Inner Voice

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Until recently I thought only people in fiction had an inner voice. And I felt kind of weird for not having one. I do now because I'm typing and trying to phrase what I'm saying carefully, although it isn't really working.
I saw this image a few minutes ago. It's an Autistic Eagle, it's a meme for those who haven't encountered it.


Is not generally having an inner voice an autistic thing? I'm not diagnosed yet and it's not something I'm aware of. So do you have an inner voice? Is this strange or not?

Sorry if this is disjointed, my head is whirling and I'm not very coherent.

Some autistic people have an inner voice. Some do not.

I'm one of those who doesn't. The idea of actually having one strikes me as overwhelming.

I have an inner voice and it's tremendously overwhelming... it's constantly reviewing, repeating and analyzing what I'm doing and what's going on around me. And sometimes I get stuck in loops (the sentence about reviewing repeating and analyzing ran in my head for a solid 30 seconds after I typed it before I could begin this one... just to make sure I was saying what I meant to say)... It makes talking/concentrating very difficult.

I do have an inner voice that sometimes tell me what I should do. I usually listen to it because it seems like when I don't listen to it, I end up missing out on something good. However, I'm more careful about it now after an occasion where I listened to it and it got me in some trouble and ruined a friendship with one of the best friends I've ever had. Although sometimes I think it was for the better that that particular friendship ended when it did.

Do you mean that you actually hear a voice with your mind's ear? No that you have chosen to imagine a voice and put some effort into it, but a voice that seems to speak of it's own volition and communicates with you verbally?

I thought this was a symptom of psychosis and a criterion for schizophrenia?

I thought the inner voice described in literature was a metaphor for a certain kind of thought process. Do people take this literally?

I have a inside noise which frankly is quite annoying. I analyze every single detail about everything and often when I'm not functioning too well it's because of this analyzing.

Sometimes if you're a verbal thinker you can imagine the voice so habitually that it seems automatic. When I'm reading I'm imagining the words being said but it kind of seems like they come on their own because it takes almost no effort to imagine it. It still seems like something I'm imagining in the sense that I don't hear it like real sound but it also borders on automatic/involuntary. I can tell the difference between the thoughts and actual sounds but I don't have to put much conscious effort into the process.

It's the same as when I'm listening to rock lobster. The lyrics are so descriptive that images come straight into my mind's eye as I'm listening to the song. That one's not verbal.

So to answer your question it can be automatic and heard in my mind's ear but unlike a schizophrenic I can tell the difference between something in my mind's ear and something that's real. The only time I lose sense of the difference is right before I fall asleep and that's hypnagogia.

That is fascinating.

I had no idea. Count me among those who don't have one! It sounds like it could be really annoying and intrusive.

No, hallucinations are a psychotic symptom. And not even all of them are.
"Hearing voices" is like hearing actual people talking, except that there's noone talking. It's completely different from your mind's ear.

But it sounds like people are saying that they hear a voice that talks to them as part of their normal mental activity. I can imagine a voice saying something, no problem, but I don't hear my thoughts in a voice at all. My thoughts aren't even in a verbal system until I want to speak them, then they get translated from the natural symbolic system that thinking takes place in to the language i am communicating in.

If I take the phrase "I have learned so much at WrongPlanet" and imagine it spoken I can do that. I can imagine it in Michael Caine's voice. I can imagine it in Morgan Freeman's voice. But when I read about an "inner voice" telling characters in fiction something or use this phrase about myself, I don't think of it as a heard voice at all--I think of that as a surfacing subconscious idea or line of argument.

It sounds like there is something like the "hearing voices" experience that some people have with their own thoughts. That's completely alien to me.

I think the eagle image in the OP looks like something else, too. "Inside voice" is a phrase I associate with teaching young children not to shout or scream inside houses or vehicles. That's not the same thing as an inner voice, as I understand it.

With hallucinations you can't tell that they're coming from your own mind -- they seem to truly be coming from the outside. I.e. you hear your phone ring, but then notice your phone's battery is dead which is the only way you figured out that the phone didn't really ring.

I have an inner voice, and I think visually. Perhaps that's one of the reasons my head feel so stuffed full of things.

Yes I've always had an inner voice...I used to talk to my self a lot as a kid (according to my parents)

I still talk to myself, because it's one of the two means I have of "thinking" in words. Or rather, being able to translate my thoughts into words and back again. The other being writing.

I'm not even sure what an inner voice is. I talk to myself in my head but I'm not sure if that is what that means or something else.

I think visually most the time but I think with an inner voice when I am writing and reading... But the visual aspect is always there... I guess there must be some people that are mostly thinking with their inner voice and little to no images?