There was a bit of discussion about this on a podcast I listen to (Adrift) earlier in the year.

My mind is basically me taking to myself. As I write this I’m speaking all the words in my head. As I read it back I’m reading all the words in my head.

I believe there’s a school of thought that you shouldn’t read the words to yourself when you are reading, bit I have to do that otherwise it doesn’t go in. I can read a page without the words being spoken in my head but I will then have no idea what any of the page said, v and have to re-read it. Same if my mind wanders while reading - anything I read whilst my internal voice is talking about something else will not go in.

I can’t shut it up. If I think about nothing, my internal voice will literally be saying “I need to think about nothing. I should empty my mind. How do you think about nothing?”.

I do have thoughts in words, language. I don’t exactly hear or see it but it’s definitely language based. Often two levels of thought, one superficial and another underneath, thinking about those superficial thoughts.

At any given time there’s three functions going on in my head. There’s a stream of calculations that constantly flow. There’s my inner entertainment system that that translates those calculations to thoughts if they need to be translated. Then there’s sorting room with the file cabinet and shredder to organize that flow of thoughts.

When I say entertainment system I mean my inner voice and the ability to visualize just by thinking. Is the voice what’s traditionally considered a monologue? I don’t know. It’s nothing like Al Pacino giving a speech. It’s some of the worst narration imaginable. What I think is happening is my mind is doing calculations then using my voice to put those calculations into my consciousness for me to understand. The amount of time my mind shuts the fuck up is almost nonexistent. It does happen but, for it to switch from monologue to nothing requires intervention. I’m either filling my head with something to occupy it like music, or reading, or video games which in that case my head voice focuses on whatever I’m throwing at my brain with a little spillage. Or I’m seeking out a purposefully quiet environment where I can just go and ignore my thoughts. Almost like meditation but I’m no monk. I’m not sitting in some room with my legs crossed and my arms out falling asleep. I usually just find some place quiet outside and take in the world around me.

What really grinds my gears is the sorting room. I imagine it as each thought going to a room with a few filing cabinets and a shredder in it. That room can probably be broken up into bodily function operations, everyday needs operations, and emotional operations. The first two are functioning, it’s the emotional one that’s backed the fuck up and overflowing. There’s some shit that should have been shredded a long time ago. Some thoughts keep popping up because that particular filing cabinet is overflowing. It manifests itself as depression and anxiety. When my inner voice is concentrating on that, then I know I’m in for a tizzy. The narration goes from quiet nothings to fucking full blown yelling and screaming matches in my head. The dangerous part is resisting the urge…

I have an internal voice/monologue day-to-day but visual when engaging in recall.

Easiest way to describe it is when I read a novel it’s all going in as words but if I think about a specific part later it’s recalled as a picture my mind created out of the words. I read the book but recall the movie.

I have no sound, voice, or pictures in my head. I didn’t know that other people did see/hear things until a couple of years ago. Thoughts just come in chunks.

I’m like you, right down to the accidentally talking to myself and trying to play it off as other shit.

I’m at about level 2 on this scale:

My thoughts are a lot of imagery imagination. There are “words” to go along with it, but there certainly isn’t an extensive monologue/narrative/conversation going on.

Answering the title, and only the title: I’m not entirely convinced they do. But I’m alive and successfully cosplaying as a functional adult, so at least they’re doing some good.

For me it’s often like watching a movie and lots of 3rd person monolologue as well as one wierd idea after the other popping up and going.

I often alao have interviews with myself how I just killed it in certaim situations and do play by play analysis from these events.

When in public settings I often play in my mind some wierd social games: where I try to find the mood of others and react to what they do (kinda like a dating sim).

I also like to go back to past events and analyse what I could have done better and memorize what to do in a future convo.

Since I speak more than one language my thoughts change languages. When I consume or produce in a certain language my brain is basically in that language and all my thoughts are in that language.

I usually dont engage directly with my thoughts unless I am talking to myself out loud which I often do.

I think mostly on instinct, and rationalise/summarize my actions only if I have to.

It’s a bit like waking up at night in a pitch black room and making your way to the toilet. You barely remember it the next morning, but if someone asks you about it you say “oh yeah maybe” and retrieve/fabricate a memory of you navigating around furniture in the dark (because you MUST have), but can’t actually recall it.

There’s an internal dialogue, usually. Might even basically be a copy of someone else. That’s most of my conversations anyway. I am pretty social, it just doesn’t extend far outside my mind. I often re-use bits from these imagined conversations when actually talking with those people, but that usually doesn’t work out.
One on one conversations are ok-ish, but 3 or more people, are just a mess. Often I get no response. Either I wasn’t heard, or I talked at the wrong time, or whatever else. I’ll wait for minutes for the right moment to say something, and it’s still badly timed, or the conversation has moved on.

But anyway, I can have fairly rich conversations, even with multiple people inside my mind.
Also, my thinking works better when walking.

Imagined sounds, especially music can be enriched with light tapping of teeth, sucking around saliva and rumbling from tensor tympani.

I go back and forth between having an internal monologue. Generally day to day I might not hear the voice though.

I’m multilingual so if I’m in another country surrounded by people speaking in another language the monologue will be constant as my brain is focused on being immersed in the language.

Edit: Fixed typo monolingual → multilingual

I have an internal narrator that doesn’t sound like a specific voice that is like a pseudo auditory representation of my thoughts. This mostly applies to reading or troubleshooting where I’m consciously working through stuff. It also means that something which stands out as incorrect is massively annoying, like people confusing lose and loose because I ‘hear’ it. Homophones are fine!

I can’t really picture things unless it is something I have seen many, many times. So no picturing something in my mind that I haven’t seen before. Most things I have seen before are mostly vague ideas and with minimal detail. Like I know a baseball has the stitching and it curves in a certain way, but probably couldn’t draw it. I know what my wife’s face looks like, but can’t quite picture it in my head because I don’t look at a singular photo of her over and over.

But I can hold relational information like many to one combinations and 3d space relative positioning but without the ability to see it. So I can generally figure out if things will fit together even though I can’t really ‘see’ them, I know they fill a certain volume relative to other things of a similar volume and that is generally good enough. Most things are measured relative to each other now that I’m thinking about it.

My brain is like having 100 apps and tabs open and my brain constantly hitting alt-tab some random number of times.

Ask yourself questions and your subconscious will retain them on voicemail. Eventually the call will be returned and you will have the “correct” response, either declaratively or more subtly as intuition