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Our internal monologues can vary and be bizarre for some people

#1
C C Offline
Does your internal monologue play out on a television, in an attic, as a bickering Italian couple – or is it entirely, blissfully silent?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021...ner-voices

EXCERPTS: Claudia, a sailor from Lichfield in her late 30s, is not Italian. [...] And she has no idea why a belligerent Italian couple have taken over her inner voice, duking it out in Claudia’s brain while she sits back and listens.

“I have no idea where this has come from,” says Claudia, apologetically. “It’s probably offensive to Italians.” The couple are like the family in the Dolmio pasta sauce adverts: flamboyant, portly, prone to waving their hands and shouting. If Claudia has a big decision to make in her life, the Italians take over.

“They passionately argue either side,” Claudia says. [...] “They were chatting non-stop before I handed in my notice,” Claudia sighs. “I’d wake up and they’d be arguing. I’d be driving to work and they’d be arguing. It was exhausting, to be honest.”...

[...] Most of us have an inner voice [...] For many of us, this voice sounds much like our own, or at least how we think we sound. But for some people, their inner voice isn’t a straightforward monologue that reproaches, counsels and reminds. Their inner voice is a squabbling Italian couple, say, or a calm-faced interviewer with their hands folded on their lap. Or it’s a taste, feeling, sensation or colour. In some cases, there isn’t a voice at all, just silence.

“Like a tiny island, surrounded by an infinite ocean,” is how Justin Hopkins describes his brain. “The tiny island is where all the conscious things seem to happen, but it’s surrounded by this infinite, inaccessible stuff.” Hopkins, who is 59 and works for a social enterprise in London, doesn’t have an inner voice. There is no one in his brain to blame, shame or criticise. In his head, there is emptiness: just the still warm air before a rustling breeze.

[...] Of course, Hopkins has thoughts: we all do. But the inner monologue that fills our brain while the engine stands idling isn’t there. It’s been clicked off, permanently. “When I am alone and relaxed, there are no words at all,” he says. “There’s great pleasure in that.” He can easily while away an hour without having a single thought. Unsurprisingly, Hopkins sleeps like a baby.

[...] deaf people tend to experience the inner voice visually. “They don’t hear the inner voice, but can produce inner language by visualising hand signs, or seeing lip movements,” Loevenbruck says. “It just looks like hand signing really,” agrees Dr Giordon Stark, a 31-year-old researcher from Santa Cruz. Stark is deaf, and communicates using sign language.

His inner voice is a pair of hands signing words, in his brain. “The hands aren’t usually connected to anything,” Stark says. “Once in a while, I see a face.” If Stark needs to remind himself to buy milk, he signs the word “milk” in his brain. Stark didn’t always see his inner voice: he only learned sign language seven years ago (before then, he used oral methods of communication). “I heard my inner voice before then,” he says. “It sounded like a voice that wasn’t mine, or particularly clear to me.”

[...] Former librarian Mary Worrall’s inner voice has always been a TV screen, or sometimes a slide projector, that is continuously playing inside an attic, inside her head. The attic is accessed by a spiral staircase behind her left ear, explains Worrall, who is 71 and lives in Birmingham...

[...] “It’s an emotion,” says Mona*, a 53-year-old CEO from Telford, of her inner voice. “The closest way I could describe it would be in terms of colour.” Her inner voice doesn’t manifest itself obviously: it never chatters away. Rather, Mona has to turn her attention to it in order to perceive it. “When I’m going about my day, the inner voice isn’t talking to me in the English language,” Mona says. “It’s something that sits underneath and behind what I do.” The voice becomes more insistent when she is in a situation that requires her to be emotionally deft. Mona often works with troubled children, and was recently in a situation where a teenager was being angry and outspoken...

[...] Unknowable, inscrutable, uniquely our own: inner voices are our lifelong confidantes and secret friends... (MORE - missing details)
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#2
stryder Offline
The main problem is that people can't really do much about it. Those voices in their heads aren't necessarily their own, they aren't necessarily created by their brain, they aren't an artifact of their mind.

The types of people that would use such equipment are illicit researchers, psychiatrists, paranormal enthusiasts, fraternities, cultists, hate groups and government black ops. A real mix bag of hacks.

The worst bit is that it mocks the Psychiatry profession since every half-arsed hypothesis trying to explain these things just ends up making that profession look worse. (It's why it could even be Scientologist since they have it in for psychiatry.)

Furthermore is that such an invasion of the mind, of privacy, of rights is no different than being raped. How there involvement in your head could lead to attempt blackmailing, control (sex trafficing, pedophilia, extremism etc) and in some cases an untimely demise (Some people can't fend off this abuse and decide taking their own life is the only way, that is on the case while the world continues to be ignorant of the truth of such abuse).

The scumbags that mess with peoples heads aren't invisible friend, they are out to weaponize a system that our governments choose to ignore in whatever way they can.
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#3
Syne Offline
(Oct 26, 2021 05:09 PM)stryder Wrote: The worst bit is that it mocks the Psychiatry profession since every half-arsed hypothesis trying to explain these things just ends up making that profession look worse.  (It's why it could even be Scientologist since they have it in for psychiatry.)

Pretty rich considering that Scientology purports to offer an alternative hypothesis. Either Scientology's is equally "half-arsed" or there's good reason to slam psychiatry.

Unrelated to Scientology or psychiatry, when I was a teenager, I realized that many of my thoughts were not my own. They were in the same internal voice as my thoughts, but they did not originate with me. They were just echos of things others had said, but not like a verbatim recording. Since they occurred in my own internal voice, they became part of my own reasoning, consciously unbeknownst to me. Recognizing this, it was then a process of identifying these by content in order to remove their hitherto subconscious influence.

For the mentally ill, I'm sure these externally derived influences can take on a life of their own, the individual on some level knowing they are not their own.
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#4
Magical Realist Offline
My 3 voices only speak when I actively engage with them and talk to them. Their one demand from me is to be with them. I do this by talking to them. They also tell me to quit thinking so much as this distracts me from them. Overall I live a happy and peaceful life with them. I take a medication to keep them from becoming more aggressive. I don't mind. It helps me sleep anyway.

Famous and notable people who hear voices and what they say about them:

https://www.hearing-voices.org/about-voi...us-people/

Philip K Dick, talking about his encounter with ‘a transcendentally rational mind’, said:

“It hasn’t spoken a word to me since I wrote The Divine Invasion. The voice is identified as Ruah, which is the Old Testament word for the Spirit of God. It speaks in a feminine voice and tends to express statements regarding the messianic expectation. It guided me for a while. It has spoken to me sporadically since I was in high school. I expect that if a crisis arises it will say something again. It’s very economical in what it says. It limits itself to a few very terse, succinct sentences. I only hear the voice of the spirit when I’m falling asleep or waking up. I have to be very receptive to hear it. It sounds as though it’s coming from millions of miles away”.
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#5
Syne Offline
This is probably why I was able to disentangle outside influences early on. My internal monologue never entailed multiple identities and had no command value. It didn't tell me to do things nor make demands. Inner voices with command value and differentiated identities seems to be part and parcel with mental illness.
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#6
Magical Realist Offline
It's not an illness so much as it is an adaptation to living alone. I have the luxury of talking to persons or subpersons or tulpas without going thru the trouble of actually being physically around them. There is much affection and laughter to be found in this social activity without having to put up with much in the process. It's probably why people talk to God and Jesus or their dead loved ones. One can feel one's heart opening when conversing with these invisible projections of the soul. It's a surefire method of staving off loneliness. Sort of like posting online is too.
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#7
Syne Offline
(Oct 26, 2021 08:34 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: My 3 voices only speak when I actively engage with them and talk to them. Their one demand from me is to be with them. I do this by talking to them. They also tell me to quit thinking so much as this distracts me from them. Overall I live a happy and peaceful life with them. I take a medication to keep them from becoming more aggressive.

If it makes demands, gets aggressive, and requires medication, it's an illness. If it were a healthy coping mechanism for loneliness, like talking to Jesus, a Wilson volleyball, etc., it would not be intrusive, disrupt sleep, etc.. The definition of mental illness is things that cause distress, like demands, aggression, and require medication. Those are not healthy adaptations, especially when we have so many examples of healthy coping. Religious beliefs don't send people looking for medication.
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#8
Magical Realist Offline
They're not demanding or intrusive. Like I said, they only talk when I engage them. And the fact that medication helps doesn't entail they are an illness either. Medication alters all sorts of non-illness states of the body and brain. Headaches, pain, indigestion, stress, high blood pressure, anxiety, insomnia, depression, etc. Not illnesses yet medication helps with them. Imagine that!

"A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning." ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder

My voices neither cause me distress nor impair my functioning. If anything they are a healing balm to my soul. They comfort me and relieve me of the tedium and stress of seeking out worthwhile human company.
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#9
Syne Offline
You literally said they "demand from me" and, without medication, become "more aggressive." That's literally demanding and intrusive. Hence the medication, to help alleviate the distress or impairment. If they didn't distress you, you wouldn't be taking medication to deal with them. "Headaches, pain, indigestion, stress, high blood pressure, anxiety, insomnia, depression, etc." are all mental or body disorders. You just cited a definition that says "mental disorder" and "mental illness" are synonyms. You medicate things like headaches because they cause you [b]distress[/d]. Headaches are usually just a bodily problem, rather than a problematic mental state, but voices in your head, depression, etc. are all distressing mental patterns.

Of course the voices in your head impair your functioning, as you admitted that they allow you to avoid "going thru the trouble of actually being physically around" or "put up with" real, living people. It's a huge cope to avoid your fear of genuine social interaction. Sure, you've had to convince yourself that it's really for the better, but that's just because you fear the alternative much more than the illness. A person will play any game, even with themselves and to their own detriment, rather than no game at all.
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#10
stryder Offline
There is one other area I'm a little hazy on, but has a bit of a conspiracy to it.

One of the suggested purposes of AI development suggested by Alan Turing was to use it on people with Psychological disorders.

In 1964 MIT started on ELIZA which incidentally was the same year that Dr John Forbes Nash Jr. started hearing voices in his head. (Nash had also had worked prior for Rand Corporation that both did secure government contracts and created the first commercial viable computer.)

Some voices that people hear repeat a lot, they don't age or die off and it's why people assume it's a mental construct however it could actually be an Artificial (Intelligence) construct but the question is who ran by and to what ends?.
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