It can also lead us to do things that sabotage us. However it manifests itself, when the inner voice runs amok and chatter takes the mental microphone, our mind not only torments but paralyzes us. Sometimes it’s a fixation on one specific unpleasant feeling or notion.
Sometimes it’s a free-associative pinballing between negative feelings and ideas. Sometimes it’s a compulsive rehashing of past events ( rumination) sometimes it’s an angst-ridden imagining of future events ( worry). Sometimes this chatter takes the form of a rambling soliloquy sometimes it’s a dialogue we have with ourselves. This often happens precisely when we need our inner voice the most-when our stress is up, the stakes are high, and we encounter difficult emotions that call for the utmost poise. And when they disconnect from the present, it’s often to converse with that voice or hear what it has to say-and it can have a lot to say.Īlthough the inner voice functions well much of the time, it often leads to chatter-the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather than a blessing. Most people rely on and benefit from theirs every day. If you’ve ever silently repeated a phone number to memorize it, replayed a conversation imagining what you should have said, or verbally coached yourself through a problem or skill, then you’ve employed your inner voice. The inner voice is a basic feature of the mind.Īlthough the inner voice functions well much of the time, it often leads to chatter-the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather than a blessing. It involves silently signing to themselves, similar to how people who can hear use words to talk to themselves privately. Deaf people who use sign language talk to themselves too, though they have their own form of inner language. Some people who stutter, for example, report talking more fluently in their minds than they do out loud. The flow of words is so inextricable from our inner lives that it persists even in the face of vocal impairments. The fact that multiple spiritual traditions have both feared our inner voice and noted its value speaks to the ambivalent attitudes to our internal conversations that still persist today.
They called it “deluded thought.” And yet many of these very same ancient cultures believed that their inner voice was a source of wisdom, a belief that undergirds several millennia-old practices like silent prayer and meditation.
Around the same time, in the East, Chinese Buddhists theorized about the turbulent mental weather that could cloud one’s emotional landscape. Some even considered these voices demonic. Early Christian mystics were thoroughly annoyed by the voice in their head always intruding on their silent contemplation. Humanity has grappled with the phenomenon of the inner voice since the dawn of civilization.
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