Woman who lives without internal monologue explains how she thinks

A woman who doesn't have an internal monologue has revealed exactly what it's like to live your life without that voice in your head which articulates all your thoughts for you.

If you've got an internal monologue, it can be nigh impossible to know what life would be like without it and you'd likely assume that everybody just has this thing.

However, that's not the case as a big chunk of people in the world just don't have an internal monologue, which tends to come as a bit of a shock to the people who do.

One of these people who doesn't have an inner monologue is Kirsten Carlson, who took the time to explain what it's like inside her head to YouTuber PA Struggles.

She revealed that when she has things like anxiety and depression, it manifests itself physically far more than mentally.

There were some huge blessings to not having one though, as Kirsten didn't have those weird 'shower thoughts' where your brain dredges up an old conversation from years ago and you spend ages thinking about what you could have said.

Talking about her lack of an internal monologue, she explained the way it affects how she thinks and reads, along with how this has all been normal for her all her life, and she has tried to have a voice in her head.

She said: "I have tried to do that since learning an internal monologue exists, I end up speaking out loud to myself.

"When I read I can see the sentence structure, like in my head every sentence has a shape so you can see the shape of a sentence.

YouTube/PA Struggles

"Keywords will pop out and I can file those away into my concept map, so at the end of reading something I can have a concept map of the main topics that I read about.

"I tend to move my lips when I read so essentially I'm saying it out loud but it's just not audible. It's not like images, it's just the words."

Kirsten 'never really enjoyed' reading and suspects the lack of internal monologue is one of the reasons why, as she can see the story plot.

However, she is a very fast reader and is able to absolutely race through a piece of text.

If she has a thought she explained that 'normally I say it out loud', and in her head 'it's all just like files' with 'categories of information' she can pull up when she needs it.

There are plenty of other ways not having a voice can change things about the way someone lives their life, but since it's all pretty much normal to that person there's nothing really outlandish about it.

YouTube/PA Struggles

Kirsten does enjoy being alone, but she's found she 'always have to be doing stuff' so if she's on her own she has to be occupied with some task.

She said the whole lack of an internal monologue 'feels really normal to me', so not having that voice inside her head isn't a problem as it's her 'everyday life'.

Well, mostly, as she admitted it is actually pretty tricky getting to sleep as she can 'see lists of things I need to do' and if she wants to make those lists go away she's got to go and write them down.

While she dreams at night, she doesn't remember people speaking in the dreams and 'hardly ever' daydreams, explaining she couldn't think of a time she had a daydream.

Topics: News, Health, Mental Health

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker