How can I tell if I have an internal monologue?

Mine never shuts up telling me what to do/reminding me to do things. I have been caught answering it back out loud a few times(angrily) 😂

I don't have an inner monologue and I have no idea how people who do manage to live with it!

I definitely don’t have this monologue, I think visually like a movie or picture book. When I read I’m pretty slow - thinking in words or conversations would be exhausting for me!

It has blown my mind that not everyone thinks like this. I just assumed inside everyone’s brain was a silent movie of their thoughts!

if something is annoying me i often think it through as if I am posting in aibu or writing to an agony aunt. I then formulate replies in my head.
Does anyone else do this?i have an inner dialogue- DH doesn’t. He reads out loud and moves his lips when he doesn’t.

If you can 'hear' it in your head then you have one. I'dve thought most people have one. It narrates to you thoughts about memories, current situations, future plans etc.

Yes, practicing future conversations. I do this a lot. I'm not good at thinking on the spot or coming up with answers off the hoof so I find myself practicing what I'm going to say often.
I also find that my inner voice is very critical of me and rarely has anything nice to say to me. It will often say nice things about others, but never me.

I have no inner monologue and like reading too.
i’m a pretty chilled person (no gad). I daydream a lot but in pictures and feelings like a movie. When I read it’s like watching a movie not listening to an audio book.

I have a particular voice which goes through my head when I’m reading posts on here. Everyone has the same voice. It is a different voice to the voices in my head when I am reading other things. I very rarely post but as I write this I’m also using the mumsnet voice.

Yes it's constant and has been as long as I remember, can't picture things in my head though without a lot of effort!

I don't have an IM that I can hear at all but I kind of see the words all jumbling together. I have anxiety and when it's bad the letters are all crashing into each other.

I am always thinking though and worrrying but as I say I kind of see them.
I can't see things in my minds eye but I know for example what a red apple looks like but I can't envision one? I'm not sure though if I'm describing or a amusing the same thing differently to others iyswim?

I remember being about 7/8 abc my dad was away for a couple of days I was so upset because I couldn't remember what he looked like.

Wow, fascinating!

So those with an inner monologue, do you hear your own voice and the timbre of your actual voice in your head? Like a person speaking in your ear?

I thought i had an inner monologue but now realise I don’t: I’m in the “thought clouds” group.

I also absorb chunks/paragraphs of words, read really fast and work as a writer/editor - mentioning as this is coming up.

My brain has lots of thoughts but I don’t hear my own voice, it’s more of a neutral wondering.

If I think of an upcoming event, I will have a pre-visual of me doing it, eg like “Yorkshire to parents” I’ll imagine driving to Yorkshire. I also “see” a calendar of the year ahead unfolding in my mind (anyone else?!)

Can someone describe what the monologue is like? Is it “and now I’m cleaning my teeth, and now I’m going downstairs” is everything narrated?

Do you tell yourself to shut up? I have to listen to the radio

Yep, exactly the same here- thank you for setting it out as I couldn't think of how to explain it!

DH tells me how he has a non stop internal world, and particularly the thing about rehearsing and re-rehearsing conversations 🤯 I get this on a logical level but it sounds pretty tiring.

I wonder the same thing. I wish my inner monologue would go away sometimes because it’s constant and always worrying.

Gosh. Interesting. Mine is like I'm constantly talking to myself.

What if you thought ‘did I put the bins out?’ or ‘oh bloody hell, gbetter set the alarm.’ What do you hear when you think it whilst your eyes are shut?

Fascinating. I need this work out what I actually have

sometimes the voices just happen, its like your doing x and then its yea so to speak

It is odd in general though. Anyone that can read a book in silence has an internal monologue.

I can do both? Just sat in silence, eyes closed. I can hear nothing and think nothing or I can think to myself ‘well…’

Fascinating discussion.

This is so, so mind blowing. So if you think ‘this person on Mumsnet is being unreasonable’, how do you think it if you don’t hear in your head ‘yeah I think that’s unreasonable?’

But it’s not a monologue if it’s not as if you’re hearing thoughts in words. It’s more a shifting set of fuzzy clouds that are thoughts (for me).

Surely thinking the thoughts is an inner monologue? The monologue is your thoughts.

But you do think, so how do you not have an internal monologue? Even to think ‘I have no internal monologue’, must mean you think it and therefore ‘hear’ yourself speaking that thought in your head?

@Nursingadvice I hear my own voice mostly, reading out my own words like now as I'm typing. Although sometimes I'll take the opposite stance and ask myself a question perhaps to verify how I feel about something, and then both voices are my own discussing contrasting sides. Sometimes it's spontaneous thoughts being aired in my brain, other times I kind of know what I'm about to say, so there's clearly more background non verbal thinking informing the narrating voice in my head.