Oh wow I’ve never heard of that before, how did you discover you had that?
Comment on Who here does NOT have intrusive thoughts?
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I have aphantasia and no internal monologue, and a side benefit of that is that intrusive thoughts aren’t really a thing
shootwhatsmyname@lemm.ee 2 months ago
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Like most folk with aphantasia, I thought that people talking about “seeing things in their imagination” were just being dramatic and using common language. It never occurred to me that they could genuinely see things in their minds. And the whole thing where people would be upset when a character in a TV show or movie didn’t look like how they’d imagined they would look, never made sense to me. And shows where people could recall the details of peoples faces for police sketch artists…
Basically, moments like that started adding up over my life, and then about 10 years ago, I read an article from someone who had discovered they had aphantasia through a similar path, and it all just fell in to place.
Nemo@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
And the lack of internal monologue? How is that experienced? Do you know what you’re going to say before you say it, or is it simultaneous? How do you problem-solve, can you ask yourself questions?
I’m sorry if I’m being obnoxious, I’m just terribly curious. I’m always hungry for experiences outside my own.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I can think of words, I just don’t think I’m words. And when I think of a word I can run them together in a sentence. But they have no “sound”. They don’t have volume or pitch, they don’t sound like anyone, they’re just the idea of words. And because the words are after the fact, they don’t exist without me willing them in to existence. So no monologue in the way people describe it, and the idea of a conversation in my head doesn’t make sense. It would be more like writing a script for a conversation
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
How does one read books without reading them out loud? Is that not a form of internal monologue?
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The words have no sound. No volume, no pitch. They’re word ideas not words. I don’t hear anything, I just understand the words.
galanthus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Interestingly enough, silent reading was historically uncommon due to the fact that literature was less common than it is now and, most importantly, the lack of separation between words.
The ability to read silently was considered very unusual.
Srh@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Have both and intrusive thoughts 🥲
umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
must be nice and quiet too
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Gotta be a bitch if you have tinnitus though.