Do you have a 'rich inner life'?

[Twattergy]

And if so, what's in there?!
I think I do, in so much that despite a fairly busy life I spend quite a lot of time in my own head, and I like it.
For me, a rich inner life means I enjoy thinking about a range of 'non essential' things like music, nature, art. I'm interested in my own ideas and in how I process the world around me. I am company for myself, if that makes sense.
Unsurprisingly I'm therefore quite happy spending time alone. I am also very sociable. So it's not at the expense of connecting with others.

Such an interesting thread. I don't think I daydream but I do spend a lot of time planning things for work and pondering how / when / if these things work out, how it could look. Fascinating to hear how others think. Going to spend some time pondering that too (is that my inner life...😁) And agreed re casting of Bunny for sure.

I do this. Although my interiors are houses that I know well and that I'd like to get my decorative hands on!

And I could have written your OP word for word. It's a nice [alternative] life 😊

You could write a book, that's what I'm doing at the moment. I've invented a whole family group, their friends, neighbours, work colleagues, their homes, the local towns, their enemies(!), the lot. Oh yes, and some rather dramatic events.😁

Me too - thought straight away when I read the first book.

I'm sad 😔 I used to have a wonderful, rich inner mind's eye, full of my vivid imagination, and could think of anything I liked.

Reading fiction was brilliant, and I loved it. I could picture the characters, get a sense of their appearance, hear their sounds and voices, imagine their actions.

Then I had a head injury and post concussion syndrome. The injury made me lose my mind's eye after (a condition called aphantasia), and it was heartbreaking. I miss it so much. Now all I see when I close my eyes is blackness. 💔

Your favourite imagined space is my actual space. I feel lucky and very content. I used to spend time imagining other lives but I was very unhappy. Now I spend time doing all the things that make me happy. One of which is my own company 🤔

@user1471453601exactly. For me, my inner life is not much a fantasy land, but more a world of ideas and reflection on real things. Luckily for me I had a very happy and stable childhood so it wasnt used as a means of escape from a difficult reality. But I can see why that would happen. Just goes to show that we have differing reasons for our inner lives!

@Ladygodalmightysounds wonderful!

@ForeverDelayedEpiphanyI'm so sorry to hear this. I do think it's a privilege to have an inner life. There are many people whose medical or life circumstances mean it is just not possible. Does it mean you need to seek more 'in the moment' pleasures? E.g. more sensory things, travel?

I identify with everything you’ve said so much.

And I thought Art Malik for Ibrahim. Although the BK casting is less jarring than PB.

Bear with me, are you all talking about what you’re imagining your life to be?
Or about what fuels you internally in a fulfilling way (for want of a better word)?
I’ve always loved books and lived in them while I’m reading them. That’s very much part of my inner life, so is music and art. Never fantasised about living in a manor in the moors, for instance, but I did have the all white apartment in the city centre filled with art that tells a story thing, but I am living in one. I have a full on ‘relationship’ with my home, it’s part of me, I treat it really well.
Growing plants is another one, very much a solitary thing, but I love it more than a lot of other things, that first plate of new potatoes and salad you grew yourself is one of the highlights of the year.
I choose and do a new course every year, for myself.
Is this what you mean by rich inner life?

I’m talking about what fuels me internally.

@BuddhaAtSeayes I'd say it's more about internal fuelling than about fantasy other lives. It's not so much doing the enriching things (like courses, tending plants) but processing the thoughts and feelings about those things internally. From this thread Im learning that those with a rich internal processing like this are more likely to seek out external activities that help fuel it (music, art, literature,nature) because we not only enjoy the activity in the moment but also the legacy of ideas and feelings they create. But also, with a rich inner world one could be sat in an empty room and still have enriching ideas happening internally, its not always about external stimulation. It kinda happens regardless.

I see. In my mind, I thought the feelings/legacy enrichment is part and parcel of reading/painting, as in the act is followed naturally by the rumination, iyswim. A bit like: I read, say, The Reader, and it stayed on my mind for a good while.
Nice topic, OP, it got me thinking

Thank you 😊Yes, I actually found (still find) it devastating in many ways. I feel like i kost a part of me, my soul almost. That sounds ott and hyperbolic, but I genuinely hate it. I don't feel as connected to the world as I once was 😔😫💔

I have heard from another guy who has it after a head injury too, and he found it equally hard to come to terms with. The brain is so fragile and I remember taking my imagination for granted 😪

Yes, in some ways I interact with my children a lot more now since.

I was just about to write exactly the same to @Unexpectedlysinglemum! It's great that I seem 'strong' to other people, thanks to my capacity for getting through horrid circumstances with relative equilibrium. What they don't know is that I'm re-imagining the horrid circumstances into quite unrealistically pleasing versions ... This has proved dangerous when the circumstances are financial and I have access to credit 😳

Really interesting reading others experiences. Do you also find you have intrusive style daydreams where bad things happen? I sometimes imagine myself getting very hurt but then usually with an element that makes me the hero. I imagine taking a bullet to save a child or just having some terrible injury that I bravely recover from. I imagine my first day back at work with the scars.

It sounds really pathetic written out!

I read a lot, do yoga, listen to a huge variety of music.

Such an interesting thread.

Maladaptive daydreamer here - my inner fantasy/imaginary life* is incessant. Anything can set me off, I read a news story about an incident and start imagining the actual scene and what people were saying / doing there, what I'd have done if I'd been there, multiple different versions of how I or other people would respond in any given scenario. Or I'll see a job advert and go rambling off on how my life would be if I applied for that role, everything from interview to travelling to work, friends / relationships developed in the first year, hypothetical clubs joined. Or I'll be walking down the road with a bag of shopping and imagine if it were snatched what the people who snatched it would think of / do with the contents, then I'll start imagining their home lives etc. It's exhausting and also terribly disruptive. As I'm quite an anxious person, it also creates the perfect conditions for imagining really negative stuff as well e.g. someone doesn't respond to my text and within seconds I've developed all manner of convoluted theories about why they have cut me out of their lifes etc. But @ForeverDelayedEpiphany your posts have made me reflect on the fact that it's also a privilege in some ways and, on the plus side, I am never bored!

It took me a ridiculously long time to realise that some people do not have this kind of inner life, don't have imaginary conversations in their head all the time.

Like others on this thread, I had a tricky childhood and think daydreaming was definitely a refuge. Also, I have ADHD.

I can 100% relate to this 😂

Exactly this. I recognise among my friends that all of us who are humanities academics or novelists or both read early and obsessively to escape unhappy home lives and took off into absorbing imaginative worlds as a kind of safety. Computers didn't exist in my childhood, but if they had and were as easily accessible as library books, it's perfectly possible we'd all have become obsessive gamers instead.

Yes! I feel exactly like this and try to surround myself wirh others like this. I get it from my mum. 😊