Have you ever been talking to yourself when
a friend walks in the room? Yeah, super awkward. But why? Everyone talks to themselves. Whether it’s out loud or just in their head. When I’m on super long road trips I usually
end up having a full on conversation with myself. Or if other people are around, the conversation
just simply moves into my head. Scientists call this our internal monologue
or sometimes refer to it as our inner voice. It’s so weird, because not only are we constantly
having sil
ent conversations with ourselves, but it often feels like we can actually hear
our conversations out loud even though it’s happening in our heads. Since the dawn of the study of psychology,
psychologists have been studying our inner voice. The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygostky believed
that our inner voice occurred because of the internalization of external speech. So for example when you hear yourself or another
speak out loud, you internalize the sound of it and recreate the sounds you’ve perce
ived
in your mind. That’s why your inner voice sounds like
your voice and when you are thinking about what your mom might say to you after doing
another bump of Chuck Norriss, you recreate the sound of her nagging voice asking you
why you haven’t settled down with a nice girl and gotten married yet. You see, scientists have found through neurological
experiments that the same part of brain used when we talk out loud is used when we are
using our inner voice. This is called Broca’s area – and you
guessed it, it’s named after the scientist who discovered the link between speech and
that part of the brain. And as we use Broca’s area, simultaneously
we are using the same muscles in our throat that we use just before we make sound come
out of our mouths – the Larynx. Wonder where that word came from? Well, look it up ‘cause I have no idea. Anyways, almost everyone talks to themselves. For many years, some professor at the University
of Las Vegas studied this shit and found that while it is
still unclear as to why exactly
we have an inner voice, we almost all do. Of course there are exceptions such as some
dyslexic and deaf people who both report having an inner voice that is made up of mostly visual
pictures or symbols rather than sounds like normal people do. And by normal I don’t mean that dyslexic
and deaf people are abnormal, rather that – well no I guess that’s what I’m saying. Speaking of abnormal people, those who have
auditory hallucinations probably think they are hearing
voices due to the fact that their
inner speech may just be not recognized by them as self-produced. The evidence shows that the same parts of
the brain that are active during inner speech are active during auditory hallucinations. In a 2012 Finish study, it was found that
during auditory hallucinations, the part of the brain that is tied to self-awareness is
less active, meaning that auditory hallucinations might be a result of hearing one’s own inner
speech without being self-aware that they a
re having inner speech. Ok. But why do we talk to ourselves? Well I hate to break it to you, but the answer
to that isn’t quite known. It might be an evolutionary step as our inner
voices actually help us with tasks. For example chess players whose inner voices
are suppressed aren’t able to perform as well as those whose inner voices aren’t
interrupted. You may experience this when a person is talking
to you while you are in the middle of a project. While out of politeness you may continue to
co
nverse with the person, you silently want to cuss them out because you just f’ed up
the Lego Star Wars Sandcrawler that you had been working on for hours. Our inner voice can also act as a motivator
and help us overcome difficult situations by urging us to strive on and not give up. However, it can be just as damaging as helpful. Many describe their inner voice to be nasty
or cruel. We’ve all been there. But you, know, don’t let it get you down. Thanks for watching! Please hit the thumbs up butt
on below if you
enjoyed the video and subscribe to stay updated.
Comments
So you're telling me it's normal that i have the deepest conversations with myself in my head and not with actual people ? Well thats good to hear
When I'm alone, i often have a full conversation with myself, and i sometimes answer myself back, SERIOUSLY, and as a matter of fact, that's how i do my best thinking, and make some of most important decisions
I'm happy I'm not the only one who does this!
I honestly thought I was fucking crazy for doing this. I straight up explain stuff to myself in depth when that makes no sense because I'm me and I already know what I'm explaining. I'm constantly speaking with myself in my head and out loud so I'm glad the level I do it at isn't bad. I actually thought it was some sort of psychological disease.
If you're talking aloud to yourself (where others can hear you), it's called "soliloquy".
I always whisper to myself every time I'm not in a conversation. The weird part is that I always do it in accents revolving around being Irish, British, or Scottish. I'm a Mexican boy who hasn't been exposed to things as such.
i always talked to myself in my head
Wow, as someone who is dyslexic it all makes sense now!!!
I can’t remember exactly what my voice sounds like without talking out loud but I can remember my friends voices well.
My inner voice is Australian. I am American, idk why. I never even left the east coast.
I talk to myself when am alone and bored,i like it coz it gives me confidenece and alertness
My friend keeps on saying to me “Why do you keep talking to yourself?” like ahhh I can’t help it
Sometimes I don't even realize that I'm talking to myself. And when It stopd I ask what happened, and then my dumbass realizes I had a 30 minute conversation about why strawberries don't taste as good as they look whiteout even realizing it. Then I kinda miss my voice because it really helped me to get through the problem.
i have an inter monologue but when i think a lot of the times my tongue is moving in my mouth like i’m actually saying those words
Where do you talk to yourself the most? For me it's always in the car - good thing bluetooth exists and I can play it off like I'm talking to someone else.
|have you ever been talking to yourself and your friend walks in your room?| happens to me on the street... keep up the great content!
thank you! myself is always being hard on me and i’m always defending myself from myself
i talk to myself, because i think of me in a youtube video (:
I don't have an internal monologue at all so this definitely doesn't apply to me. Any attempts to 'speak in my head' take considerable effort and don't happen spontaneously. I mainly operate from feelings/emotion-driven 'mental activity'. I seem to be in a relative minority in this method of thinking. I'm still very curious about how I might work on creating an inner voice that I can use to guide my behaviour. It feels distressing when my thoughts don't seem to align with the types of thoughts that the vast majority of people seem to have. I suffer from severe treatment-resistant depression and it makes a lot of CBT methods pretty useless. There are no verbalised thoughts to challenge. The best I can do is try to convert that vague and murky river of consciousness into words on a page that act as a rough approximation of a 'thought'.
Today I learned that I have no internal monologue and no ability to visualize. I thought the internal monologue was a euphemism or metaphor, I had no idea that people actually had internal monologues. I have absolutely no ability to have an internal monologue, I do not think in words. I only think in concepts feelings thoughts and ideas, and I can't close my eyes and visualize anything. I have no mind's eye. And I cannot believe the rest of the world isn't this way. What's more, I cannot believe that people are fascinated by the way that I think. Something that's felt normal for my whole life