Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Hold all the horses. Everyone stop whatever you’re doing. Don’t nobody move.

Do you, Dear Reader, hear your own voice—or a voice, at any rate—in your head, which speaks to you? I’ve always assumed everyone did—because I’ve always had this voice in my head. I hear myself speak in my own brain. Sometimes, it’s how I make decisions. I literally discuss the matter with myself. At other times, this sort of “self talk” is how I process something which happened. It’s certainly how I do my pre-writing—coming up with the sentences in my head, and “hearing” them.

But I’ve just learned, through random and mindless scrolling on social media, that not everyone experiences this.

So this voice is, in psychological terms, called “interior dialogue” (makes sense, that’s exactly what’s happening). According to healthline.com this voice develops in childhood, possibly as part of the process of building language and cognitive skills. In adulthood, this inner voice remains as a form of support for processing information or task completion.

Predictably, “Researchers don’t fully understand why some people don’t have an inner voice.” (healthline.com) Click on the link if you want to read about how researchers theorise that it has to do with the maturation of different physical pathways in the brain. Which is a haunting idea—how much of this rich mental world (the mind) is dependent on what’s physical (the brain)? And certainly matters are complicated by the fact that different people experience this inner voice differently—apparently some experience it visually, as images, rather than speech which they hear. This is a relatively new area of research, and the scientists are still working on asking the right questions, never mind getting the answers.

But I’m fascinated by the implications of this phenomenon. I’ve always dished out advice along the lines of, “oh, you need to hear the sentence in your head” and “oh, you need to tell the voice in your head to stop worrying about this or that.” Did all the students who got such suggestions actually hear themselves in their head? Also, what implications might this have for, say, questions which ask you to identify the tone of a sentence?

And then, of course, there are the far more personal, mental health-related implications. The healthline.com article goes on to distinguish between hearing this inner voice, and auditory hallucinations. It then ends with advice and resources for those whose inner voice tends to be overly harsh or critical—what is termed negative self-talk.

On one hand, I cannot imagine not hearing myself in my head. In fact, that’s one of the things which makes me realise I’m alive. No, really. That’s always been how I’ve understood Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am.) I know I am alive because I can hear myself. Not because I can feel the ground beneath my feet, or the warmth of the sun on my skin. But because I hear my voice in this space-which-is-both-here-and-not which we call the mind. (Yes, I live in my head too much. Apparently, it’s an INFP/Type 4 issue.) The first time I tried to consciously grasp the totality of death, that’s how I understood it also—the irrevocable haunting absence of that voice. Gone. Snuffed out. Silent. Silenced. So this inner voice is very, very important to me. I depend on it. I cling to it.

But at the same time, this inner voice—or at least the twisted version of it—can be hideously, unfairly, awfully mean. It tells me demoralising things about myself, and the people around me. It points out flaws, mistakes, problems—even before these exist sometimes, honestly.

I’m doing my best to work on coping with the dark version of my inner voice. And, in case you too may have your own version of this mind-demon, here are a couple of things which worked for me.

1. Knowing what negative thought patterns are, so I can spot them and stop them. Also called “cognitive distortions,” negative thought patterns are ways of thinking which contribute to distress in the long run. For instance, “catastrophising” refers to when you exaggerate, in your own mind, the outcome of something which happened or will happen. Let’s say you text a friend, and they blue tick you. Then you go into panic mode because you start thinking that they hate you, or that you’ve ruined the friendship completely, or that they didn’t respond because they were killed while reading the text and trying to cross the road at the same time… I learned about cognitive distortions as part of preparation for CCE lessons, by the way—so kids, stop dunking on CCE lessons. They matter. This lesson helped me cope. Here’s a list of these negative thought patterns: https://www.familycentre.org/news/post/10-common-negative-thinking-patterns-and-5-steps-for-change

2. Moving into my body—as opposed to staying in my head. And no, you don’t have to drag yourself into the steaming outdoors for this. Just get up and do something rooted in the physical world. I’ve come to enjoy working out as a way to return to the physical. (In my room, alone, with the shades down so no one can see me!) In a terrible pinch, I have even been known to resort to cleaning and tidying up. Once or twice, memorably, I walked my sister’s dog. (Never again, too stressful.)

3. Countering with positive self talk. It all felt, before I tried it, a little hokey and… well… cringe, all this “comfort your inner child” and “speak kindness to yourself” business. But it works! Ok, so I cannot bring myself to physically hug myself yet, but I am learning to actively say kind, encouraging things to myself when the dark version of my inner voice decides to have a little fun at my expense. And ok, so this one doesn’t quite work when I’ve already worked myself into a frenzy of self-recrimination, or a deep well of loss and despair, but it works very well when I catch myself before I get there.

4. This one is an odd technique I taught myself out of sheer desperation back in the good-bad old days, before the Internet, and we were all just lost and lonely teenagers struggling with being alive. I liked to imagine the “bad thoughts” as physical objects, then imagine myself putting these objects into a box of some kind. Then I would imagine myself sealing the box, and putting it away, or casting it adrift, or some other kind of imagery which represented letting it go. (I’d caution against imagining burying the thing, because to me that image smacks of repression rather than letting go.)

5. And finally, of course, there’s human contact. Sometimes there’s nothing for it. When the critical voice is really pushing my buttons I have to replace it with an actual person’s actual voice. And this contact doesn’t even necessarily have to be a family member or friend, anyone close like that—I really do mean human contact. A couple of times I’ve combined this with strategy number 2 and just gone out to buy random things I didn’t need, because that would—if I keep reminding myself—force me to stay out of my head and remain in my body, and eventually put me in contact with random strangers. Most of these strangers will be human, but occasionally, happily, these strangers will be cats or dogs I meet on the way. Now those are good days.

If you’ve strategies of your own, or have read/heard/come across more, please let me know! It’s always good to expand your tool box.

And if you don’t hear an inner voice, or you experience an inner cinema instead, I’d love to hear about that too!

Image credit: Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash