Silent voice: How you talk to yourself

A woman thinking. (Courtesy/isockphoto)

In movies you will see people having internal monologues countless of times yet we act like it doesn’t happen. And here is why, not everyone experiences it. You may tell someone about it and they might not understand it.

The truth is that some of us have internal conversations. This is the voice you argue with when you need to make a decision, it can help retain and recall important information and another amazing fact is, it can help you process emotions especially the negative ones.

According to psychologists, this silent voice can only be heard in our minds and the person does not move their lips or make a sound even when they’re responding to it.

Here is the interesting part, we all hear that voice differently. You for instance might here long complete sentences like, "tomorrow I need to drop off the kids, go to the salon, pass by the supermarket then grab some fresh juice on my way home." For others, they hear more disparate phrases like, "buy shoes", "read the Bible" etc.

As if that isn’t enough, there is a second group of people who have proper silent conversations mentally. They will argue and even reason depending on what is playing out. A good case in point is envisioning a job interview.

What happens in this case is you play out both roles of the HR or recruiter and yourself. This will help you ask yourself questions, answer and bounce off ideas in anticipation of what will happen come that day.

For another group of people, they find themselves idly walking and thinking about the chess moves they’re going to make or the responses they’re going to give in their next board meeting. What is happening here is they’re having internal conversations whether they know it or not.

Now for those who don’t hear this voice, this so called voice may be visual. In as much as they may not hear words inside their heads, they memorise, remember things and project events from what they see.

They may not be able to recite something they read using their head voices yes, but they will recall it visually.

On the other side of the spectrum is a group that doesn’t have internal monologues nor visualize because of a rare condition that doesn’t allow them to neither visualize the future nor relive the past. What happens in their case is they bring forth things that happened to mind.

That however doesn’t take away from them having human emotions. Every human thinks and feels to some degree.