would very much like to have that particular trait/habit/whatever.

Though, I don't know how.
Because words and language are my weakness and I'm so sick of stories that I had to lower something inherently human into just another stimulus of data to me.

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only a psychologist can answer the question whether you need help

It can be very depressing to read about all the attacks on transgender people by politicians.
I looked into therapy after having anxiety issues last fall and decided it would be cheaper to
just buy stuff for "retail" therapy.

I don't remember if I had episode with imaginary characters like there, but I talk to myself a lot. I think it grew as one of my ways to cope with lack of trustworthy people I could talk with. Aside from making everyone flood me with "who are you talking to?" questions, it helps me a lot.
I also think that unless it disturbs you or limits in any way, there's nothing wrong with it. Better be a "weirdo" that copes that way than being "normal" but mentally a ruin

Inside my head I have long talks about all kinds of stuff that attract my interest. Or just random stories. I tried to write those down, but can't make a good book of it

It's my way of processing stuff. Usually late at evening when the world grinds to a halt and I can't sleep yet.

If it doesn't affect your life, it's no problem.

This is completely normal.

There are more variations with our "inner worlds" than each of us may think.

Most people are supposed to think in some kind of combination of pictures and spoken or visual language, with some automatic knowledge that zips through so fast we don't have a cognitive experience of it, if that makes sense at all.

But the process of thinking that you describe is a known and normal phenomenon. There is another way of thinking where the person does not have any images, sounds, or other senses incorporated in their thoughts and it is instead pure streamed knowledge. You could imagine this as an old-style modem working, except instead of tones it is knowledge.

I've put in some time looking into how people think. It's kind of a difficult think to research.

**I do want to point out what someone else brought up-If you say this to the wrong person you are at risk of them misunderstanding that thinking in a conversational way is "schizophrenic voices", which would be an entirely different thing. That would be an auditory hallucination. There is another phenomenon called "intrusive thoughts" which is not what I think you are describing. That is also normal, but can be distressing when people hyperfocus on it.