I used to be like that, and it was helpful in many ways as I seemed to always be ready for wherever a conversation might go. But I wasn't living in the moment. Now I actively stop myself from simulating the various branches of potential conversations. It feels good to live in the moment (shaking my head a little when I feel it starting helps). The downside is that I don't have as many prepared responses and am more easily caught unaware, so now I rely more on sentences or behaviors that are broadly applicable to buy me time to think about my actual response.
On the other hand, it is so satisfying when a conversation hits a branch you worked on for hours on end! Very useful for dating and job interviews. Especially for people with foot-in-mouth disease[1]
While I do play out a lot of conversations and branches in my head, my imagined lines of conversation never really play out in reality. I find for example that my imagined conversations are a lot more hostile, I'm always imagining having to battle and batter my coworkers and managers to explain why things are the way they are - but in person I find that not only are others nicer than I imagined they would be, but I am too. I'll plot the cutting things to say, but in reality I realize that such things would be wholly inappropriate and undeserved and I don't really want to be mean anyway.
For me, this tendency is more of a problem online. This is because I can simply plot out a conversation and then write it the way I planned. It's something I need to be mindful of, to restrain my inner-jerk not just in person but online too.
Exactly. Our brains evolved in a complex social environment where saying or doing the wrong thing could mean getting attacked or pushed out of a social group. But in modern society this is much less the case.
And what would it be like if we could train our brains to think empathetic thoughts about the people around us? This is the premise of the book How to Make Friends and Influence People. The results are very powerful and lead us further to fulfilling our aims than fear infused thinking.
Hi, that's a nice book reference. I've ran into this thread a bit late, but do you know if that book is still relevant (it's published in 1936, Wikipedia says) or are there more modern works that incorporate those ideas and work with them?
It is still relevant, They updated the copy in 1985 to keep it modern but also true to the original. The straightforward message of that book is as powerful as ever.
I love how you guys make me feel like I'm not an odd person. I have a hard time explaining what it's like in my head to other people, including my own wife. If nothing else, it's comforting to know other people struggle with interactions because of the multiple internal threads constantly churning.
> I find for example that my imagined conversations are a lot more hostile
Yes, this! I sometimes find myself getting slightly mad at someone for something that I imagined them doing (or thought they were going to do), because I then had a played-out clash with them over it in my head. As soon as I notice what I'm doing, though, I stop being mad, because it's ridiculous to stay mad at someone over something they literally didn't do.
As a man with Aspergers, that sounds so useful.. and while I can often simulate conversations in my head, real-world conversations with real people almost never play out the same way.
It probably has to do with having little ability to intuitively understand what other people would think.
From my experience, I think a lot of it is due to the fact that you can't really surprise yourself. In the conversation in your head, you try to always be the 'winner' of the debuate, and part of that is to try and come up with remarks from your 'opponent' for which you have gotcha replies. Except you know what your 'opponent' is going to say because that's you. In real life, the opponent is someone else and they may surprise you.
Interesting. I tend to think you can surprise yourself. I write stories as a hobby, and my characters often surprise me.
I'd say it's down to two things:
a) Having to imagine a different personality's perspective, and
b) Having some time to think of a better answer than the off-the-cuff one.
Point a tends to happen whenever I make an effort to see the world from someone else's point of view, or make up an imaginary character to have a conversation with.
Point b tends to happen in my own head when I get quiet time - like during a long walk or shower and a thought I'd never imagined before comes up.
It can have some predictive power, too. Imagine, for example, there's an important negotiation coming up. You'll be sitting on one side of the table wanting the things you want. It does help to put yourself in the opposite seat mentally, thinking about what they want to get, and how you'd go about trying to get it. Maybe even trying on for size the best arguments you might make for their position.
True, I didn't want to imply you can't brute force it somehow, but what I was referring to was the general, low-effort, low-stakes conversation we (apparently not) all have in our heads.
My psychologist once thought I might be on the spectrum, but IDK. I do have a few symptoms including difficulty communicating, but I plan so heavily for every situation that others hardly notice.
Really? By far the most useful thing for dating seems to be the ability to be in the moment while conversing and being able to feel the flow of feelings and emotions - that's what makes a good interpersonal intimate conversation good and speeds up any dating goals one might have... Overthinking stuff, or even thinking a lot in general (while conversing) - does not.
You missed the initial point... preparatory thinking; it's not playing out during the conversations, but before; and for many of us, allows us to actually be in the moment with a discussion because we're prepared for standard branches of the possible conversations.
> By far the most useful thing for dating seems to be the ability to be in the moment
That obviously varies a lot. When I am actually spontaneous, bad things happen. I am able to improvise on top of a plan, but winging it is not an option.
My psychologist thinks I might be on the autism spectrum.
For what it's worth, while I'm far from infallible, my strategy on dating was successful enough the last two decades or so.
Is it though? I have found a job and wife that is OK with my foot in mouth disease and think it works better when you sell who you are. Don't get me wrong self improvement is important, but so is telling people who are going to spend time with you what they are going to get.
The fact the I plan conversations does not make me any less of myself. You are mistaking planning with deception.
And anyone I meet will eventually learn all my flaws, but that's an incremental process. It doesn't make sense to just throw each one of them on the first date.
That sounds like hell to me. I don't have an internal monolog. I think in visuals. I am a quiet person. I am a better programmer for it I think. I visualize the structure of a program I am writing and pair programming would also be hell for me.
I definitely am capable of thinking non-verbally, and I agree it can help with programming. But I just can't wrap my head around not having an internal monologue at all. How did you even write this comment? What was the process that led you to put together this particular series of words, if not 'hearing' them in your own mind as an expression of your thoughts first?
Edit: Thinking on this more, I may not have had an internal monologue when I was younger. I recall when I was maybe 11 or 12, I had a sudden, distinct moment of increased self-awareness, after which my internal monologue became my predominant mode of thinking. My first thought was that all of my mental activity up till that time had been in a fog, and that I really hadn't even been a fully conscious being. I crossed some kind of cognitive rubicon which my previous self couldn't even understand. I assumed this was a normal phase of mental development at the time, but now I'm curious if others have had similar experiences.
I spend a lot of my time writing, and when I'm ready, stuff just pours out. I'm always thinking the words as I write them, but there's not lots of intervening internal dialog.
Often it's like I have no clue what I'm going to write, until I write it.
But maybe that's just that I've trained myself to write my internal dialog down, instead of just thinking it. And when I'm stuck, I definitely talk to myself more. Sometimes to the point that I can't write anything.
When I'm really focused on something, on the other hand, it's very hard to stop. I'll be so tired that I can barely think, and yet I can't clean my teeth and wash my face without scribbling notes on scraps of paper. Which, by the way, I dispose of securely ;)
Also, it's obvious that there's a lot going on that I'm not at all conscious of. I can stew over stuff for days, or even weeks. And then, out of nowhere, it's there to be written. Or done, as the case may be.
Damn, this is so weird. I had the same experience, and was desperate and sad by how many years went by without me "actually living" (as I so thought at the time). I went to an extreme of really thinking with this internal monologue for everything that I did, even going to the bathroom. Otherwise I would feel like a robot from the cartoons I watched.
Not the parent, but the general process would be: form a kernel of a thought, this is largely subconscious process. This thought is made up of meaning-and-context-rich symbols specific to my mind.
Refine this thought, resolving contradictions and various logical weakpoints.
Translate this thought into speech, losing much of the information content because language is a tool created to holler at your fellow hominids as you hunt African game and backstab each other when competing for high value mates.
I'm not lacking internal monologue, but this resonated with me.
Often I can feel that I have a complex idea more or less nailed down, but it's an effort to stop and put things into words, even internally.
Other times though even an internal monologue isn't enough to tease out the edge cases or weigh the tradeoffs, and I need to write stream-of-consciousness style.
Different styles of problems lend themselves to different approaches, I think
Language is a way of communicating abstractions from one abstraction machine to another; of course information content is lost, but that is only because it must be transformed and compressed to fit into the narrow channel of audio signals that humans are capable of both producing and detecting.
Well said. And in relation to primal psychology (hunting game on the African savannah and hollering at fellow hominids), our ability to convey abstractions and stories through language is an integral part of what makes us human. So the view that language is just a utilitarian tool and not much more is myopic to me. We are social creatures, and whether you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, sharing thoughts with others is inextricably woven into your biology. A rejection of this concept is, to me, a rejection of a deeply important part of life and what it means to exist as a sentient being. It often bothers me to interact with people who have this attitude; it's like trying to talk to them through a glass barrier that they refuse to take down.
This fascinates me as I remeber this moment too - I was about 5 or 6 though and it was going into my grandmothers back garden through an arch and I was like fully 'awake' for the first time - I had vague feelings of memories prior to this but I do remember the voice becoming aware.
I've never had anyone else remember or experience this before and I think its important.
I was browsing the thread, trying to recollect my oldest memory of me having an internal monologue and remembered one time in my grandmothers back garden when I was 5/6, then read this :)
My story was that I was playing around in the garden. I was messing with a pile of stuff placed against the garden wall and as I'm touching something, suddenly I feel a huge electric shock. There was an old electric socket there, probably for pluggin a grass cutter. I remember the strong tinge around my whole body and how it pull me into it. I quickly twitched and jumped back. I remember telling myself "Wow, I could have died there". And, "electricity really gets you stuck" (I remember when I was that age adults would warn you about touching electric sockets, saying you could "get stuck to it", I guess not grounding installations was common).
That's really cool, thanks for sharing! Based on your and another poster's response, it seems like there is some wide variation in the age at which this moment might occur (I'm skeptical that the other poster who said they were 3 had the 'same' moment you and I are talking about, but it seems similar enough in this particular context). This begs the question - are there people who never experience this event??
Interesting. Just curious, are you able to have a conversation with yourself in a mirror without speaking out loud (something that the article says at least some non-internal-monologue-having people say they can't do)?
Yes I can but it sounds somewhat false to me. It's hard to capture in words the real truth of what I am thinking. If I start talking to myself it starts to sound like someone else's voice - my fathers or someone famous
Agreed. As I've grown older, I spend less time running tight verbal loops in my mind, and more time examining things visually. It seems more externally-oriented, and allows for better sleep.
The same for me. Also I have that internal monologue, but it feels like it's just me talking and it's not constant chatter, I can just not talk inside if I don't want to.
Why is it a bad thing for your brain to be running DFS all the time? Is it a wasteful use of time? Does it cause behavioral issues? Is it a personal choice? Or...?
I think it's a question of balance. I was too far on the side of not living in the moment, and spending lots of time on what-if scenarios. I think that I might have veered too far to the other extreme now, and my capacity for empathy is suffering a little.
Fully agreed. I was like this (overthinking what if’s) for many years, and the amount on energy spent on this left me spent to actually go and live in reality. The upside was having a plan for nearly whatever life threw at me - but discarding hundreds of alternate plans.
Now as I grew older I have learnt to be much looser with life steering, as we are not in full control anyway. Just have a general direction of what you want to do, and spend the rest of your energy here and now...
This "Living in the moment" stuff has depth such that many books have been written on it. It is one of the premises of mindfulness meditation, and Buddhism thoroughly explores this.
The summary is that you will be more satisfied if you are not continuously ruminating on the past, or anxiously anticipating future problems, but instead focus on your immediate happiness. e.g. Right now you are comfortable, not in any pain and surrounded by interesting things. Enjoy this, and don't worry about some conversation you might be having later.
Living in the moment is somewhat counter to striving. It's hard (maybe impossible?) to be a builder and a creator without spending some time ruminating on the last and future.
I think it depends on whether you want to feel like a good person, or be a good person. Living in the moment lets you feel better, because there's less to consider. Constantly examining yourself and those around you allows you to better react to those surroundings (even if some people don't act on it for various reasons, one of which might be getting too caught up in the examining and never doing).
Like literally every single thing in life I can think of, the truth is likely that moderation is key, as too much to either end of the spectrum is problematic.
This is definitely not true, at least most people don't experience it this way once they learn meditation/mindfulness/etc.
What happens instead is that if you are in the moment, you can much more easily see and feel which things actually exist in the current moment for you to consider, and to actually react to those surroundings that actually matter, instead of those that have been served up by the internal dialog which is based usually on worries, fears, ego beliefs etc.
Living in the moment does not make you live like an animal. It makes you appreciate and focus on that which truly matters for you, instead of distractions that a constantly thiking mind always throws at you and makes you feel like everything is says matters and is very important.
Those things that are truly worth considering, already exist in the moment. If you have a real need or want to do something today - it will be in the moment and it will present itself. It is a total nonsense that a person "living in the moment" can never complete any complicated task, accomplish a complicated goal or plan for the future when that is required. - And that is being a good person, not simply "feeling like one".
I would argue that perhaps your idea of living in the moment is more like mostly living in the moment. To truly live fully in the moment would be to react to stimuli as they were encountered, wouldn't it? If so, then to truly live in the moment would be to ignore most the ramifications of what you say or did, beyond what you could internalize, as to act without forethought is to strip away all we do to try to tame our less desired instincts.
That is what I tries to express by talking about moderation before. At one extreme you have what I outlined above, and at the other you have the person who always seems absent minded because they are always thinking about something else, and are rarely if ever giving their full attention to what's going on in front of them and around them.
I think when most people say you should "live in the moment" they are actually espousing moving that direction on the spectrum, which can be beneficial, even if reaching the end of the spectrum likely isn't. The point of all this is that being more mindful of your surroundings and living in the moment is probably useful most the time, until it isn't, because you've gone too far, where too far depends on the location, company, and circumstances, so there's no real "correct" answer.
The reason I even broached this is because it was already alluded to in this exact same thread, with:
I think it's a question of balance. I was too far on the side of not living in the moment, and spending lots of time on what-if scenarios. I think that I might have veered too far to the other extreme now, and my capacity for empathy is suffering a little.
I can relate to that in some respects, even if only for aspects of my personality. In letting go of always being too overly concerned with exactly how I was perceived and interpreted when I was you to being able to let some of that go later in life, I noticed times where my not making sure to explain myself in extra detail probably left people thinking I was dismissive of their concerns (and there are probably plenty of times where I don't realize I was dismissive of their concerns, and I'm willing to bet that's more often now than in the past).
If it is 10AM and I need to plan for my meeting at 3PM, and I need to consider the needs of the person I am going to meet - all of these details exist in my mind "in the moment". I can use those stimuli in the moment to plan out everything I need, in the moment. Even though I plan something in the future, I move those plans in my mind which exist there as a moment, as images or words or etc.
Once you start practicing mindfulness or meditation, you very easily see these distinctions. Yes, there is a way to use those concepts in a literal sense in which "in the moment" would mean that you can never consider anything else than your immediate surroundings. However most spiritual teachings or meditation retreats or people who say that this thing has helped them in their life, mean it in a more practical way.
Perhaps "being in the moment" is not the best phrase to really explain what they mean here and there is a lot of space for confusion and misunderstanding. But it is just the phrase that they usually use.
I think that this is a false trade-off. Being "in the moment", or "present" doesn't mean turning off your brain and not planning for the future. It is possible to be present while you are planning for the future.
This amounts to, when planning, not being overly invested in emotionally anticipating the outcome of your plans. (Both good or bad, as anticipating the good will hurt your ego when the plan fails, and dreading the bad will hurt you now.)
I can comment on this for my wife who suffers from anxiety.
She is very good at planning because she needs to feel in control all the time. You are right that when things don't go as planned and the pressure ramps up she loses her control and makes poor decisions or no decision at all.
It's interesting to me as I am on the opposite side for most of the time.
For me personally it seems to make it impossible to get to sleep. Which makes me tired, and less resistant to rambling trains of thought. Repeat ad infinitum.
Have had this issue sometimes, specially when ruminating about a discussion or whatever. What i often do in those cases is going into visual mode. For me I imagine having big long wings and catching the wind from some high mountain descending flying slowly, trying to surround the mountain and checking the views. It's something soothing and takes the attention away from the internal monologe. Though you can fall back to it and when you notice go back to visual.
I also note that there is like two visual modes, one less defined, more controlled by my will, and one more realistic and crowded with details mostly out of my control.
I don't usually have this issue, but when I do I find just focusing on breath, meditation style, helps. As soon as you notice yourself thinking, acknowledge the thought gently, and then let it go. At least for me (with a bit of practice) this can head off any thoughts before they can get started, and eventually allow things to quiet down.
Also, acknowledging the fact that, since I'm in bed trying to sleep, I can't act on these thoughts right now anyway, so I don't really need to have them right now (and trusting that if it's important, they will probably come up again at a more useful moment).
When you think less you may be open to more possibilities, be more spontaneous and even have some childlike fun. However, others can be taken aback and even suspect ulterior motives, until you harmonize better with others.
Spontaneity is also thinking. There are two distinct modes of thought. Verbal/abstract and real-time/intuition. These have neurological foundations in the two hemispheres. The right is more highly connected. The left has more to do with speech and rumination.
I am surprised that you said others can suspect ulterior motives, because that started happening to me but I can't figure out what the connection is. Can you expand on that?
I have learned to be cautious with two very different types of people (this is not a scientific exercise, take with a grain of salt):
- One is people who are constantly negative and cast stones everywhere, but offset that negativity with charm. They can accrue a network of Stockholm-esque followers that would say "he's not an asshole, he's actually a really sweet person." When they perceive a threat from you, or they find that you are indifferent to their charm-aura, you can get on their s*list pretty quickly. They can subtly isolate you from their followers, and be as useless as possible if you have to depend on them for anything. If they lash out at you, it's actually not out of character because they lash out at everything. They're just being themselves, right? Much of their venom is hidden behind sardonic humor, which gives them plausible deniability. They are not beholden to social norms, and everyone around you has accepted that. In lieu of social norms, they create impenetrable, arbitrary standards that only they and their followers can meet.
- Another type of person I'm initially careful of is someone who doesn't give any "tells." They always go with the flow, and laugh at everyone's jokes. The only overtly interesting thing about them is how social they are (they only open up in trivial ways). They listen very deeply, asking follow-up question after follow-up question, but they're likely to go and spill your secrets over drinks "I heard X said Y....ya I know, interesting." They don't waste an opportunity to gain social currency, spanning all social groups in order to trade between them. They rarely challenge people, and seem above the fray, but they're as political as anyone.
Do you live on the set of Mean Girls? But me, most people are spending their energy trying to get by, with no time for junior high school drama conspiracies. Maybe I'm too useless to be socially manipulated.
People are indeed complex. The first type of person described specifically is rare, but what is more common is a dangerous combination of aggressiveness and charm.
Tying back to the OP, I think an internal monologue is valuable. If you don’t have one, that’s out of your control. However, I think it encourages pro-social behavior on the margins. Using your internal voice is quite literally introspection. It can make you feel bad about a potential course of action, preventing you from doing it. It can also make you feel worse about something bad you did, by replaying it in your head. Too much of that can bog you down, but I think it’s an important part of the self-policing toolset. I believe reflective people are more trustworthy (not that internal voice = reflection).
I hear you about the people who use their charisma to assemble followers and mark you down as an enemy if they can’t bring you into that fold. It’s very disappointing that you can’t have a normal working relationship with them.
Has there been a deflation of the word "gaslighting" recently? I used to understand it as "making person X or others believe person X is crazy (in order to discredit them)" but I see it used much more widely nowadays and I don't really see what it has to do with the scenario in question.
Setting different standards for themselves, setting other people up, even boasting of sabotaging others openly, surrounded by gullible and oblivious people, limiting number of marks, snide remarks, running in packs and claiming all authority while victimizing themselves. Gaslighting is rare but part of the toolset.
It lost it's subtle manipulation element too. Gas lighting was causing doubt to spread, using manipulation tools the abuser thought were flying under the radar of the victim. The victim fell oblivious to the changes in worldview. It lost all connection to psychotherapy when it became a politicized term.
People mostly prefer "their own kind", at least until they truly get to know you. Solving fatigue by being recluse starves crucial human contact. For many reasons there can remain barriers before getting meaningful contact. Your question itself points to this preference and yearning, and not indifference.
A different mode of mind will be received by others differently, as an experience. To get anywhere we must move, but to others this might be deemed too uncomfortable or even mistaken as implicit criticism.
As social creatures we must have/find support around us. This works as platform and mandate, so helps true leaders lead.
When I look closely at those sorts of imagined conversations, I almost always conclude that my attention has been misdirected by delusional egotism. I also find that letting them run tends to entrench the delusions, which I am better off without.
Depth first search. Basically he's saying you're playing out each conversation to the end, then backing up to the last branch point and chasing it to the end, repeat until you've exhausted every possibility you can think of
In my experience it typically doesn't work, but sometimes it can work and is good to keep your mind busy IF you have some free time. It's just rehearsing, essentially what dreams are, but in daytime and more controlled.
It doesn't work in the sense of predicting the conversation, but do it long enough, or, do it with iterative deepening, and even though you probably won't nail the specifics of how the conversation goes, it WILL frequently prepare you in broad strokes such that the actual conversation's twists and turns won't throw you, even if they do surprise you.
I found that in my late 30ies I shifted from an exhausting DFS to a BFS mode....and it has surely helped in tackling social and work complexities better. I have also discovered that I was unconsciously not giving my full attention to details ,especially over math/programming problems, I was always in a state of slight 'haze', but the whole thing was extremely well played by the brain...I really thought I was fully concentrated and paying complete attention, but only now I know that I can step to a deeper level, where I play back and forth multiple variables and remember better the connectivity of the problem. A decent analogy would be if you play piano and are going through a challenging part, your hands and mind are fully focused on the movements but doing so makes everything hard and stiff, and eventually you run out of steam very fast, with experience though you learn to microfocus on some parts and keep it loose on others...etc. seems fitting..
I think it's the personal/interpersonal version of "real artists ship". I am one of those people that spends too much time in his head. It's mostly wasted energy if I never pause and let the thoughts out.
Your mention about shaking your head is very interesting. How did you come up with that? Are you aware of Peter Levine's or David Berceli's work on shaking/trembling as a natural stress-releasing mammallian instinct that people are usually repressing?
In the last couple of years I started thinking about this and since then I'm trying to live in the moment because now I'm aware of how much time I spend in my head. It is very hard for me to train this though.
