I've come across LOADS of ADHD people with borderline uncontrollable inner speech, but hardly ever anyone who speaks of a lack. My own inner speech never shuts up. From the instant I open my eyes to when they fall shut. It's exhausting.
My inner speech never shuts up, and when I started watching the video, I was surprised that deficient inner speech could be linked to ADHD. My brain never shuts up, and I've heard from other adhders that they have the same issue. But finishing this video I started understanding that neurotypicals can actually control their inner speech? Not that someone constantly babbles about random unrelated stuff inside their heads. I'm 40 and I still mumble to myself when I think hard, and when I have some intense conversation going on in my head, I gesture with my hands. So the deficiency of my inner speech is excessiveness and uncontrollability.
Personally, my inner speech doesn't stop unless it's to play yet another 15 second chunk of music. For what it's worth, Adderall is the only thing that's ever given me the ability to quiet that internal voice. Adderall is a bad fit for me in other ways, so I have to deal with this disjointed monologue that incessantly runs through my mind and distracts me. My comprehension skills are themselves quite strong, but my working memory issues and wandering mind seriously limit my ability to employ them. I also struggle greatly with narrative writing, but it's again due to disorganized thinking as opposed to a lack/deficiency (unless you're including deficiency in capacity for regulation) of inner speech.
My brain runs constantly too, but I have the idea that this is not the inner voice that Dr. Barkley is speaking of. Here’s what I’ve theorized; Barkley is welcome to debunk this if I’m off base. Apparently, the subconscious is capable of processing 11 million bits of information a second, whereas the conscious can only do about 40 bits. This presumably means that the conscious mind can only grab and process a little of what’s going on under the hood at any given time. I’ve supposed that this is one of the things that is handled by executive functioning: retrieving relevant thoughts and memories in an ordered fashion, when needed. I think it is pretty well established that one of the problems with ADHD executive functioning is that it filters poorly. What I have supposed this means is that way more noise from the subconscious overflows into the conscious, in a more random way. Arguably, some of the working memory problems could be buffer overruns; it’s not just that we cannot keep as many bits of data in our RAM, but also that we are receiving way more data than we can sort. Like constant overtorqued stream of consciousness. Sometimes this produces intuitive leaps and sometimes it just produces disordered thinking. From my sense of my own self, I am guessing that the inner voice, which apparently provides self-direction, is something other than this noise. It’s like an instructor whose directions are being drowned out by the brain’s chatter. This lack of directions might contribute to impulsivity. Weak executive functioning may mean we don’t hear relevant data on why we should or shouldn’t do something. This is a concept that events in my life of the last two weeks have put into my head. Maybe I’ve made a useful intuitive leap, or maybe I’m assembling a flawed concept from poorly filtered associative data.
@@jimwilliams3816 I'm probably crazy but I have suspected something similar. For reference, I got ADHD and Aphantasia, and I have a particular interest in meditation, introspection, and using neuroscience to try and understand what's going on under the hood. It's entirely possible that I need to get out of my head more or that I'm delusional or just crazy. Anyways.. I suspect that there's at least 4 different voices or sources in my head and noise on top of it. The first one is my voice, initiated and controlled by me. The second one sounds just like me but it lies to try and get what it wants, and for the longest time I thought it was my own thoughts, it was the one always seeking stimulation, telling me I should go smoke, or get a snack, go do pretty much anything that isn't productive or negative for my well-being. The third one and fourth one are distinct, they sound like my internal monologue but they're faint and have different tones, one is calm and the other is more aggressive, not necessarily angry but more intense and combative. They are pretty much always talking in the background to each other discussing things I learned recently, like they're working constantly to help me decode and understand information. I get eureka moments throughout the day from them, you know that moment when something clicks and you finally understand a concept, and it creates a uniquely satisfying feeling. I hypothesis that because I don't have any mental imagery, my brain instead attempts to understand information by verbally analyzing information through multiple angles and perspectives to compensate. They also occasionally throw out suggestions when I'm talking to people, the intense voice makes me aware of danger and the calm one tries to make me think things through before drawing conclusions. This stark difference makes me wonder if I'm picking up signals from both my left and right side of my brain and that I'm just hearing what I'm not supposed to because it's normally drowned out by a dull static and usually there's some sort of jingle on top of that. When I take my stimulant, it clears up and everything is just so quiet that it actually was giving me anxiety the first few times. Pretty surreal. Also, it's like they're speaking in a different language but I intuitively know what's being said, while my internal monologue is in English. It's weird but not really something I noticed until I tried journaling, listening to my thoughts and trying to transcribe them on paper was a surprising amount of mental gymnastics, information abstractly bubbles up in blocks that have to be unscrambled and reworded. Again, I'm probably just crazy though.
I somehow manage sometimes walking outside to get that to turn off by a kind of mindfulness meditation. It isn't reliable though as sometimes I just get lost in my thoughts instead of concentrating on my experience
For sure. 1. Over sharing 2. Cant stay quite around people, need constant external sound to avoid internal chatter 3. Can't read without having to reread every paragraph or sentence but high comprehension level 4. Way too much talking out loud back in elementary 5. Makes playing music difficult despite natural abilities and comprehension for it 6. The internal speech of 20 people talking all at once 7. Too much internal chatter in social situations makes me want to go home/ or just leave 8. Immense energy expended to keep a straight train of thought. etc etc etc etc For me this hits the nail on the head. Yet somehow I can learn things at an extremely fast pace but has to be done in my own way on my own time. I cant do nearly anything for more than short stints. For me I live in hell with this.... many things have helped but at this point even knowing as much as I do... I cant control my adhd. When I think I am... I get reminded harshly that I aint. Trying to work with it now. Thanks Doc!!!
🙁what you describe sounds rather typical for ADHD but I personally can’t really relate exactly to what he mentioned in this video 🤔 Examples would have been great because I’m lost with this video. Talking to themselves about a task? Like saying to yourself in your head “now I’ll type up this document, then I’ll check my emails, then I’ll make some calls and then I’ll go to the grocery store.” 🤔 I’m a little confused what he’s even referring to, this specific research sounds a little wishy washy/non-concrete in my opinion. I would write daily adventure short stories as a child and expressed myself in diaries etc daily for hours. So I don’t know if I misunderstand what he’s referring to in this video but I can’t really relate…
Is high reading comprehension common with ADHD? I've got the same. Psych said after his evaluation if it were up to him he'd let me skip college because my reading comprehension was that of a graduate student as a 17yr old. Still took me 7yrs for undergrad lol
@@oysterchampion8998 You mean reading something that interests you or in general? I think it depends what it actually is? But generally I would say not necessarily (unless you’re very interested in that topic) due to the lack of focus meaning you might understand fast but since you can’t focus too long and get distracted easily it affects the reading comprehension?
It's interesting you used the word 'suffer'. I've never had much of an internal monologue and a few years ago was surprised to find out that most people have constant chatter going on inside their heads. I thought that would drive me crazy, so wouldn't consider the lack of inner speech a deficiency. I just think more in concepts than in words. But the link with difficulty with comprehension really hits home as I've always stuggled with that. I don't talk excessively though, but I do talk to myself out loud, and although I think I have ADHD I'm not yet diagnosed.
Sorry for a late reply, just wanted to say that it's nice to see someone else mention that they think in "concepts". Most people don't seem to understand what I mean when I say that. I wrote a comment on this video just a bit earlier on this. If you're interested, you can probably sort comments by most recent and easily find it.
I absolutely talk out loud to myself in order to think things through that I'm having trouble with, and I very often just talk out my thoughts without realizing it, because it makes my life easier to verbalize things. I've done this since I was a kid, too I also have internal speech, but it just works better when I externalize it
Absolutely fascinating. I have very disorganized inner speech and I always blamed my working memory for not being able to ‘hold on’ to what I’m thinking about or change or manipulate what my mind is saying. After listening to this I can see that I rarely have coherent thoughts all the way through, I get the spark of a thought and move to the next thing, or I repeat the same few things over and over again trying to work with them to no avail. Damn Dr. Barkley… I’m so glad I found this channel. This makes so much sense
My inner speech usually focuses on berating me for all my mistakes, and reliving all of my embarrassing moments. It especially loves doing this at 3am. Not any help at all at remembering my shopping list, my to-do list, or those very important verbal instructions I received to get from point A to point B. I do remember my mother, as an adult, would verbally talk to herself a lot. I don't even think she realised she was doing it. It would drive me crazy.
I’m very familiar with the 3am issue. My psych tried me on a non-stim med that is sometimes used off-label for “night terrors,” and it seems to have been pretty effective. I can still think a lot in the middle of the night, but it’s generally not catastrophizing. Daytime has been harder to thwart. I’ve been following the discussions on “busy inner voice,” and thinking that in my case at least, a lot of my thinking may not be inner voice per se. My RSD-reliving mistakes may be less an inner dialogue and more replaying memories and reacting with overstrong emotions. I will sometimes say something to myself about how hopeless I am, but mostly it feels...somatic? Alexithymia doesn’t help, I have trouble distinguishing emotions from sensations and thoughts.
I became a very good student when, in nursing school, the textbooks had huge margins and we had to buy the books, so I was allowed to write in those margins where I would summarize the reading, in succinct tiny pencil writing. That way I could pull it all together into a smaller package that used fewer words and which therefore was easier to grasp in one "piece" or "chunk."
Interesting. I got through my health science degree, especially the exams, by summarising each lecture in one A4 page using lots of highlighter diagrams. It's a technique my high school biology teacher used, and it stuck with me!
I have to keep doing that in conversations with others (breaking down complex info into smaller tidbits) and I feel strange for doing it. It's also become my (probably maladaptive) masking mechanism to pretend like I am really understanding things. I just try to sum up or paraphrase what the other person has said in the past couple of seconds. But if I don't have the full picture in my mind (which I rarely do), I end up having a dozen smaller puzzle pieces in my head afterwards. It is amazing how many mechanisms persist into adulthood.
I was shocked when my daughter told me that she doesn't have an inner voice. We were talking and trying to find some solutions to help her remember things she needed to do and when I described what an inner voice was she couldn't relate. I had no idea there were those without this ability. Its both intriguing and worrisome for me, but explains a lot about some of the challenges she deals with. She's 14 now but we both discovered this quality about her a few years ago. It's difficult for other people, adults, teachers to understand. She was diagnosed with ADHD combined presentation and level 1 autism couple of years ago. She also excessively talks to herself and the comments about this were really interesting. I'm not finding much info on using this knowledge to help parents or educators and would be grateful if anyone has resources to point me to.
Thank you! Again an excellent video full of information. I have difficulty with my internal voice. It's not lacking but the perception is as being very weak or seems to be coming from very far away. It is not close to my internal "ears". For example, when I need to memorize a long string of numbers(Ex. Phone number), I can't do it without talking to myself loud so I can physically hear my voice trough the ears. This separate me from my other thoughts, isolates those numbers from the rest of the thought process. Anyways, I can store those numbers only a very short amount of time. And in this time, if anything is happening(Ex. someone talks to me) I will forget and I need to start again. It's a struggle.
I have hyperphantasia (the opposite of aphantasia) and anendophasia (now that I have learned what anendophasia is, thank you!). So my mind is only pictures, practically zero words. And yes, I have ADHD and also childhood trauma. No autism. My reading comprehension is excellent (I see the story in my head like a movie) but my verbally-guided behavior is terrible.
This is 100% me. I need to force myself to talk to myself so I know what the hell I'm doing or how I'm feeling. Otherwise, it's all pretty much just images and sounds. They are so powerful they used to drive me to tears for no reason. Concerta however has flattened this, but it also flattened negative emotion so it's a good deal to me. Wish you well
Thinking about myself and some of the other commenters here I have a few conclusions. People with ADHD often have plenty of Internal Speech but it's nature is flitty and distracted. It is also frequently ruminating and self-critical. Relying on this Internal Speech is unhelpful to completing tasks or keeping the consistent train of thought necessary to thinking through a complex problem. Therefor, we often vocalize our thoughts. Doing this grounds what would be a purely internal narrative to its production as a speech act with our mouth and a perception of the words though our ears. A similar effect can be made by writing our thoughts out and reading them back. The Internal speech is externalized but in the process becomes more like "normal" internal speech. "Normal" internal speech is still present but is rendered "other" or less real feeling by these processes. This explains why I feel somewhat exposed or anxious when I am prevented from vocalizing to myself for a long time. Schizophrenia seems related as a more extreme point on this axis where internal speech is totally othered. Their propensity to talk to themselves could be a very similar coping mechanism to our own.
This is absolutely me. I had almost no inner voice until i started on medication as an adult. It happened almost immediately, along with the other executive functions. It was almost scary at first. I had no idea humans were even supposed to do those things!
I just started (back) on concerta after a short time on stimulants a few years ago. Have you found that your stimulants have remained effective for inner voice related deficits over time?
I certainly relate to the concept of anendophasia as a person with ADHD and very likely CDS. It's not that I cannot think to myself in principle, but my thoughts are not verbal and not thought through linearly. I think my thoughts are rather non-linear chunks of concepts that happen all at the same time at different level of my conscious awareness, so to speak, and my brain kind of connects them all instantly on a subconscious level to form a more or less coherent idea. And I do very much agree that this is part of what impairs my executive function, because when I'm faced with a complex task that requires a sequential set of steps to be executed, my brain really does not give me the mental description/verbalisation of the linear steps the tasks entails, that is very much a very effortful and manual process for me to analyze that task at hand and figure out all the steps that it's comprised of and where it would be most appropriate to start with. I also struggle with verbal recall and verbal processing, which impairs my social life too, because it makes it hard to talk to people.
Excellent information! I have ADHD (actually just started on Strattera today) and complete aphantasia as well as anendophasia (which I just learned the term for from your video). I also have severe dissociation due to a trauma disorder. As a result, this brain is always a silent black void absent any imagined sensory experience. Can't visualize anything, music doesn't get stuck in my head, can't imagine how anything feels or smells or tastes. No internal speech at all; thoughts are constantly verbalized. Cannot relive any memories except as the occasional somatic flashback. Except when dreaming. Dreams are astonishingly vivid, realer than waking life. Every sense can be felt and experienced... until I wake up and lose all connection to those sensory experiences. My theory is that whatever is happening with my inability to visualize, imagine senses, or relive memories, it feels like every neural mechanism that works to create imagined sensory experiences is actually happening, but the output gets blocked. Like a home theater setup, but you forgot to plug the final cable into the tv. Interestingly, I do not struggle with rhyming (in fact, I'm a musician who is pretty good at rhyme, rhythm and syncopation, songs are on my YT channel). Fascinating existence, I have to say. I often wonder if the extremely traumatic car crash we were in just shy of 2 years old has any connection to the aphantasia and anendophasia.
Apart from the reading comprehension and rhyming elements this is something I’ve been aware of my entire life. As soon as an idea pops into my head (in response to something someone says or I see) it has to be uttered aloud or it vanishes forever (or until triggered by another external force later). There’s no room for thinking in sentences. When I learned in Ψ about Vygotsky’s theory I joked that maybe I never internalised my private speech, but ever since then have realised it’s largely true. Even while listening to this video, alone, I had to bite my lips to stop me commenting out loud and the strain was so great my neck muscles now hurt. My mother said I was speaking in sentences at 2 years old (she is a retired SaLT, and my large vocabulary and love of word play is thanks to her). Unfortunately I also have TMJD so talking too much can prove painful in more than just the shame/embarrassment of oversharing or blurting out tactless truths. At 62 it would be good to get a dx and see if medication could change things for the better. Feels like I’m running out of time to get a handle on life. Thank you, Dr B, for educating and enlightening us x
Dr. Barkley, I wanted to express my gratitude for your informative video. At 29, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and now at 31, I've encountered lifelong struggles similar to those discussed in your video. Specifically, my word retrieval is exceptionally poor, I struggle with pronouncing common words, and I lack an internal voice beyond a monologue that tends to be repetitive and surface-level. I've previously attributed my lack of an internal voice to poor working memory stemming from my Adhd. And I've noticed that reading fiction books helps strengthen my internal voice, albeit temporarily, usually after extended reading sessions. However, if I go a few days without reading, my internal voice almost completely disappears again. Thank you again for sharing valuable insights.
What exactly do you mean by “internal voice”? Like thinking about your life or reflecting or planning or what is “internal voice” exactly referring to?
The way you write seems eloquent. Are your writing skills much better than your verbal skills during a conversation and if so, why do you think that is?
This is fascinating! Can you delve a little deeper into what this would look/sound like in a person? I work with ADHD/ODD students, as well as having ADHD, myself. I see others commenting on a running internal monologue and I have one too. Is it that this internal monologue is separate and distinct from internal speech needed to complete tasks? I can really see how lack of control of this internal monologue interferes with a more controlled internal speech. Or is it more like a lack of internal voice? That is rarely what I experience or see with ADHD.
Wow. This one really hit me hard. Yes, not entirely absent, but deficient. I know I talk to myself, and I know I talk to others (a LOT) to process my thoughts. I have been off ADHD meds lately, and I’ve been noticing that I’ll stare at work on my computer screen, stuck, and the only way I’ll figure out what to try is to make a suggestion to myself out loud. There is also my inability to filter my replies to people, and on occasion when I know I need to hold my tongue on something (that I figured out in advance, not in real time), I have told myself “don’t say that” over and over -in my head, but it’s a lot of work, and it feels like speaking. But most of all: there have been some unfortunate places in my life where someone has said something of importance to me, and I’ve had absolutely no response. Out loud or in my head. I just go blank. I am prone to fight/flight/freeze, and I have tried to view this as overwhelm/freeze, but it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like a null response. I think this might explain what that is.
Omg I just left comment about that! My brain go blank too and it doesn’t feel like overwhelming situation. I mean I do get overwhelmed and freeze, but sometimes it’s just simple question about myself and it’s blank! Feel so stupid ..I have to try analysi my past to find answer but knowing someone waits for answer now I m unable to focus find that answer. Do you feel the same?
Dear Dr. Barkley, Thank you for this video. Fascinating how new the concepts of aphantasia and anendophasia are given how basic and well-documented both phenomena are. To share some personal experiences: I have both aphantasia and anendophasia and my own theory has been that many of my ADHD-related difficulties were being mediated by them. Given the anecdotal evidence in the comments to your videos about these phenomena, I find it fascinating that that conclusion seemed to be hasty and my case might be more uncommon than I thought. (For example, I assumed the often-shared idea of 'like zapping through channels while someone else holds the remote' was just a metaphor...) Would be nice to learn more about whether these three conditions are correlated somehow. In line with some of your lectures, I assumed the problem with ADHD is a lack of a clear image of my goals. For example you said something like 'the mind's eye and mind's voice are usually developed later, and what they have is quite weak.' Others here seem to report that distraction through inner images seems to be a bigger problem. Intuitively, this once again taps into the two-factor structure of ADHD (inhibition vs. EF, mediating the neuronatomy to the symptoms of hyperactivity, inattention, and emotional disregulation). Does this mean that both the development of mind's voice/eye, the control thereof for self-directed actions (EF) as well as more complex interactions (e.g., with inhibition) might be related to the problems with ADHD?
I realized that I always talk to myself instead of using my inner speech, like I have an inner monologue but 99% of the time I just talk out my thoughts out loud.
I also often do that without medication, but this is because it is helping me staying focused. It is so much harder to control my thoughts without other stimuli to strengthen the control.
I have combined type ADHD, adult diagnosed. I was shocked a few years ago to learn from social media that most people have a constantly running clear flow of words in their head. My mind is a dreamy mix of images, snippets of songs and tv show/video game dialogue, and random words here and there, appearing in a floaty dreamlike manner. I always laughed at the ridiculous premise of mindreading in movies where someone could literally hear another person's private thoughts as though they were speaking out loud. My objection was: thoughts aren't words, they're just a jumble of pictures and feelings and how would one person ever decipher someone else's? I was so shook when I found out some people do think like that. Not myself, that's for sure. I tend to whisper audibly whenever I write/type. And the process is slow and feels like I'm doing a translation from the dreaminess of thoughts to the selection of accurate words. I do enjoy writing and find it like a fun puzzle, turning what isn't a word into what is. Figuring out how the best words can both give clarity and impose limitations... sometimes impoverishing the thoughts themselves when words don't fit
I often talk to myself out loud. To quote Gandalf: “I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to…” Seriously though, to me it’s just inner speech that hasn’t been suppressed. My mom loves to say that I didn’t have an unvoiced thought until I learned to read. My internal voice never stops going and my external voice is simply the physicalization of my internal voice. That dualistic distinction that is posited between inner and outer speech just sounds like a semantic distinction that doesn’t really hold any meeting, other than it not suppressed. Reading the comments, it sounds like there are many people with ADHD like me with constant internal speech and others with little internal speech. Fascinating!
Thanks. Only recently I discovered others really do have “inner speech”…then with a recent trial of SR Guanfacine, I experienced rudimentary “inner speech” for the first time at age 68! And found I didn’t have to actually talk the thoughts I ordinarily would speak aloud.
I am 37 and recently diagnosed with ADHD still talk to myself out loud. Even in group settings people have seen me moving my lips when thinking hard about something. So many things have been illuminated about my past/present with this diagnosis. Thank you for your continued content.
AuDHD here, with plenty of layers of weakish chatter/ songs/ loops/sounds/verbalized details and associations going on in my mind as well as some stronger more linear verbal thoughts. For good retention or self-direction it does help me to say the thought out loud or write it. I have hyperphantasia and exceptional drawing skills, and am quite good at rhyming, reading and writing, but have poor word retrieval sometimes: especially the nouns can be slippery to recall. When I read I hear the words, imagine the scene or picture it graphically and there is often a second layer of verbal thought going on underneath, reacting to what I am reading and connecting it to other thoughts and questions, all of which together can either be excellent for deep reading comprehension and retention, or it can become too distracting and I may have to go back and try again. When I write something more complex it can sometimes be very nonlinear with lots of going back and adding or rephrasing. Often I find it hard to speak in a straight line, as well. I experience it as a second layer of verbal thought under my speech, correcting myself or adding details, and sometimes throwing me off track. Being nearly bilingual and having to live much of my daily life in the weaker of my two languages makes things even more complicated.
Yes, definitely. I work as a therapist and I have noticed that some people (many, as a matter of fact) have difficulties in writing a diary, which might be connected with anendophasia. They dont have their own inner voice and therefore, dont know what to write...
Dr. Barkley. You are very clear and your information exactly matches my perception of how ADHD works. My view on the issue of inner speech has more to do with learning; it would not be a comorbidity, just another symptom of ADHD. I am a person who has always been concerned with understanding how my mind works and seeking solutions by comparing results. Visually imagining that I am talking to another person about a problem I am experiencing helps me to elaborate and seek solutions more clearly. Because it takes away the urgency, and then gives me time to organize my thoughts and reflect. So the urgency comes from the issue of not getting answers to the questions we need to make a decision (not knowing what to do, but knowing that we have to make a decision). In other words, it would be an executive behavior that we do not have, so we force ourselves to make a decision, which may seem impulsive. But the fear of not taking a necessary measure and also not immediately thinking about the repercussions is what forces us to choose an option without having reflected. Although I always try to reflect on what is happening, I do not get internal answers. The feeling is like I have an impulse to stop the action of thinking. Dear Dr. Barkley, I hope I have been clear, but if I have, I am available to answer any questions you may have. Best regards!
Answer is probably different for inattentive vs hyperactive. Inattentive is like internal mental hyperactivity, which seems difficult to imagine without copious internal speech.
I've yet to be diagnosed, but initial screening was overwhelmingly positive and I'm in queue to get full testing done. I have anendophasia. I of course think and there's an excessive amount of thoughts, but it's not words and definitely not voices or sounds. My imagination completely silent. Even when I imagine speech, it's like I'll imagine visuals of someone talking, but there's no sound. The "words" are simply abstract concepts or more visuals. I do still have an inner critic - that's extremely harsh - but it's not words, rather abstract concepts or ideas and visuals. It's almost like the "speech" is beyond my perception, like it's happening under the surface of my consciousness, all I'm getting is the message, the understanding. So when my inner critic says: "I'm a loser", "I'm lazy", "I'm a failure", it's not those words, but rather the idea of what those words mean, if that makes sense? This has also made it quite difficult to confront the inner critic as there's no dialogue or persona to confront, it's like there's a straight mental link from that part of me into my conscious mind. It's quite difficult to differentiate my thoughts from myself. If someone reading this has this problem, I recommend having "dialogue" with your inner parts in writing. I can translate those thoughts into words just fine, but it takes some effort. And with my low capacity for remembering those thoughts, it's been incredibly helpful to write down the thoughts in the form a dialogue because that then allows me to follow along and actually form a concrete idea of where those thoughts are going and what bigger picture they're trying to convey. Jung's 'Active Imagination' technique has been very helpful in this.
Yes 100% I never thought I had adhd then I tried medication one time. Two things happened, my anxiety/reactivity to stimuli went way down, and suddenly I could think things through in my head. I could stop a sentence midway in my head, and reformulate it, choose the right word. Growing up I was told "think before you speak" and my response (much later, because due to my anxiety I can't put things together on the spot) - was "but how?" The reason I'm always butting in, saying irrelevant stuff, is because I can only process it out loud. And by "process", I mean think it through, think through the actual words, and make cogent sense of it. Unfortunately, I still do not have an adhd diagnosis or medication, due to lack of access. Which sucks mightily. I will keep trying though! Thanks Dr Barkley for explaining this, you're a legend! Keep it up 😊
After a lifetime of constant (and often multiple channels of) speech / thoughts I think I'd love to have anendophasia, at least for a week or two so I could have a break from myself!🤣
As mentioned by many others in the comments so far, I have too much internal speech. The struggle is not a lack of inner speech, but that it says too many things about too many things to the point of being overwhelming, and that is what leads to all the problems you stated. I speak my thoughts out loud because that is how I can hold on to the thought that I need to stay focused on in the moment. Also, perhaps I am unique on this regard, but I have many vivid memories of strong self-speak in childhood; some relating to important or emotional situations, but also some from things that seem trivial.
I struggle to recall my childhood and upto 18 years etc. Even past 15 years is blurryish 😢I hate this. I remember some stuff, but very short and not vivid at all
Fascinating! I remember the exact moment when I started to have an inner dialogue, I totally fall under the category of delayed inner speech develpoment. My mental chatter started when I was 13 yrs. Since then I became an anxious person. These days I am much calmer since I implemented mindfulness mediatations into my daily practice. I am diagnosed with adhd.
That's interesting. If you don't mind me asking- Did you start taking ADHD medication at the time your inner voice started? Others here have commented that sometimes inner visualization &/or voice has come about/coincided with the use of prescriptions.
@@leogrrrl5876 That's weird, when I tried ADHD medication my inner voice got much calmer and more quiet. And also, nope, I got medication way later in my 30's.
If it is must've been misdiagnosed because my inner speech cannot shut up for one second (in all seriousness, I would never describe mine as "weak", but unquestionably erratic, directionless, and uncontrollable) I also speak out loud to myself very often. Externalizing my thoughts is like an instinctive itch that I need to scratch. If the matter is about not thinking in words at all (the famous inner speech) this sounds almost directly counter to what every ADHD person I've ever met reports (but my pool is way, way smaller than yours, of course) Meds DID make reading massively easier for me though. The words on the page sound way clearer in my mind, with less noise and fewer other words "pulling" on them.
"Externalizing my thoughts is like an instinctive itch that I need to scratch." - This is such a great way of putting it. I had no idea so many ADHD people felt the same way I do or that self-talk was so common for us.
- yeah, I think I get you. Tell me - before you were prescribed meds, would talking out loud help you focus a little bit more on what you wanted to be thinking about? Like, would it help your thoughts be a little more controlled, more directed?
Thank you for your videos. I definitely recall having delayed internal speech and going through the progress toward internal speech at a much later time as mentioned in the video, but if I’m like a number of other adhd people here and I believe that I am as a bunch as saying the same thing is that now their internal speech is _over_ active and doesn’t stop and in fact is speaking so fast internally and it is nonstop that there’s some sort of inhibition that never got turned on and therefore over takes all other sensory processes within the moments of trying to listen externally. . Ie. If I look at someone, I can’t hear them, if I don’t look at them then I can listen and understand them better, if I use a fidget ring on my left finger with my left thumb, it engages the right hemisphere which then inhibits the left hemisphere and therefore quiets and inhibits the language production areas so I can then quiet the internal speech and then be able to focus on the external conversation. Whereas if I put the ring in my right first finger and spin it with my right thumb, it doesn’t stop the internal speech at all and if anything activates it more. We need to be looking at the inhibitory connection between the parietal lobes and frontal lobes, ipsilateral as well as contralateral connections. And in addition, we need to be looking more at the involvement of the insula with not only language processing but also emotional regulation with fear, anger and sadness, which also plays a huge part in adhd. There are a few dozen mri and DTI studies that can be done on these topics. Again, thank you for your insightful videos.
So interesting. I can imagine voices if i try, but i usually just don't. I only realized other people have a different experience when once on THC i suddenly had a inner monologue. It felt insane and distracting to me but when I told other people they said it was their normal.
I have ADHD and work with parents who have kids with ADHD. YES!!! This is accurate! For me, I have a LOT of internal speech and mental movies (I think, although ADHD being a disorder of self evaluation, I could be a fish that doesn't know it's wet!), but my internal speech and movies are disorganized and not the most efficient at times. It feels like I cannot prioritize internally in the way some others do. Its like there is TOO much internal speech and movies, and my brain can't sift through it. It's like I will get organized in my brain and think it's all there, and then BOOM! I missed a detail (didn't think about it)--- gas in the car, appointment fell through the cracks, etc. I have noticed this with children as well as my own son with ADHD.
I remember being 10 or 11 and getting told off by my parents for talking to myself out loud as different characters in public. It was assumed that I was just a bored only child who didn't realise that it wasn't okay to do that anymore, but I remember knowing it was viewed as socially unacceptable and being unable to stop myself anyway. It took me three times to pass my driving test. The time I finally passed, I had gotten ""permission"" from my instructor a lesson or two before that it to say the steps of more complicated manoeuvres (e.g. parallel parking) out loud during my test, and was told that it could even be beneficial because it let the examiner know I was aware of, and performing, all the required safety checks. The simple act of vocalising the instructions that I knew extremely well, but was unable to direct myself to follow, made it such that I went from almost immediately failing at the initial obstacle circuit of the test to getting a perfect score.
This is very interesting! I actually dont know if I have an inner speech. I have something, but for me thats more like my anxiety to keep myself accountability. Its a noise of reminders, and negative selftalk. But I speak alot to myself aswel. I remember from when I was younger I struggled to write a diary, and still do... And it so much nire easy for me to speak and get the information in out in that way! 🤷♀️
Some people spend decades meditating to try to quiet their inner voice. It's seen as an overactive part of the mind and switching it off, even momentarily, is considered a rare achievement. Athletes perform at their peak when in a flow state and not thinking. Thinking here inhibits optimal functioning. Is a lack of thinking a 'deficiency' or optimal functioning? Are there actually different ways to 'lack' internal speech.
Not thinking in speech =\= not thinking. I think primarily in images and sensations, but my thinking doesn’t stop. Just because I’m not reciting actual words in my head doesn’t mean I’m not replaying the same 5 seconds of a catchy song on repeat or vividly reliving embarrassing memories.
@@Ferrant621 now I’m even more confused. I wish he or someone gave examples to what exactly he is referring to in this video because I don’t really understand what he means exactly
@Ferrant621 wow, you articulated this perfectly. I, for sure, think in "sensations" but never knew how to make sense of it, I just knew my thinking did not involve words. It's frustrating because this way of thinking negatively affects my ability to provide concise, clinical responses in professional settings. The information that I output always has an overly emotional tone no matter how much I try to tame my sensation-bases thought process and transmute my thoughts to words instead.
@@IntegrityMeansAll that could, possibly, mean that you don't experience this inner voice. It doesn't mean you don't THINK. Part of why researchers are interested in anendophasia is that intelligent and competent people report not experiencing this. I can't, personally, imagine what it would be like to think without an inner voice, but I think I can understand what @Ferrant621 means. Imagery is not the same as speech. Some people rely more on a "picture" of what is happening/will happen/has happened/should happen. I don't like the term "deficit" or "deficient" to describe weak or absent "inner voice": I prefer to think of this as an alternative or variant of human cognition.
@@kathrynturnbull990 that was very kind of you that you mentioned intelligent people don’t experience this inner voice according to research 🙂 I wouldn’t know whether or not that’s true or why..? Can you give an example for “inner speech”? The way I grew up wasn’t ideal at all, I was basically left alone all day as a little child and even when my so called parents got home from work they either left again going out or had people over so noone truly communicated with me growing up besides classmates / my friends but that’s why I wondered if this could be related to speech development etc meaning I did not learn how to articulate yourself well until I read more and went to college etc. Then I started to love communicating in different languages and also writing a lot but until I was a little older I just never learned how to describe certain things or just how much you can express yourself and your feelings with words because noone cared growing up. So I wonder how that plays a role as far as speech development, but in school etc I was always good expressing myself on paper (right now I’m very tired so I apologize) but as far as the inner speech can you give examples possibly? Let’s say someone has an important date - hearing does inner speech mean people go over what they’re going to say in their head (or quietly talk to themselves)? I may write a few notes last minutes but I’m not sure if I understand “inner speech” correctly? I also used to ruminate a lot until a few years ago going over things someone said but mostly what someone wrote and what I responded but that was mostly written words.. I’m really trying to understand so I’d truly appreciate examples, if you don’t mind.. Other than that I don’t really care how random people perceive what I may say (which could be bad and good depending on who it is and what was said etc) so I rarely ever plan anything I say (only for really important situations maybe but then mostly via a written note) But maybe once I know some examples, it will click what people mean with “inner voice” Thank you very much for helping me understand 🙏🙂
I remember getting medicated for the first time as a teenager and being pretty startled by hearing my inner voice for the first time. I honestly felt a little crazy. Even though I sort of assumed this was the natural state for most of my peers. Fast forward to today Even on medicine these days I feel it’s still a pretty weak or quiet inner voice, but unmedicated it doesn’t exist.
I don’t lack inner speech completely but my wife often asks me what I’m thinking about and my response is often… “I’m not even thinking at all.” It’s almost like my brain goes into this meditative / resting mode. It happens often when I’m mentally or physically tired, sad, or overstimulated. Also seems to happen after extended bouts of hyperfocus. My brain is either 100% on like ALL SYSTEMS GO … or it’s barely running at all in a subconscious auto pilot mode running on fumes. Seems to be very black and white for me.
I have lots of internal speech, but I also struggle with internal speech. I think what happens is that if I’m with other people and interacting with them, there something that happens with the stimulus of interaction with other people that makes my verbal impulse control weaker because I’m distracted by the interaction and I am not focusing hard enough on what things are appropriate to say out loud and what is not. It also happens if I am focusing on other tasks and I end up speaking to myself out loud instead.
Thank you very much Dr Barkley for always sharing your insights and knowledge filled videos !! Educational and professional excellence !! It helps very much and I hope it does to everyone I forward it to !! Also love the humor you add sometimes 😊😊😊 Greetings from California … I wish you and folks and all good health , success and happiness !! Much Love ✌️😎💕
I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid but I'm pretty sure I have CDS in addition to ADHD. I usually have full blown conversations in my head. Often I explain stuff to some fictional listener and answer questions I imagine they would ask. I also don't feel like my actual thoughts are verbal. They are those abstract things, that are hard to put into words. And maybe the explaining is me trying to do exactly that. But then again I sometimes really get stuck in loops. Sometimes I start thinking a sentence, but in the middle of it I understand the idea it is conveying on a conceptual level and don't even bother finishing it verbally. And then there are random bits of music sprinkled in here and there. It's extremely hard to stop my brain from doing this. Unless of course my mind blanks. Which happens mostly when I stare into the void. But also sometimes when I try to start a task or make a decision. In those instances it can feel like my brain freezes and refuses to do anything. ps: It felt pretty good to get that out of my head, maybe I actually should get into journalling 🤔
well...hit the nail on the head for me. jesus. ive no inner speech unless i try hard to conjure one up. though, when i do try inner speech, it stutters like crazy and i give up. however, for my fellow non inner speechers, I suggest trying out asl/sign language; even if you can hear just fine. i would bet that if you havent any inner speech, communicating without words will come very, very easy/effortlessly. sign language is 100% visual & if you keep at it & learn how to sign, youll be surprised that for all the lack of inner speech we experience, our constant visual memory that we use fits quite well with sign language. i haphazardly stumbled upon this fact having to communicate with deaf colleagues & coworkers. i worked with a guy who was deaf & he taught me how to sign; daily. even he was surprised at how fast i could absorb non verbal communication, but hell... my mind is just impulses and visual memory; recalling the language was very easy. i know not everyone is the same, but if anyone who has a quiet mind is reading this, give it a go - a deaf person may thank you later
My daughter tells, that she doesn´t think verbally. Every time she has to talk to somebody, she has to translate her nonverbal thoughts to words. She can manage conversations, but writing is really challenge. She is 25 already, but I still help her to write to her doctor etc. She was 20-21, when diagnosed ADHD and autism.
My mind constantly goes on and on, either using inner speech or images or just associations of ideas. Mind wandering, most of the time. I have problems with sustained reading, mostly because my mind constantly wanders off and also every sound or visual cue distracts me. And every idea I read needs to be mulled over. My comprehension is usually good or even better, I can usually contribute and explain a lot to others about what I actually know and read, and whenever the occasion arises, I get told that they find it useful or even impressive. But it is hard for me to consistently guide myself, sustain and progress. Narrative writing is difficult because, again, my mind wanders off or keeps mulling over things or gets distracted. Staying on topic is also difficult, and remembering my outline, or even committing to an outline. My problems are definitely in the area of sustained guidance and control, and also working memory. Less or not at all in deficient internal speech or imagination. Although, there was a time way back in school when I had difficulties imagining the normal vector for a surface. But after a while, I could clearly and easily imagine and work with it in my mind. I am still undiagnosed (it takes years and years here), but probably have ADHD, CDS, ADS, and a few assorted others.
It me! Oops, didn’t get to the part where you asked for feedback. I’d say it causes a fair amount of struggle. Parents, teachers, and bosses were frequently upset with me for not understanding or remembering instructions. I have a hard time writing notes to myself for later because I can’t adequately get my own point across; which admittedly sounds silly, but I’ll often read a note at the intended time and wonder what the hell I was trying to communicate. Executing a plan is difficult when I can’t formulate and organize one in the first place; this is less of an issue with things I’ve done before and can visualize, but doing anything new and relying solely on verbal instructions is very difficult.
I wholeheartedly relate. And, regarding it possibly being a memory problem - ya can't remember what you can't formulate first. That's the thing. I struggle badly with this.
@@IntegrityMeansAll it would likely be related to memory, yes, but there are different types of memory too (e.g., memory for single words, memory for stories, memory for tasks that you perform physically with your body, memory of shapes, navigational memory, etc). Many internal processes are related in the brain. Researchers and scientists use words to try to define what they see on the outside, as well as what we experience internally, so that they can study it better and learn more about it. But we don't have "memory" or "inner speech" like we have a "nose". We can see a human nose, point to it, describe it, draw it. There's little room for disagreement about what the nose is among humans: all we have to decide is the word we are going to use for it. These brain processes are not so clear because they are not a discreet physical thing.
@@kathrynturnbull990 Thank for your detailed message, I truly appreciate it. I never thought about this is in such detail. So according to that theory would it be correct to assume that neuro-typical people without any damage etc to the brain can recall all (significant) experiences once someone reminds them of it? Let’s say an old friend would ask you if you remember the time you stayed with her for a couple days 10 or 20years ago or even more fleeting memories? I just give this as an example because people mention experiences to me that I don’t remember especially the longer time has passed. The same with task related memory I mostly only remember the same exact specific moments in regards to a person even if I was with them for years. It’s not even because those particular moments or events were special but that’s just the only ones I recall from a time period of many years. Maybe if they mentioned and described it in detail I might remember something else but not sure. It’s very little I remember but I do remember bad moments & some good ones but it seems so far away like different life times. On the other hand I’m good with reading people and their micro expressions. I also wonder if Adhd medication changes memory for better or for worse …
Personally, I have no internal voice. I have to speak out loud in order to think fluidly, this doesn't mean I'm incapable of thinking in my head, I simply cannot hear audio. This comes with, as I understand, some odd side effects. My dreams are completely silent, I can remember sounds but mostly using rhythm. Thinking in words is similar to using a perfect set of sound proofing headphones. Even without audible input, your still conscious of what your saying.
Another thought provoking video. At the start of the video, using anecdotal experience, I very much thought the conclusion was going to be different. My own internal speech seems to be very much present and those of others with ADHD that I’ve talked to about their anxieties (I’m a clinical psychologist), frequently are able to discuss internal thoughts. I had always conceptualized the increased use of self-talk for ADHD population as a function of increasing arousal and engaging greater processing elements. I could see how it could interfere and delay development of internalized speech, perhaps even completely eliminate the development all together based on other cognitive factors. I can also see how elements in your summary are accurate with myself. I recall as a child into middle school my father criticizing big me for reading out loud (I come from a family of avid readers), challenges today today with rhyming and using pronunciation guides, and a general preference to read information vice hearing. In fact I generally work through my patients concerns in a greater depth while I’m writing my notes. Even so, I still believe that I do have a good bit of internal talk, in fact as I write I tend to be actively writing what I’m dictating to myself internally.
I found both this video and last week's videos incredibly interesting, because they both fit me perfectly. And now for an apology... The following is a result of my always quiet mind. I am very interested to see if others have the same inner experience as I do. I believe it must be exceedingly rare. I have never put any of this to paper (screen?) before, so it's a bit jumbled. Feel free to TLDR and go on to the next post... The subject regularly comes up in conversation with friends and relatives who can't understand how I can have absolutely no internal dialogue... Well, I CAN have it, if I force myself to think over a past conversation with someone, or if planning a conversation in the future... However, I never talk to myself. Instead I think in concepts, ideas, methods and principles. Movement, change, transactions, etc... It's at once both ambiguous and concrete. Personally, I find that it must be so much more uninhibited, full of possibilities and opportunities and understanding free from preconceptions. Even playing with my thoughts is a wonderful passtime for me... But then again, I've never experienced the opposite. My mind is never bored, and it's exceedingly good at coming up with out-of-the-box solutions for complex problems with many variables. My ADHD is, for the most part, not a deficiency, but a superpower enabling to do things that my peers (and colleagues) could only dream of....... Well, I guess they don't forget the items and the order of their morning routine or the names of their friends of 30 years... I do... Every day🤦♂️ Sticker-reminders and labels are my friends there... At least for brushing my teeth 🤷♂️ A few years ago I also realised that I cannot visualise/audiate anything complex. I never have and I don't think I ever will. My wife has tried guiding me through the "leaves on a stream" meditation exercise as she feels it helps calm her always over-active mind. I can never visualise more than just the tree, or just the stream, or the leaf, or just the ground I'm sitting on, never more than one element at a time, and only faintly. I can't even solidly imagine the faces of my friends or family, though I know very well what they look like. My wife, she holds the entire experience clear in mind and it allows her silence....... Something I have in abundance! 😂 On the contrary, for me, even the little virtualisation I manage to do during that exercise encourages my otherwise verbally quiet mind to think new thoughts, ones of family far away or experiences long past... Still, I can't visualise anything, but it doesn't stop me from pondering solutions to problems. I LOVE complex puzzles! Not jigsaw puzzles. I find those exceedingly boring. But I'm a speedcuber (Rubik's cubes up to 7x7) and though I can't "visualise" the cube and it's pieces, I FEEL the cube. My lack of visualisation/audiation is quite paradoxical to me. I feel as though it should make me less able to analyse and parse visual stimuli, but in fact I am often much more adept at it than other people. My wife is a graphic designer and deals with colours and shades all day every day. Her lines are straight and angles good... But I can ALWAYS see when something is off. I'll let her know and she'll tell me "no". But when I tell her to double-check, I am right! Multiple times we've asked a group of people to arrange an assortment of similar colour hues (www.arealme.com/color-hue-test/en/) and I'm generally finished first and always 100% - I know it's to do with the capabilities of the eyes, but still... I'm also the annoying person that can tell the difference between 59hz and 60hz on a video monitor. If someone else is in the kitchen but not paying attention, I'm the person who says "something's boiling over now..." a few seconds before the "tssch" from the spilling from the spilling pot. I once volunteered to assist in the Audio/Video department at a convention. There turned out to be feedback issues. One speaker caused extra feedback, so the experienced audiotech frantically fiddled with the Graphic EQ, trying to adjust for the noise. I was on mixer, just watched him work and listening to the changing sound. Then I asked him to lower one slider (825Mhz) - He cut it by half and the feedback was gone. I continually find niches where my ever active, ever pattern-seeking mind has an edge... And it's all by feel. I don't necessarily think with any structure or aggressively/systematically attack a problem. The solution most often shows itself, by itself, during the process of my learning the concepts of what I'm involved in. I feel my way through everything. I find that, despite the thoughts presented last week, I am very good at imagining the feelings of others. I am (for good or bad) exceptionally proficient in putting myself in the shoes of others and feeling their joy, excitement, fear or pain. Which means I'm a mess at funerals... But, contrarily, I can also decide to shut myself up completely, like a psychopath, feeling no compassion at all... It's scary sometimes, if I allow my mind to travel there, I can "become" a murderer in my mind, not even feeling remorse over an absolutely horrific deed. So, despite not being able to visualise an image, still or moving, I can easily imagine things on a conceptual or emotional level... Just not visually/auditory. I'm a heartless cynic valuing truth and absoluteness extremely highly. I read peer-reviewed journals for fun. I'm deeply interested in the universe and in life, both its building blocks and its design. I greedily take in knowledge about quantum mechanics and other theoretical and experimental physics. I love astronomy and biology. What I've found has thought me that nothing comes from nothing, and that, even though many bawk at the idea of a creator, I find such a one hard to dismiss... I'm always the first to call "bullshit" (sometimes rudely, sorry) when someone raises a sensational piece of news that they read (eg. a colleague once stated that fake plastic rice was sold in some places - rubbish...) or when someone gives silly health advice ("you should drink magnesium powder dissolved in water, it'll solve all your issues" or "fruits of [any tree of the the Annonaceae family of plants] can cure cancer because of Annonacin"). I feel the sum of the variables of what I know, giving my answer. Then, resolving the reason in my mind after the fact. After pondering long and hard, considering my own thought pattern over many months, I feel that my neuro divergent execution of conscious thought allows my unconscious mind to more easily contribute directly to the non-verbal dialogue going on in my head... I think. I feel. I do. ADHD can be a super power. I would never ever want to be without it... Although it would be nice to be able to manage the less desirable consequences better... Have others found these same properties apply to their minds? I'm keen to know how you have been able to further exploit those abilities 🙂
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I think we need to hear more examples from people like you who can demonstrate that this lack of "inner voice" is not a "deficit"...or, not necessarily. Thought processes are so difficult to measure: much easier to see and quantify what people can DO based on the abilities of their brains. For myself, I certainly have an inner voice, but I study this stuff and I think it's important to understand all the variations of thought and cognition!
I can say I have anendophasia, words flee from my mind, I wonder if what I say is appropriate, who the person I'm talking to is, is she smart enough to understand me or not? if they get upset or not? how this problem is solved, will the judge me? maybe I'm overwhelmed with thoughts! I have to accept I can't change the world and i am relieved! this world makes us sticky!
not exactly, I just said the reason why I am like that! and the texture of anxiety I experience, being overwhelmed by rootless thoughts and emotions causes such disorder
@@nedahashemian3973 I understand the reasons but it would still result in the opposite in a way? I really would like to see how they came to these particular conclusions and the actual analysis and variables etc. I conducted empiric studies and developed all these measuring metrics etc (long time ago) but ever since then realized a lot of so called scientific studies/finding lack validity or reliability due to how they’re conducted. And to just claim people with ADHD can’t visualize things or have no inner voice without even any suggestions or treatment /therapy approaches included that target those problems are not very productive in my opinion. That’s like publishing studies claiming that so called neuro typical always repeat every study they read blindly and taking it at face value instead of actually examining whether or not the study was conducted properly and lacks validity. Or to claim that many neuro-typical psychiatrists lack critical thinking ability and just repeat and say/do whatever they read.
My verbal memory is horrible. Holding more than 3 words in my mind for longer than a few seconds is very hard. If I can build a visual of what's being said and through that an understanding, a concept, it gets easier. But remembering arbitrary words or numbers is painfully difficult. The same applies for reading comprehension. I have no issues with this as long as I can visualise what's going on. The words kind of fade away as I start reading. This is how I read books, they play as visuals in my head. So as long as whatever is being said is building an idea, following a story, instead of simply listing numbers or factoids, I have no issues following and understanding. Reading and understanding something like research papers - outside the 'abstract' section and so - is borderline impossible for me though. If I can't visualise what the results mean and build a story out of it, it's not sinking in even a little bit. Understanding even a single sentence like that takes immense effort in converting it into an idea of some sort. Then needing to hold that idea while I convert the next sentences or paragraphs into one feels like my brain is going to fry.
I have a lot of inner speech, I would say my inner speech is very rich, but it is very rarely useful in driving behaviour, and it's not always easy to follow. If I am trying to work something out in my mind, I often can't do this, this was something I had idenfied in myself even before diagnosis. I tend to either talk my thoughts, worries, plans through with a trusted friend or my spouse, or I will write them out, sometimes online, sometimes just privately, and from there it makes a lot more sense and I seem to be able to translate or transfer or organise it into a plan or even just a track which somebody else (including future me) could follow. However, this can be a very exhausting process. When I try to keep steps of a plan in mind I get muddled up, I re-do tasks which I have already done or decided not to do, I skip parts which I had decided to do, I do things in the wrong order, in a way which I later realise I had already realised was illogical or I abandon the plan halfway through. Unlike a lot of ADHDers I don't mind my "chatterbox brain" and I don't find it quietens down with medication, which I am quite glad about because I think it would seem strange and lonely without this! I do seem to keep on task much more with medication, and I tend to have the ability to mentally think ahead to the next step, so perhaps my "mind's voice" is more focused in this way.
…now at 70yo I’ve been “chemically enhanced” (stimulants) since my diagnosis 13 years ago…while the use of stimulants keep my cognitive abilities engaged their efficacy related to reading comprehension is minimal as well as verbalized instructions/directions. I rely HEAVILY on mental pictures to best comprehend information. Therefore, internal speech while active, it alone (without mental visualizations) does not afford me the ability to outwardly execute/perform actions/tasks related to my internal speech/thoughts in any meaningful way. I mentally rehearse in great detail through mental imagery much of what I intend to act out prior to doing so. My Dyslexia affords me the ability to visualize with a felt sense which then “colors” the imagery.
Hi there! I also have heavily relied on mental pictures in cognitive processes. Unless we’re talking about basic vocabulary that is used incessantly, I can only retrieve terms & names if I codified them with an image when I learned them. If nothing very pictorial was used, the minimum is the image of the word spelling. I have great difficulty retrieving words & names (even though I have a pretty advanced vocabulary, apparently), but I usually know how many syllables the word I’m trying to recall has,which letter it starts with, at least 2 vowels, at least 2 consonants! It’s ridiculous. In any case, visualizing and observing the visible world contribute a remarkably large part of my cognitive processes. Repetition, making sure everything has an image, practicing… these things help me from flopping in professional situations.
Thanks, I'd really like to know more about internal speech.. People, please realize that our racing thoughts are not inner speech. As the doctor said, when you are little, you talk to yourself bc you are learning self-management and self-regulation.. At 2, I used to say No No! when trying something my mom wouldn't like. In time, you internalize this (or not). From exercise coaching, I learned that lots of people have this actual negative voice that says: you bumbling lazy whatever... They are taught to talk to themselves as a good friend instead. Me with ADHD have no "you" inside. I also can't do affirmations in the mirror. I can see that hair needs to be brushed, but seldom have any human connection with that mirror person. I'd have to practice, from talking out loud again, playacting, fake it till I make it. That is not masking, that is reparenting yourself.
I do a lot of self-talk when I am on my own. like commenting everything I do and also having loud conversations . also when I work concentrated I do that alone or if there is someone else in a concentration atmosphere . I would say I have inner speech and haven't always got the need to talk , when there is people around.
I'm autistic, not ADHD but have no inner monologue unless I concentrate and then I don't hear an inflected voice mostly just the sound of the words as though I'm working out the pronunciation or it's like a screen reader, flat. The only difference I've noticed compared to people with noisy inner monologues (most of them ADHD or AuDHD) is that they tend to remember exact quotes more than I do, whereas I tend to pick up on symbolism to a far greater degree. I suspect because my thoughts are a series of visual media or sensory and thought flows. I absolutely remember the mood of a piece far more than most people I have met. I talk to myself out loud all the time to process language and thoughts audibly so that I can interpret the emotion of a piece of writing when reading, for example. I'm also just shy of profoundly gifted, and have hyperphantasia so I'm not sure how/if that plays into the mix.
I have never heard of this. This is so very interesting. I have thought once I heard of aphantasia that it explained why I could do math in my head but I wasn't taking language into account for my math or orientation (directional). I'm not sure how I would figure this out. If I have directions for say a recipe, I still cannot keep it in my head.
I do have lots of parallelized and accelerated thoughts throughout the day. Sometimes, specially after a reading session, I can't synthesize what I've read right away in an internal speech.
I have no problem with this at all. Mg inner dialogue is always going. Especially when I’m not relaxing. It guides me through everyday life and tells me right from wrong. It’s the problem of am I going to listen. I have noticed that I do talk out loud to myself so I can fully understand. Like if I don’t read something out loud it might not sink in like it should if I don’t read it out loud.
i have no inner monologue and i find it helpful to talk out loud to think through things or write it down or externalize things somehow. i have a hard time focussing on writing papers and a big part of that is remembering where i am in the paper and what order things are in and what order it should be in, etc.
i also always forget tasks and events. i have to put it in a calendar and a to-do list. previously i had very bad anxiety and that actually cancelled the forgetfulness out a bit because i spent so much time worrying. once i started to lose that anxiety i became less punctual and forgot more tasks. i had to strengthen the coping mechanisms.
Personally, I have found that I have a hard time with internal speech and typically need to externally process as a result. My ADHD medication seems to dramatically improve how well I can talk to myself in my head so much so that I don't feel nearly as compelled to externally verbalize my internal speech. It's hard to say whether it's an Anendophasic or a non-Anendophasic impairment in verbal working memory because it's hard to distinguish between a lack of internal speech and loosely cohered internal speech.
I don't believe that Anendophasia is linked to ADHD. On the contrary, I have excessive internal speech. As you later said, the problem is a reduced capacity to use self-speech to guide performance.
I still to this day (44yrs) have trouble working things out fully in my thoughts. I definitely work through a thought process better by saying it out loud. It's only since being medicated that my external thinking is more fluid. Before this I had many long pauses and much more trouble recalling my words. But, because of my external thinking, while verbally working things out I say the wrong conclusion and also correct myself a few times. This to others around me invites interruptions to correct me, which in turn stops my process while someone else worked out the conclusion. This frustrates me so much.
Interesting video Dr Barkley. I have to say, I'm not quite sure on this one. Most of the people I know have worked with that have ADHD describe almost a hyperactive inner voice or a racing mind of inner speech. The idea that it could be from a lack of inner speech doesnt mesh too well with my experiences. Although, it could relate to difficulties filtering and organizing inner speech for task relevant features perhaps? Curious to hear what your take is on this.
When I read a book I often forget what happened in the last chapter. I don't have my diagnosis yet, but after informing myself I am pretty sure I have ADHD.
As an AuDHD myself, I have a weird thing on which I haven't found a name yet, maybe it's this, but I'm having some difficulties finding my words at times. When I write novels or poetry, I have to use synonyms dictionary because I definitely have a deep understanding of the things I want to convey, but I find myself oftentimes blocked on more generic words that aren't as adequate as I would like them to be. To know deeply the meaning of the words without being able to get back the actual words by myself is a very frustrating experience. It feels like I have a crutch in my mind. At times, I also feel my inner dialogue to be more blurry. At others, it's very clear.
I have something similar, where even as a kid I would sift through all the words I knew to find the ones that fit my meanings and feelings best and get very frustrated when people used less specific and less fitting words to describe what I had said. I care deeply about precision of words when it comes to expressing myself
to people who didn't watch the whole video - it is not qbout having inner/at load speech, it is about how much it is vonnected to the tasks and what you are doing...so if you are thinking about dinosaurs but should go check on the kettle it is not the inner speech that is typical
I often wonder what people mean by an inner "dialogue", that indicates two parties. As a rule I never talk to myself, because I'm genuinely worried I'll answer back, instead I imagine holding conversations with other people but the other party is entirely silent in the matter and I decide what they want to know. Even before I internalised the speech I would explain things out loud, like tying my shoelaces, to some imaginary audience.
i have an inner speach, i do not have an inner dialogue. my inner speach is not constant nor is it too effective in guiding behavior. it's just something that happens sometimes when i make commentaries to myself. mostly my thoughts are not in speach or image format, they're just vibes
At 10:41 you say that the signal from the brain doesn't enter the spinal cord to creat external speech, but speech is only partially a function of the spinal cord. Many of the main functions of speech are controlled by the vagal nerve which doesn't travel through the spinal cord at all.
From limited unscientific comparisons with a few close friends it does seem check out that I (as the one with ADHD) have less inner speech than they do. I don’t know how representative we are of course or how robust our introspection about it is. But still. I do have plenty of experience of inner speech that doesn’t easily turn into action and sometimes it can work to deliberately repeatedly intensify the inner speech or even make it into external speech and that sometimes gets me over the hill to do the action. It’s frustrating, because sometimes when I’m around people I need to say “I’m thinking about doing [something]” as a way to make my self be able to do it, and then they take that as a cue to do it themselves. It’s doing all the mental work to build up to doing it but then having the reward of having contributed being taken away. I wouldn’t say I lack inner speech completely though. And if there is not speech there is usually something else going on. Music, vivid visual imagery or problem solving of some kind; to name a few. Though not always. I can reach some mentally calmer states some times.
I don't really use internal speech. I have a little of it, but I don't use it for problem solving. If I have a complex physical task to do I'll literally close my eyes and visualise myself doing it to work out the steps. If I have an abstract task, like writing code, I'll draw a diagram with shapes representing different bits. Maths and coding feel more like shapes in my brain than words. I like how they feel! Writing is the worst! I can't write complicated content and a grammatically correct sentence at the same time. I forget what I was writing about! Also, I don't really understand grammar. I'm ADHD and ASD.
My internal speech never stops. She even reads the books to me 😅 I am actually glad my medication doesn’t quiet the internal speech. I don’t know what I would do without it because I have had it so long. Edit: I love that you always include references. ❤
Personally, I talk through tasks a lot or read aloud if I'm having a difficult time understanding something. From a lifetime of masking, it is a bit more and liuder if I'm alone. I will talk through things I'm typing a lot too.
OMG Dr B has just opened a giant can of worms & for myself I can't get a coherent response together on a phone... Extremely interesting video tho. A little bit terrifying...
Are you guys sure you don’t (also) have autism? I feel what is described in this video sounds more like autistic traits. Often times there’s comorbidity. I know someone very well who what he described in this video would apply to but this is person is also autistic as it strongly appears. Or maybe I misunderstood what that inner voice and other things mentioned in this particular video is specifically referring to. Examples would be great
My biggest issue with internal speech is how it never shuts up and is *very* difficult to control. If I'm trying to do my literal job and preform calculations, my mind will start talking about numerous things at once. I often refer to it as my "monkey brain." It's exhausting and never turns off. I genuinely can't imagine what true silence must be like.
Fascinating, gratitude for connecting the dots, how does the inner voice of self-speech relate to the inner voice[s] of other-speech as in Schizophrenia. If endophasia is inner speech and anendophasia the poverty of inner speech how would or could this affect the pathological development of xenophasia or inner other speech. Persons with Schizophrenia always point out that the inner voice[s] tormenting them are not their own inner voice. Also in most meditative practice one seeks to minimize endophasia to the point of inducing a state of anendophasia. Endophasia is believed to be inner chatter of the monkey mind. Most persons starting meditation find it hard to stop inner speech...
I would pay money for the absence of internal brain chatter. Mine talks my head off. So yappy I could refer to it as something like a chihuahua looking out the front window. If I did speak it all out loud I wouldn't have time to breathe. I have a virtual 'yappy' box in my brain that I can sometimes stuff it all into if I can catch it. Usually I can't catch it. I'm quite literally watching it's chaos as I am listening to this video and typing this message at the same time. None of that inner chatter has nothing to do with anything else that I am doing or thinking either. Sometimes, it's only usefulness, it asks the question: "Have I taken my meds?". And yet, you will never catch me in a grocery store without a written grocery list in my hand. It has to be in my hand. With my handwriting on it. If I lose my list, it's over. I cannot process. I feel like a lost kitten in the middle of an ocean. It is actually very unnerving. To have so very much room in my brain for all that yapping but none of it is useful and I cannot remember the things I need to remember. How can that be? You'd think I could recite the phone book (yes, I remember phone books) with the amount of information and inner chatter going on. But if you asked me to find just one person's phone number in an actual phone book, I'd forget who's name I was looking up by the time I located said phone book. And, yes, I have done this very thing back in the days of phone books, and before I knew I had ADHD. The key has always been to write down the name of the person first. Then open the phone book, piece of paper with name on it in hand. Inner chatter, outer chatter, it's all just chaos to me. The only thing I can rely on is that written list. A solid foundation that I can rely on. Now I'm rambling....ugh...
While rumination involves internal speech, it is the repetitive, useless nature of the repetitions that makes it, by definition ruminative, not to mention its focus on past humiliations, unresolved conflicts, or fears of such in the future. Be well,
Dumb question, are there diffedent types of ADHD? Me and my friends are all diagnosed ADHD. I think all our brains work mostly the same. As in has internal dialog. Is there a kind of ADHD that is high reading comprehension and has a strong inner dialog/imagination and the kind you describe in this video? My wife and her family have aphantasia. I think there is some undiagnosed ADHD there. Their brains do not work the same as mine. High IQ straight A types but teen pregnancies/hoarding/law issues for some of them.
Dr russel berkley So those who have private speach do you hear those voices or are they silent thoughts. I also cant hear music in .y head. I always talk aloud to myself. Really will help a lot to know what actually internal.speach is
I'm curious, Dr. Barkley, in the same way that autism used to be thought of as a deficiency in empathy, but now it seems as though it's an overabundance of empathy, leading to infants avoiding eye contact due to information overload, but this reduces the amount of dyadic pairing that they engage in, which reduces the number of opportunities to learn about other people implicitly, could this Anendophasia and low verbal working memory have a similar (scaffolding) relationship? I have some internal talk, some external self-talk and A LOT of talking to/at people. As is typical, this is often because I have a lot of ideas rattling around in my head and if I don't express them, they'll be lost. OK, so that looks like mild Anendophasia. However, what if *because* I have so many ideas rattling around in my head I get used to expressing them so as not to lose them and thus do not get into the habit of internalizing self-talk, so there's less self-talk. That seems like a plausible mechanism. As such, there could be two very distinct routes to Anendophasia and reduced internal speech.
Do I understand the distinction though - which would then make adendophasia slightly different from aphantasia? In the latter there is an absence of that sense in the mind (mind blind) but while you start out with adendo being the speech equivalent I'm hearing a nuanced difference (and it does make a difference for me, bear with my personalisation). I am aphantasic (all senses) but my knee jerk was that I am definitely not adendophasic because I have a hyperactive internal dialogue (we can debate whether internal speech is "heard" or experienced separately). But listening further you posit that adendo is not so much the lack of internal dialogue but rather the lack of task specific dialogue (obv. simplified), and that one can have a chaotic internal dialogue that interferes with task management? This, for me, suggests that we would not read adendo- in the same way we read aphantasia (at least for ADHD) because its not the absence of, but rather than absence of ordered thinking/innerlogue? I'd also wonder whether a distinction could be made as to which presentation is more affected - or, as some speculate, that adult ADHD internalises hyperactivity anyway - in that Inattentives tends to exist more internally (daydreaming) and therefore may, in childhood, be missed because its not understood that their inner world is in fact interfering with their experience of the outer world? With hyperactives their external disruptions make it obvious that they are distracting themselves?
Help me here, is this covering delay or inner speech or speech in general. My granddaughter understands everything, was evaluated and not diagnosed autistic, yet her language skills are delayed. Words ...sounds were garbled. She learned some sign, and animals by are the sounds they make. She is 3 now but she has learned not to act out when others cannot understand her. I'm not sure what preschool will look like for her next school year.
I hope someone more knowledgeable/experienced can respond. But I have to say it sounds like your granddaughter needs further assessment. If it’s obvious she has delays, that should be specifically identifiable as a diagnosis, & it needs to be addressed. If, for whatever reason, your child runs into a wall, in terms of getting more help/testing to identify your grandchild’s problem and providing recommendations, I imagine there are developmental psychology departments at universities &/or appropriate departments around university medical schools that do testing & assessments. And likely they will have someone to talk to about financial assistance/reduced cost (for example, social workers at med school hospitals). I’m wishing you guys well in getting good help.
I've come across LOADS of ADHD people with borderline uncontrollable inner speech, but hardly ever anyone who speaks of a lack.
My own inner speech never shuts up. From the instant I open my eyes to when they fall shut. It's exhausting.
How would you know that their INNER speech is “uncontrollable”? Can you read people’s minds?
@@IntegrityMeansAll no people can communicate about that lol
@@IntegrityMeansAll Because they said that was the case?
And I have it myself.
I'm constantly talking in my own head, to the point that I cant quite it. But images are really hard for me.
My inner speech never shuts up, and when I started watching the video, I was surprised that deficient inner speech could be linked to ADHD. My brain never shuts up, and I've heard from other adhders that they have the same issue. But finishing this video I started understanding that neurotypicals can actually control their inner speech? Not that someone constantly babbles about random unrelated stuff inside their heads. I'm 40 and I still mumble to myself when I think hard, and when I have some intense conversation going on in my head, I gesture with my hands. So the deficiency of my inner speech is excessiveness and uncontrollability.
Personally, my inner speech doesn't stop unless it's to play yet another 15 second chunk of music. For what it's worth, Adderall is the only thing that's ever given me the ability to quiet that internal voice. Adderall is a bad fit for me in other ways, so I have to deal with this disjointed monologue that incessantly runs through my mind and distracts me. My comprehension skills are themselves quite strong, but my working memory issues and wandering mind seriously limit my ability to employ them. I also struggle greatly with narrative writing, but it's again due to disorganized thinking as opposed to a lack/deficiency (unless you're including deficiency in capacity for regulation) of inner speech.
My brain runs constantly too, but I have the idea that this is not the inner voice that Dr. Barkley is speaking of. Here’s what I’ve theorized; Barkley is welcome to debunk this if I’m off base.
Apparently, the subconscious is capable of processing 11 million bits of information a second, whereas the conscious can only do about 40 bits. This presumably means that the conscious mind can only grab and process a little of what’s going on under the hood at any given time. I’ve supposed that this is one of the things that is handled by executive functioning: retrieving relevant thoughts and memories in an ordered fashion, when needed.
I think it is pretty well established that one of the problems with ADHD executive functioning is that it filters poorly. What I have supposed this means is that way more noise from the subconscious overflows into the conscious, in a more random way. Arguably, some of the working memory problems could be buffer overruns; it’s not just that we cannot keep as many bits of data in our RAM, but also that we are receiving way more data than we can sort. Like constant overtorqued stream of consciousness. Sometimes this produces intuitive leaps and sometimes it just produces disordered thinking.
From my sense of my own self, I am guessing that the inner voice, which apparently provides self-direction, is something other than this noise. It’s like an instructor whose directions are being drowned out by the brain’s chatter. This lack of directions might contribute to impulsivity. Weak executive functioning may mean we don’t hear relevant data on why we should or shouldn’t do something.
This is a concept that events in my life of the last two weeks have put into my head. Maybe I’ve made a useful intuitive leap, or maybe I’m assembling a flawed concept from poorly filtered associative data.
@@jimwilliams3816
I'm probably crazy but I have suspected something similar. For reference, I got ADHD and Aphantasia, and I have a particular interest in meditation, introspection, and using neuroscience to try and understand what's going on under the hood.
It's entirely possible that I need to get out of my head more or that I'm delusional or just crazy.
Anyways.. I suspect that there's at least 4 different voices or sources in my head and noise on top of it.
The first one is my voice, initiated and controlled by me.
The second one sounds just like me but it lies to try and get what it wants, and for the longest time I thought it was my own thoughts, it was the one always seeking stimulation, telling me I should go smoke, or get a snack, go do pretty much anything that isn't productive or negative for my well-being.
The third one and fourth one are distinct, they sound like my internal monologue but they're faint and have different tones, one is calm and the other is more aggressive, not necessarily angry but more intense and combative.
They are pretty much always talking in the background to each other discussing things I learned recently, like they're working constantly to help me decode and understand information.
I get eureka moments throughout the day from them, you know that moment when something clicks and you finally understand a concept, and it creates a uniquely satisfying feeling.
I hypothesis that because I don't have any mental imagery, my brain instead attempts to understand information by verbally analyzing information through multiple angles and perspectives to compensate.
They also occasionally throw out suggestions when I'm talking to people, the intense voice makes me aware of danger and the calm one tries to make me think things through before drawing conclusions.
This stark difference makes me wonder if I'm picking up signals from both my left and right side of my brain and that I'm just hearing what I'm not supposed to because it's normally drowned out by a dull static and usually there's some sort of jingle on top of that.
When I take my stimulant, it clears up and everything is just so quiet that it actually was giving me anxiety the first few times. Pretty surreal.
Also, it's like they're speaking in a different language but I intuitively know what's being said, while my internal monologue is in English.
It's weird but not really something I noticed until I tried journaling, listening to my thoughts and trying to transcribe them on paper was a surprising amount of mental gymnastics, information abstractly bubbles up in blocks that have to be unscrambled and reworded.
Again, I'm probably just crazy though.
I somehow manage sometimes walking outside to get that to turn off by a kind of mindfulness meditation. It isn't reliable though as sometimes I just get lost in my thoughts instead of concentrating on my experience
For sure.
1. Over sharing
2. Cant stay quite around people, need constant external sound to avoid internal chatter
3. Can't read without having to reread every paragraph or sentence but high comprehension level
4. Way too much talking out loud back in elementary
5. Makes playing music difficult despite natural abilities and comprehension for it
6. The internal speech of 20 people talking all at once
7. Too much internal chatter in social situations makes me want to go home/ or just leave
8. Immense energy expended to keep a straight train of thought.
etc etc etc etc
For me this hits the nail on the head. Yet somehow I can learn things at an extremely fast pace but has to be done in my own way on my own time. I cant do nearly anything for more than short stints.
For me I live in hell with this.... many things have helped but at this point even knowing as much as I do... I cant control my adhd. When I think I am... I get reminded harshly that I aint. Trying to work with it now.
Thanks Doc!!!
🙁what you describe sounds rather typical for ADHD but I personally can’t really relate exactly to what he mentioned in this video 🤔 Examples would have been great because I’m lost with this video. Talking to themselves about a task? Like saying to yourself in your head “now I’ll type up this document, then I’ll check my emails, then I’ll make some calls and then I’ll go to the grocery store.” 🤔 I’m a little confused what he’s even referring to, this specific research sounds a little wishy washy/non-concrete in my opinion.
I would write daily adventure short stories as a child and expressed myself in diaries etc daily for hours. So I don’t know if I misunderstand what he’s referring to in this video but I can’t really relate…
Is high reading comprehension common with ADHD? I've got the same. Psych said after his evaluation if it were up to him he'd let me skip college because my reading comprehension was that of a graduate student as a 17yr old. Still took me 7yrs for undergrad lol
@@oysterchampion8998 You mean reading something that interests you or in general? I think it depends what it actually is? But generally I would say not necessarily (unless you’re very interested in that topic) due to the lack of focus meaning you might understand fast but since you can’t focus too long and get distracted easily it affects the reading comprehension?
It's interesting you used the word 'suffer'. I've never had much of an internal monologue and a few years ago was surprised to find out that most people have constant chatter going on inside their heads. I thought that would drive me crazy, so wouldn't consider the lack of inner speech a deficiency. I just think more in concepts than in words. But the link with difficulty with comprehension really hits home as I've always stuggled with that. I don't talk excessively though, but I do talk to myself out loud, and although I think I have ADHD I'm not yet diagnosed.
Sorry for a late reply, just wanted to say that it's nice to see someone else mention that they think in "concepts". Most people don't seem to understand what I mean when I say that. I wrote a comment on this video just a bit earlier on this. If you're interested, you can probably sort comments by most recent and easily find it.
I absolutely talk out loud to myself in order to think things through that I'm having trouble with, and I very often just talk out my thoughts without realizing it, because it makes my life easier to verbalize things. I've done this since I was a kid, too
I also have internal speech, but it just works better when I externalize it
I find it's easier to hold a train of thought when speaking out loud instead of internally.
@@Alex-js5lg I agree
Absolutely fascinating. I have very disorganized inner speech and I always blamed my working memory for not being able to ‘hold on’ to what I’m thinking about or change or manipulate what my mind is saying.
After listening to this I can see that I rarely have coherent thoughts all the way through, I get the spark of a thought and move to the next thing, or I repeat the same few things over and over again trying to work with them to no avail. Damn Dr. Barkley… I’m so glad I found this channel. This makes so much sense
My inner speech usually focuses on berating me for all my mistakes, and reliving all of my embarrassing moments. It especially loves doing this at 3am. Not any help at all at remembering my shopping list, my to-do list, or those very important verbal instructions I received to get from point A to point B.
I do remember my mother, as an adult, would verbally talk to herself a lot. I don't even think she realised she was doing it. It would drive me crazy.
I’m very familiar with the 3am issue. My psych tried me on a non-stim med that is sometimes used off-label for “night terrors,” and it seems to have been pretty effective. I can still think a lot in the middle of the night, but it’s generally not catastrophizing. Daytime has been harder to thwart.
I’ve been following the discussions on “busy inner voice,” and thinking that in my case at least, a lot of my thinking may not be inner voice per se. My RSD-reliving mistakes may be less an inner dialogue and more replaying memories and reacting with overstrong emotions. I will sometimes say something to myself about how hopeless I am, but mostly it feels...somatic? Alexithymia doesn’t help, I have trouble distinguishing emotions from sensations and thoughts.
Oh I relate so much!
I became a very good student when, in nursing school, the textbooks had huge margins and we had to buy the books, so I was allowed to write in those margins where I would summarize the reading, in succinct tiny pencil writing. That way I could pull it all together into a smaller package that used fewer words and which therefore was easier to grasp in one "piece" or "chunk."
Oh God. Is that what I'm doing when I'm reducing? and my big picture outlooks are an unintended benefit from a reduction/deficiency upstream?
Interesting. I got through my health science degree, especially the exams, by summarising each lecture in one A4 page using lots of highlighter diagrams. It's a technique my high school biology teacher used, and it stuck with me!
I have to keep doing that in conversations with others (breaking down complex info into smaller tidbits) and I feel strange for doing it. It's also become my (probably maladaptive) masking mechanism to pretend like I am really understanding things. I just try to sum up or paraphrase what the other person has said in the past couple of seconds. But if I don't have the full picture in my mind (which I rarely do), I end up having a dozen smaller puzzle pieces in my head afterwards.
It is amazing how many mechanisms persist into adulthood.
I was shocked when my daughter told me that she doesn't have an inner voice. We were talking and trying to find some solutions to help her remember things she needed to do and when I described what an inner voice was she couldn't relate. I had no idea there were those without this ability. Its both intriguing and worrisome for me, but explains a lot about some of the challenges she deals with. She's 14 now but we both discovered this quality about her a few years ago. It's difficult for other people, adults, teachers to understand. She was diagnosed with ADHD combined presentation and level 1 autism couple of years ago. She also excessively talks to herself and the comments about this were really interesting. I'm not finding much info on using this knowledge to help parents or educators and would be grateful if anyone has resources to point me to.
Thank you! Again an excellent video full of information. I have difficulty with my internal voice. It's not lacking but the perception is as being very weak or seems to be coming from very far away. It is not close to my internal "ears". For example, when I need to memorize a long string of numbers(Ex. Phone number), I can't do it without talking to myself loud so I can physically hear my voice trough the ears. This separate me from my other thoughts, isolates those numbers from the rest of the thought process. Anyways, I can store those numbers only a very short amount of time. And in this time, if anything is happening(Ex. someone talks to me) I will forget and I need to start again. It's a struggle.
I have hyperphantasia (the opposite of aphantasia) and anendophasia (now that I have learned what anendophasia is, thank you!). So my mind is only pictures, practically zero words. And yes, I have ADHD and also childhood trauma. No autism. My reading comprehension is excellent (I see the story in my head like a movie) but my verbally-guided behavior is terrible.
This is 100% me. I need to force myself to talk to myself so I know what the hell I'm doing or how I'm feeling. Otherwise, it's all pretty much just images and sounds. They are so powerful they used to drive me to tears for no reason. Concerta however has flattened this, but it also flattened negative emotion so it's a good deal to me. Wish you well
Thinking about myself and some of the other commenters here I have a few conclusions. People with ADHD often have plenty of Internal Speech but it's nature is flitty and distracted. It is also frequently ruminating and self-critical. Relying on this Internal Speech is unhelpful to completing tasks or keeping the consistent train of thought necessary to thinking through a complex problem. Therefor, we often vocalize our thoughts. Doing this grounds what would be a purely internal narrative to its production as a speech act with our mouth and a perception of the words though our ears. A similar effect can be made by writing our thoughts out and reading them back. The Internal speech is externalized but in the process becomes more like "normal" internal speech. "Normal" internal speech is still present but is rendered "other" or less real feeling by these processes. This explains why I feel somewhat exposed or anxious when I am prevented from vocalizing to myself for a long time. Schizophrenia seems related as a more extreme point on this axis where internal speech is totally othered. Their propensity to talk to themselves could be a very similar coping mechanism to our own.
This is absolutely me. I had almost no inner voice until i started on medication as an adult. It happened almost immediately, along with the other executive functions. It was almost scary at first. I had no idea humans were even supposed to do those things!
I just started (back) on concerta after a short time on stimulants a few years ago. Have you found that your stimulants have remained effective for inner voice related deficits over time?
I certainly relate to the concept of anendophasia as a person with ADHD and very likely CDS. It's not that I cannot think to myself in principle, but my thoughts are not verbal and not thought through linearly. I think my thoughts are rather non-linear chunks of concepts that happen all at the same time at different level of my conscious awareness, so to speak, and my brain kind of connects them all instantly on a subconscious level to form a more or less coherent idea. And I do very much agree that this is part of what impairs my executive function, because when I'm faced with a complex task that requires a sequential set of steps to be executed, my brain really does not give me the mental description/verbalisation of the linear steps the tasks entails, that is very much a very effortful and manual process for me to analyze that task at hand and figure out all the steps that it's comprised of and where it would be most appropriate to start with.
I also struggle with verbal recall and verbal processing, which impairs my social life too, because it makes it hard to talk to people.
Excellent information!
I have ADHD (actually just started on Strattera today) and complete aphantasia as well as anendophasia (which I just learned the term for from your video).
I also have severe dissociation due to a trauma disorder.
As a result, this brain is always a silent black void absent any imagined sensory experience. Can't visualize anything, music doesn't get stuck in my head, can't imagine how anything feels or smells or tastes. No internal speech at all; thoughts are constantly verbalized. Cannot relive any memories except as the occasional somatic flashback.
Except when dreaming.
Dreams are astonishingly vivid, realer than waking life. Every sense can be felt and experienced... until I wake up and lose all connection to those sensory experiences.
My theory is that whatever is happening with my inability to visualize, imagine senses, or relive memories, it feels like every neural mechanism that works to create imagined sensory experiences is actually happening, but the output gets blocked. Like a home theater setup, but you forgot to plug the final cable into the tv.
Interestingly, I do not struggle with rhyming (in fact, I'm a musician who is pretty good at rhyme, rhythm and syncopation, songs are on my YT channel).
Fascinating existence, I have to say. I often wonder if the extremely traumatic car crash we were in just shy of 2 years old has any connection to the aphantasia and anendophasia.
Apart from the reading comprehension and rhyming elements this is something I’ve been aware of my entire life. As soon as an idea pops into my head (in response to something someone says or I see) it has to be uttered aloud or it vanishes forever (or until triggered by another external force later). There’s no room for thinking in sentences.
When I learned in Ψ about Vygotsky’s theory I joked that maybe I never internalised my private speech, but ever since then have realised it’s largely true. Even while listening to this video, alone, I had to bite my lips to stop me commenting out loud and the strain was so great my neck muscles now hurt.
My mother said I was speaking in sentences at 2 years old (she is a retired SaLT, and my large vocabulary and love of word play is thanks to her).
Unfortunately I also have TMJD so talking too much can prove painful in more than just the shame/embarrassment of oversharing or blurting out tactless truths.
At 62 it would be good to get a dx and see if medication could change things for the better. Feels like I’m running out of time to get a handle on life.
Thank you, Dr B, for educating and enlightening us x
Dr. Barkley,
I wanted to express my gratitude for your informative video. At 29, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and now at 31, I've encountered lifelong struggles similar to those discussed in your video. Specifically, my word retrieval is exceptionally poor, I struggle with pronouncing common words, and I lack an internal voice beyond a monologue that tends to be repetitive and surface-level. I've previously attributed my lack of an internal voice to poor working memory stemming from my Adhd. And I've noticed that reading fiction books helps strengthen my internal voice, albeit temporarily, usually after extended reading sessions. However, if I go a few days without reading, my internal voice almost completely disappears again.
Thank you again for sharing valuable insights.
What exactly do you mean by “internal voice”? Like thinking about your life or reflecting or planning or what is “internal voice” exactly referring to?
Thank you for putting it so well. I completely identify with this.
The way you write seems eloquent. Are your writing skills much better than your verbal skills during a conversation and if so, why do you think that is?
@@IntegrityMeansAll No, I just plug my idea into AI on the backend to clean up the sentence structure lol.
This is fascinating! Can you delve a little deeper into what this would look/sound like in a person? I work with ADHD/ODD students, as well as having ADHD, myself. I see others commenting on a running internal monologue and I have one too. Is it that this internal monologue is separate and distinct from internal speech needed to complete tasks? I can really see how lack of control of this internal monologue interferes with a more controlled internal speech. Or is it more like a lack of internal voice? That is rarely what I experience or see with ADHD.
Wow. This one really hit me hard. Yes, not entirely absent, but deficient. I know I talk to myself, and I know I talk to others (a LOT) to process my thoughts. I have been off ADHD meds lately, and I’ve been noticing that I’ll stare at work on my computer screen, stuck, and the only way I’ll figure out what to try is to make a suggestion to myself out loud. There is also my inability to filter my replies to people, and on occasion when I know I need to hold my tongue on something (that I figured out in advance, not in real time), I have told myself “don’t say that” over and over -in my head, but it’s a lot of work, and it feels like speaking.
But most of all: there have been some unfortunate places in my life where someone has said something of importance to me, and I’ve had absolutely no response. Out loud or in my head. I just go blank. I am prone to fight/flight/freeze, and I have tried to view this as overwhelm/freeze, but it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like a null response. I think this might explain what that is.
Omg I just left comment about that! My brain go blank too and it doesn’t feel like overwhelming situation. I mean I do get overwhelmed and freeze, but sometimes it’s just simple question about myself and it’s blank! Feel so stupid ..I have to try analysi my past to find answer but knowing someone waits for answer now I m unable to focus find that answer. Do you feel the same?
Dear Dr. Barkley,
Thank you for this video. Fascinating how new the concepts of aphantasia and anendophasia are given how basic and well-documented both phenomena are.
To share some personal experiences: I have both aphantasia and anendophasia and my own theory has been that many of my ADHD-related difficulties were being mediated by them. Given the anecdotal evidence in the comments to your videos about these phenomena, I find it fascinating that that conclusion seemed to be hasty and my case might be more uncommon than I thought. (For example, I assumed the often-shared idea of 'like zapping through channels while someone else holds the remote' was just a metaphor...) Would be nice to learn more about whether these three conditions are correlated somehow.
In line with some of your lectures, I assumed the problem with ADHD is a lack of a clear image of my goals. For example you said something like 'the mind's eye and mind's voice are usually developed later, and what they have is quite weak.' Others here seem to report that distraction through inner images seems to be a bigger problem. Intuitively, this once again taps into the two-factor structure of ADHD (inhibition vs. EF, mediating the neuronatomy to the symptoms of hyperactivity, inattention, and emotional disregulation). Does this mean that both the development of mind's voice/eye, the control thereof for self-directed actions (EF) as well as more complex interactions (e.g., with inhibition) might be related to the problems with ADHD?
I realized that I always talk to myself instead of using my inner speech, like I have an inner monologue but 99% of the time I just talk out my thoughts out loud.
I also often do that without medication, but this is because it is helping me staying focused. It is so much harder to control my thoughts without other stimuli to strengthen the control.
I have combined type ADHD, adult diagnosed. I was shocked a few years ago to learn from social media that most people have a constantly running clear flow of words in their head. My mind is a dreamy mix of images, snippets of songs and tv show/video game dialogue, and random words here and there, appearing in a floaty dreamlike manner.
I always laughed at the ridiculous premise of mindreading in movies where someone could literally hear another person's private thoughts as though they were speaking out loud. My objection was: thoughts aren't words, they're just a jumble of pictures and feelings and how would one person ever decipher someone else's? I was so shook when I found out some people do think like that. Not myself, that's for sure.
I tend to whisper audibly whenever I write/type. And the process is slow and feels like I'm doing a translation from the dreaminess of thoughts to the selection of accurate words. I do enjoy writing and find it like a fun puzzle, turning what isn't a word into what is. Figuring out how the best words can both give clarity and impose limitations... sometimes impoverishing the thoughts themselves when words don't fit
This is such a good description for my experience as well!!
I often talk to myself out loud. To quote Gandalf: “I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to…”
Seriously though, to me it’s just inner speech that hasn’t been suppressed. My mom loves to say that I didn’t have an unvoiced thought until I learned to read. My internal voice never stops going and my external voice is simply the physicalization of my internal voice.
That dualistic distinction that is posited between inner and outer speech just sounds like a semantic distinction that doesn’t really hold any meeting, other than it not suppressed.
Reading the comments, it sounds like there are many people with ADHD like me with constant internal speech and others with little internal speech. Fascinating!
Thanks. Only recently I discovered others really do have “inner speech”…then with a recent trial of SR Guanfacine, I experienced rudimentary “inner speech” for the first time at age 68! And found I didn’t have to actually talk the thoughts I ordinarily would speak aloud.
I am 37 and recently diagnosed with ADHD still talk to myself out loud. Even in group settings people have seen me moving my lips when thinking hard about something. So many things have been illuminated about my past/present with this diagnosis. Thank you for your continued content.
AuDHD here, with plenty of layers of weakish chatter/ songs/ loops/sounds/verbalized details and associations going on in my mind as well as some stronger more linear verbal thoughts. For good retention or self-direction it does help me to say the thought out loud or write it. I have hyperphantasia and exceptional drawing skills, and am quite good at rhyming, reading and writing, but have poor word retrieval sometimes: especially the nouns can be slippery to recall. When I read I hear the words, imagine the scene or picture it graphically and there is often a second layer of verbal thought going on underneath, reacting to what I am reading and connecting it to other thoughts and questions, all of which together can either be excellent for deep reading comprehension and retention, or it can become too distracting and I may have to go back and try again. When I write something more complex it can sometimes be very nonlinear with lots of going back and adding or rephrasing. Often I find it hard to speak in a straight line, as well. I experience it as a second layer of verbal thought under my speech, correcting myself or adding details, and sometimes throwing me off track. Being nearly bilingual and having to live much of my daily life in the weaker of my two languages makes things even more complicated.
Yes, definitely. I work as a therapist and I have noticed that some people (many, as a matter of fact) have difficulties in writing a diary, which might be connected with anendophasia. They dont have their own inner voice and therefore, dont know what to write...
Dr. Barkley. You are very clear and your information exactly matches my perception of how ADHD works. My view on the issue of inner speech has more to do with learning; it would not be a comorbidity, just another symptom of ADHD. I am a person who has always been concerned with understanding how my mind works and seeking solutions by comparing results. Visually imagining that I am talking to another person about a problem I am experiencing helps me to elaborate and seek solutions more clearly. Because it takes away the urgency, and then gives me time to organize my thoughts and reflect. So the urgency comes from the issue of not getting answers to the questions we need to make a decision (not knowing what to do, but knowing that we have to make a decision). In other words, it would be an executive behavior that we do not have, so we force ourselves to make a decision, which may seem impulsive.
But the fear of not taking a necessary measure and also not immediately thinking about the repercussions is what forces us to choose an option without having reflected. Although I always try to reflect on what is happening, I do not get internal answers. The feeling is like I have an impulse to stop the action of thinking.
Dear Dr. Barkley, I hope I have been clear, but if I have, I am available to answer any questions you may have. Best regards!
Answer is probably different for inattentive vs hyperactive. Inattentive is like internal mental hyperactivity, which seems difficult to imagine without copious internal speech.
I've yet to be diagnosed, but initial screening was overwhelmingly positive and I'm in queue to get full testing done. I have anendophasia. I of course think and there's an excessive amount of thoughts, but it's not words and definitely not voices or sounds. My imagination completely silent. Even when I imagine speech, it's like I'll imagine visuals of someone talking, but there's no sound. The "words" are simply abstract concepts or more visuals.
I do still have an inner critic - that's extremely harsh - but it's not words, rather abstract concepts or ideas and visuals. It's almost like the "speech" is beyond my perception, like it's happening under the surface of my consciousness, all I'm getting is the message, the understanding. So when my inner critic says: "I'm a loser", "I'm lazy", "I'm a failure", it's not those words, but rather the idea of what those words mean, if that makes sense? This has also made it quite difficult to confront the inner critic as there's no dialogue or persona to confront, it's like there's a straight mental link from that part of me into my conscious mind. It's quite difficult to differentiate my thoughts from myself.
If someone reading this has this problem, I recommend having "dialogue" with your inner parts in writing. I can translate those thoughts into words just fine, but it takes some effort. And with my low capacity for remembering those thoughts, it's been incredibly helpful to write down the thoughts in the form a dialogue because that then allows me to follow along and actually form a concrete idea of where those thoughts are going and what bigger picture they're trying to convey. Jung's 'Active Imagination' technique has been very helpful in this.
Yes 100%
I never thought I had adhd then I tried medication one time. Two things happened, my anxiety/reactivity to stimuli went way down, and suddenly I could think things through in my head. I could stop a sentence midway in my head, and reformulate it, choose the right word.
Growing up I was told "think before you speak" and my response (much later, because due to my anxiety I can't put things together on the spot) - was "but how?"
The reason I'm always butting in, saying irrelevant stuff, is because I can only process it out loud. And by "process", I mean think it through, think through the actual words, and make cogent sense of it.
Unfortunately, I still do not have an adhd diagnosis or medication, due to lack of access. Which sucks mightily. I will keep trying though!
Thanks Dr Barkley for explaining this, you're a legend! Keep it up 😊
Fantastic presentation. This explains many of the academic struggles that my daughter and I have experienced.
After a lifetime of constant (and often multiple channels of) speech / thoughts I think I'd love to have anendophasia, at least for a week or two so I could have a break from myself!🤣
As mentioned by many others in the comments so far, I have too much internal speech. The struggle is not a lack of inner speech, but that it says too many things about too many things to the point of being overwhelming, and that is what leads to all the problems you stated. I speak my thoughts out loud because that is how I can hold on to the thought that I need to stay focused on in the moment. Also, perhaps I am unique on this regard, but I have many vivid memories of strong self-speak in childhood; some relating to important or emotional situations, but also some from things that seem trivial.
I struggle to recall my childhood and upto 18 years etc. Even past 15 years is blurryish 😢I hate this. I remember some stuff, but very short and not vivid at all
Fascinating! I remember the exact moment when I started to have an inner dialogue, I totally fall under the category of delayed inner speech develpoment. My mental chatter started when I was 13 yrs. Since then I became an anxious person. These days I am much calmer since I implemented mindfulness mediatations into my daily practice. I am diagnosed with adhd.
That's interesting. If you don't mind me asking- Did you start taking ADHD medication at the time your inner voice started? Others here have commented that sometimes inner visualization &/or voice has come about/coincided with the use of prescriptions.
@@leogrrrl5876 That's weird, when I tried ADHD medication my inner voice got much calmer and more quiet.
And also, nope, I got medication way later in my 30's.
If it is must've been misdiagnosed because my inner speech cannot shut up for one second (in all seriousness, I would never describe mine as "weak", but unquestionably erratic, directionless, and uncontrollable)
I also speak out loud to myself very often. Externalizing my thoughts is like an instinctive itch that I need to scratch.
If the matter is about not thinking in words at all (the famous inner speech) this sounds almost directly counter to what every ADHD person I've ever met reports (but my pool is way, way smaller than yours, of course)
Meds DID make reading massively easier for me though. The words on the page sound way clearer in my mind, with less noise and fewer other words "pulling" on them.
"Externalizing my thoughts is like an instinctive itch that I need to scratch." - This is such a great way of putting it. I had no idea so many ADHD people felt the same way I do or that self-talk was so common for us.
- yeah, I think I get you.
Tell me - before you were prescribed meds, would talking out loud help you focus a little bit more on what you wanted to be thinking about? Like, would it help your thoughts be a little more controlled, more directed?
@@sfstucco it probably did, but I very rarely did it intentionally *just* for that, it more or less happened organically regardless of the content
It was at the reading comprention part that I agreed I must have this too.
Anendophasia seems more likely to occur along with hyperphantasia. Hyperlexia seems more likely to occur along with aphantasia.
Thank you for your videos. I definitely recall having delayed internal speech and going through the progress toward internal speech at a much later time as mentioned in the video, but if I’m like a number of other adhd people here and I believe that I am as a bunch as saying the same thing is that now their internal speech is _over_ active and doesn’t stop and in fact is speaking so fast internally and it is nonstop that there’s some sort of inhibition that never got turned on and therefore over takes all other sensory processes within the moments of trying to listen externally. . Ie. If I look at someone, I can’t hear them, if I don’t look at them then I can listen and understand them better, if I use a fidget ring on my left finger with my left thumb, it engages the right hemisphere which then inhibits the left hemisphere and therefore quiets and inhibits the language production areas so I can then quiet the internal speech and then be able to focus on the external conversation. Whereas if I put the ring in my right first finger and spin it with my right thumb, it doesn’t stop the internal speech at all and if anything activates it more. We need to be looking at the inhibitory connection between the parietal lobes and frontal lobes, ipsilateral as well as contralateral connections. And in addition, we need to be looking more at the involvement of the insula with not only language processing but also emotional regulation with fear, anger and sadness, which also plays a huge part in adhd. There are a few dozen mri and DTI studies that can be done on these topics. Again, thank you for your insightful videos.
Wow, I have both aphantsia and anendophasia
Thank you for your efforts.
So interesting. I can imagine voices if i try, but i usually just don't. I only realized other people have a different experience when once on THC i suddenly had a inner monologue. It felt insane and distracting to me but when I told other people they said it was their normal.
I have ADHD and work with parents who have kids with ADHD. YES!!! This is accurate! For me, I have a LOT of internal speech and mental movies (I think, although ADHD being a disorder of self evaluation, I could be a fish that doesn't know it's wet!), but my internal speech and movies are disorganized and not the most efficient at times. It feels like I cannot prioritize internally in the way some others do. Its like there is TOO much internal speech and movies, and my brain can't sift through it. It's like I will get organized in my brain and think it's all there, and then BOOM! I missed a detail (didn't think about it)--- gas in the car, appointment fell through the cracks, etc. I have noticed this with children as well as my own son with ADHD.
I remember being 10 or 11 and getting told off by my parents for talking to myself out loud as different characters in public. It was assumed that I was just a bored only child who didn't realise that it wasn't okay to do that anymore, but I remember knowing it was viewed as socially unacceptable and being unable to stop myself anyway.
It took me three times to pass my driving test. The time I finally passed, I had gotten ""permission"" from my instructor a lesson or two before that it to say the steps of more complicated manoeuvres (e.g. parallel parking) out loud during my test, and was told that it could even be beneficial because it let the examiner know I was aware of, and performing, all the required safety checks. The simple act of vocalising the instructions that I knew extremely well, but was unable to direct myself to follow, made it such that I went from almost immediately failing at the initial obstacle circuit of the test to getting a perfect score.
This is very interesting! I actually dont know if I have an inner speech. I have something, but for me thats more like my anxiety to keep myself accountability. Its a noise of reminders, and negative selftalk. But I speak alot to myself aswel. I remember from when I was younger I struggled to write a diary, and still do... And it so much nire easy for me to speak and get the information in out in that way! 🤷♀️
Some people spend decades meditating to try to quiet their inner voice. It's seen as an overactive part of the mind and switching it off, even momentarily, is considered a rare achievement. Athletes perform at their peak when in a flow state and not thinking. Thinking here inhibits optimal functioning. Is a lack of thinking a 'deficiency' or optimal functioning? Are there actually different ways to 'lack' internal speech.
Not thinking in speech =\= not thinking. I think primarily in images and sensations, but my thinking doesn’t stop. Just because I’m not reciting actual words in my head doesn’t mean I’m not replaying the same 5 seconds of a catchy song on repeat or vividly reliving embarrassing memories.
@@Ferrant621 now I’m even more confused. I wish he or someone gave examples to what exactly he is referring to in this video because I don’t really understand what he means exactly
@Ferrant621 wow, you articulated this perfectly. I, for sure, think in "sensations" but never knew how to make sense of it, I just knew my thinking did not involve words. It's frustrating because this way of thinking negatively affects my ability to provide concise, clinical responses in professional settings. The information that I output always has an overly emotional tone no matter how much I try to tame my sensation-bases thought process and transmute my thoughts to words instead.
@@IntegrityMeansAll that could, possibly, mean that you don't experience this inner voice. It doesn't mean you don't THINK. Part of why researchers are interested in anendophasia is that intelligent and competent people report not experiencing this. I can't, personally, imagine what it would be like to think without an inner voice, but I think I can understand what @Ferrant621 means. Imagery is not the same as speech. Some people rely more on a "picture" of what is happening/will happen/has happened/should happen.
I don't like the term "deficit" or "deficient" to describe weak or absent "inner voice": I prefer to think of this as an alternative or variant of human cognition.
@@kathrynturnbull990 that was very kind of you that you mentioned intelligent people don’t experience this inner voice according to research 🙂 I wouldn’t know whether or not that’s true or why..? Can you give an example for “inner speech”?
The way I grew up wasn’t ideal at all, I was basically left alone all day as a little child and even when my so called parents got home from work they either left again going out or had people over so noone truly communicated with me growing up besides classmates / my friends but that’s why I wondered if this could be related to speech development etc meaning I did not learn how to articulate yourself well until I read more and went to college etc. Then I started to love communicating in different languages and also writing a lot but until I was a little older I just never learned how to describe certain things or just how much you can express yourself and your feelings with words because noone cared growing up. So I wonder how that plays a role as far as speech development, but in school etc I was always good expressing myself on paper (right now I’m very tired so I apologize) but as far as the inner speech can you give examples possibly?
Let’s say someone has an important date - hearing does inner speech mean people go over what they’re going to say in their head (or quietly talk to themselves)?
I may write a few notes last minutes but I’m not sure if I understand “inner speech” correctly?
I also used to ruminate a lot until a few years ago going over things someone said but mostly what someone wrote and what I responded but that was mostly written words..
I’m really trying to understand so I’d truly appreciate examples, if you don’t mind..
Other than that I don’t really care how random people perceive what I may say (which could be bad and good depending on who it is and what was said etc) so I rarely ever plan anything I say (only for really important situations maybe but then mostly via a written note)
But maybe once I know some examples, it will click what people mean with “inner voice”
Thank you very much for helping me understand 🙏🙂
I remember getting medicated for the first time as a teenager and being pretty startled by hearing my inner voice for the first time. I honestly felt a little crazy. Even though I sort of assumed this was the natural state for most of my peers. Fast forward to today Even on medicine these days I feel it’s still a pretty weak or quiet inner voice, but unmedicated it doesn’t exist.
I don’t lack inner speech completely but my wife often asks me what I’m thinking about and my response is often… “I’m not even thinking at all.”
It’s almost like my brain goes into this meditative / resting mode. It happens often when I’m mentally or physically tired, sad, or overstimulated. Also seems to happen after extended bouts of hyperfocus. My brain is either 100% on like ALL SYSTEMS GO … or it’s barely running at all in a subconscious auto pilot mode running on fumes. Seems to be very black and white for me.
I have lots of internal speech, but I also struggle with internal speech. I think what happens is that if I’m with other people and interacting with them, there something that happens with the stimulus of interaction with other people that makes my verbal impulse control weaker because I’m distracted by the interaction and I am not focusing hard enough on what things are appropriate to say out loud and what is not. It also happens if I am focusing on other tasks and I end up speaking to myself out loud instead.
Thank you very much Dr Barkley for always sharing your insights and knowledge filled videos !! Educational and professional excellence !! It helps very much and I hope it does to everyone I forward it to !! Also love the humor you add sometimes 😊😊😊
Greetings from California … I wish you and folks and all good health , success and happiness !! Much Love ✌️😎💕
I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid but I'm pretty sure I have CDS in addition to ADHD. I usually have full blown conversations in my head. Often I explain stuff to some fictional listener and answer questions I imagine they would ask. I also don't feel like my actual thoughts are verbal. They are those abstract things, that are hard to put into words. And maybe the explaining is me trying to do exactly that. But then again I sometimes really get stuck in loops.
Sometimes I start thinking a sentence, but in the middle of it I understand the idea it is conveying on a conceptual level and don't even bother finishing it verbally.
And then there are random bits of music sprinkled in here and there.
It's extremely hard to stop my brain from doing this. Unless of course my mind blanks. Which happens mostly when I stare into the void. But also sometimes when I try to start a task or make a decision. In those instances it can feel like my brain freezes and refuses to do anything.
ps: It felt pretty good to get that out of my head, maybe I actually should get into journalling 🤔
well...hit the nail on the head for me. jesus.
ive no inner speech unless i try hard to conjure one up. though, when i do try inner speech, it stutters like crazy and i give up.
however, for my fellow non inner speechers, I suggest trying out asl/sign language; even if you can hear just fine.
i would bet that if you havent any inner speech, communicating without words will come very, very easy/effortlessly.
sign language is 100% visual & if you keep at it & learn how to sign, youll be surprised that for all the lack of inner speech we experience, our constant visual memory that we use fits quite well with sign language.
i haphazardly stumbled upon this fact having to communicate with deaf colleagues & coworkers.
i worked with a guy who was deaf & he taught me how to sign; daily. even he was surprised at how fast i could absorb non verbal communication, but hell... my mind is just impulses and visual memory; recalling the language was very easy.
i know not everyone is the same, but if anyone who has a quiet mind is reading this, give it a go - a deaf person may thank you later
My daughter tells, that she doesn´t think verbally. Every time she has to talk to somebody, she has to translate her nonverbal thoughts to words. She can manage conversations, but writing is really challenge. She is 25 already, but I still help her to write to her doctor etc. She was 20-21, when diagnosed ADHD and autism.
wow! i didn't know this had a name. difficult to explain to people how most of my thoughts don't include words
My mind constantly goes on and on, either using inner speech or images or just associations of ideas. Mind wandering, most of the time. I have problems with sustained reading, mostly because my mind constantly wanders off and also every sound or visual cue distracts me. And every idea I read needs to be mulled over. My comprehension is usually good or even better, I can usually contribute and explain a lot to others about what I actually know and read, and whenever the occasion arises, I get told that they find it useful or even impressive. But it is hard for me to consistently guide myself, sustain and progress. Narrative writing is difficult because, again, my mind wanders off or keeps mulling over things or gets distracted. Staying on topic is also difficult, and remembering my outline, or even committing to an outline.
My problems are definitely in the area of sustained guidance and control, and also working memory. Less or not at all in deficient internal speech or imagination. Although, there was a time way back in school when I had difficulties imagining the normal vector for a surface. But after a while, I could clearly and easily imagine and work with it in my mind.
I am still undiagnosed (it takes years and years here), but probably have ADHD, CDS, ADS, and a few assorted others.
It me!
Oops, didn’t get to the part where you asked for feedback. I’d say it causes a fair amount of struggle. Parents, teachers, and bosses were frequently upset with me for not understanding or remembering instructions. I have a hard time writing notes to myself for later because I can’t adequately get my own point across; which admittedly sounds silly, but I’ll often read a note at the intended time and wonder what the hell I was trying to communicate. Executing a plan is difficult when I can’t formulate and organize one in the first place; this is less of an issue with things I’ve done before and can visualize, but doing anything new and relying solely on verbal instructions is very difficult.
But wouldn’t that be more of a memory issue?
I wholeheartedly relate. And, regarding it possibly being a memory problem - ya can't remember what you can't formulate first. That's the thing. I struggle badly with this.
@@IntegrityMeansAll it would likely be related to memory, yes, but there are different types of memory too (e.g., memory for single words, memory for stories, memory for tasks that you perform physically with your body, memory of shapes, navigational memory, etc). Many internal processes are related in the brain. Researchers and scientists use words to try to define what they see on the outside, as well as what we experience internally, so that they can study it better and learn more about it. But we don't have "memory" or "inner speech" like we have a "nose". We can see a human nose, point to it, describe it, draw it. There's little room for disagreement about what the nose is among humans: all we have to decide is the word we are going to use for it. These brain processes are not so clear because they are not a discreet physical thing.
@@kathrynturnbull990 Thank for your detailed message, I truly appreciate it. I never thought about this is in such detail. So according to that theory would it be correct to assume that neuro-typical people without any damage etc to the brain can recall all (significant) experiences once someone reminds them of it?
Let’s say an old friend would ask you if you remember the time you stayed with her for a couple days 10 or 20years ago or even more fleeting memories?
I just give this as an example because people mention experiences to me that I don’t remember especially the longer time has passed. The same with task related memory
I mostly only remember the same exact specific moments in regards to a person even if I was with them for years. It’s not even because those particular moments or events were special but that’s just the only ones I recall from a time period of many years. Maybe if they mentioned and described it in detail I might remember something else but not sure. It’s very little I remember but I do remember bad moments & some good ones but it seems so far away like different life times.
On the other hand I’m good with reading people and their micro expressions. I also wonder if Adhd medication changes memory for better or for worse …
Personally, I have no internal voice.
I have to speak out loud in order to think fluidly, this doesn't mean I'm incapable of thinking in my head, I simply cannot hear audio.
This comes with, as I understand, some odd side effects.
My dreams are completely silent, I can remember sounds but mostly using rhythm.
Thinking in words is similar to using a perfect set of sound proofing headphones.
Even without audible input, your still conscious of what your saying.
Another thought provoking video. At the start of the video, using anecdotal experience, I very much thought the conclusion was going to be different. My own internal speech seems to be very much present and those of others with ADHD that I’ve talked to about their anxieties (I’m a clinical psychologist), frequently are able to discuss internal thoughts.
I had always conceptualized the increased use of self-talk for ADHD population as a function of increasing arousal and engaging greater processing elements. I could see how it could interfere and delay development of internalized speech, perhaps even completely eliminate the development all together based on other cognitive factors. I can also see how elements in your summary are accurate with myself. I recall as a child into middle school my father criticizing big me for reading out loud (I come from a family of avid readers), challenges today today with rhyming and using pronunciation guides, and a general preference to read information vice hearing. In fact I generally work through my patients concerns in a greater depth while I’m writing my notes. Even so, I still believe that I do have a good bit of internal talk, in fact as I write I tend to be actively writing what I’m dictating to myself internally.
I found both this video and last week's videos incredibly interesting, because they both fit me perfectly.
And now for an apology... The following is a result of my always quiet mind. I am very interested to see if others have the same inner experience as I do. I believe it must be exceedingly rare.
I have never put any of this to paper (screen?) before, so it's a bit jumbled. Feel free to TLDR and go on to the next post...
The subject regularly comes up in conversation with friends and relatives who can't understand how I can have absolutely no internal dialogue... Well, I CAN have it, if I force myself to think over a past conversation with someone, or if planning a conversation in the future... However, I never talk to myself. Instead I think in concepts, ideas, methods and principles. Movement, change, transactions, etc... It's at once both ambiguous and concrete. Personally, I find that it must be so much more uninhibited, full of possibilities and opportunities and understanding free from preconceptions. Even playing with my thoughts is a wonderful passtime for me... But then again, I've never experienced the opposite.
My mind is never bored, and it's exceedingly good at coming up with out-of-the-box solutions for complex problems with many variables. My ADHD is, for the most part, not a deficiency, but a superpower enabling to do things that my peers (and colleagues) could only dream of....... Well, I guess they don't forget the items and the order of their morning routine or the names of their friends of 30 years... I do... Every day🤦♂️ Sticker-reminders and labels are my friends there... At least for brushing my teeth 🤷♂️
A few years ago I also realised that I cannot visualise/audiate anything complex. I never have and I don't think I ever will. My wife has tried guiding me through the "leaves on a stream" meditation exercise as she feels it helps calm her always over-active mind. I can never visualise more than just the tree, or just the stream, or the leaf, or just the ground I'm sitting on, never more than one element at a time, and only faintly. I can't even solidly imagine the faces of my friends or family, though I know very well what they look like. My wife, she holds the entire experience clear in mind and it allows her silence....... Something I have in abundance! 😂
On the contrary, for me, even the little virtualisation I manage to do during that exercise encourages my otherwise verbally quiet mind to think new thoughts, ones of family far away or experiences long past...
Still, I can't visualise anything, but it doesn't stop me from pondering solutions to problems. I LOVE complex puzzles! Not jigsaw puzzles. I find those exceedingly boring. But I'm a speedcuber (Rubik's cubes up to 7x7) and though I can't "visualise" the cube and it's pieces, I FEEL the cube.
My lack of visualisation/audiation is quite paradoxical to me. I feel as though it should make me less able to analyse and parse visual stimuli, but in fact I am often much more adept at it than other people. My wife is a graphic designer and deals with colours and shades all day every day. Her lines are straight and angles good... But I can ALWAYS see when something is off. I'll let her know and she'll tell me "no". But when I tell her to double-check, I am right! Multiple times we've asked a group of people to arrange an assortment of similar colour hues (www.arealme.com/color-hue-test/en/) and I'm generally finished first and always 100% - I know it's to do with the capabilities of the eyes, but still...
I'm also the annoying person that can tell the difference between 59hz and 60hz on a video monitor. If someone else is in the kitchen but not paying attention, I'm the person who says "something's boiling over now..." a few seconds before the "tssch" from the spilling from the spilling pot.
I once volunteered to assist in the Audio/Video department at a convention. There turned out to be feedback issues. One speaker caused extra feedback, so the experienced audiotech frantically fiddled with the Graphic EQ, trying to adjust for the noise. I was on mixer, just watched him work and listening to the changing sound. Then I asked him to lower one slider (825Mhz) - He cut it by half and the feedback was gone.
I continually find niches where my ever active, ever pattern-seeking mind has an edge... And it's all by feel. I don't necessarily think with any structure or aggressively/systematically attack a problem. The solution most often shows itself, by itself, during the process of my learning the concepts of what I'm involved in.
I feel my way through everything.
I find that, despite the thoughts presented last week, I am very good at imagining the feelings of others. I am (for good or bad) exceptionally proficient in putting myself in the shoes of others and feeling their joy, excitement, fear or pain. Which means I'm a mess at funerals... But, contrarily, I can also decide to shut myself up completely, like a psychopath, feeling no compassion at all... It's scary sometimes, if I allow my mind to travel there, I can "become" a murderer in my mind, not even feeling remorse over an absolutely horrific deed.
So, despite not being able to visualise an image, still or moving, I can easily imagine things on a conceptual or emotional level... Just not visually/auditory.
I'm a heartless cynic valuing truth and absoluteness extremely highly. I read peer-reviewed journals for fun. I'm deeply interested in the universe and in life, both its building blocks and its design. I greedily take in knowledge about quantum mechanics and other theoretical and experimental physics. I love astronomy and biology. What I've found has thought me that nothing comes from nothing, and that, even though many bawk at the idea of a creator, I find such a one hard to dismiss...
I'm always the first to call "bullshit" (sometimes rudely, sorry) when someone raises a sensational piece of news that they read (eg. a colleague once stated that fake plastic rice was sold in some places - rubbish...) or when someone gives silly health advice ("you should drink magnesium powder dissolved in water, it'll solve all your issues" or "fruits of [any tree of the the Annonaceae family of plants] can cure cancer because of Annonacin"). I feel the sum of the variables of what I know, giving my answer. Then, resolving the reason in my mind after the fact.
After pondering long and hard, considering my own thought pattern over many months, I feel that my neuro divergent execution of conscious thought allows my unconscious mind to more easily contribute directly to the non-verbal dialogue going on in my head...
I think. I feel. I do.
ADHD can be a super power. I would never ever want to be without it... Although it would be nice to be able to manage the less desirable consequences better...
Have others found these same properties apply to their minds? I'm keen to know how you have been able to further exploit those abilities 🙂
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I think we need to hear more examples from people like you who can demonstrate that this lack of "inner voice" is not a "deficit"...or, not necessarily. Thought processes are so difficult to measure: much easier to see and quantify what people can DO based on the abilities of their brains. For myself, I certainly have an inner voice, but I study this stuff and I think it's important to understand all the variations of thought and cognition!
Ni+Fi
I can say I have anendophasia, words flee from my mind, I wonder if what I say is appropriate, who the person I'm talking to is, is she smart enough to understand me or not? if they get upset or not? how this problem is solved, will the judge me? maybe I'm overwhelmed with thoughts! I have to accept I can't change the world and i am relieved! this world makes us sticky!
So it’s the opposite of what he described?
not exactly, I just said the reason why I am like that! and the texture of anxiety I experience, being overwhelmed by rootless thoughts and emotions causes such disorder
@@nedahashemian3973 I understand the reasons but it would still result in the opposite in a way?
I really would like to see how they came to these particular conclusions and the actual analysis and variables etc.
I conducted empiric studies and developed all these measuring metrics etc (long time ago) but ever since then realized a lot of so called scientific studies/finding lack validity or reliability due to how they’re conducted. And to just claim people with ADHD can’t visualize things or have no inner voice without even any suggestions or treatment
/therapy approaches included that target those problems are not very productive in my opinion. That’s like publishing studies claiming that so called neuro typical always repeat every study they read blindly and taking it at face value instead of actually examining whether or not the study was conducted properly and lacks validity. Or to claim that many neuro-typical psychiatrists lack critical thinking ability and just repeat and say/do whatever they read.
My verbal memory is horrible. Holding more than 3 words in my mind for longer than a few seconds is very hard. If I can build a visual of what's being said and through that an understanding, a concept, it gets easier. But remembering arbitrary words or numbers is painfully difficult. The same applies for reading comprehension. I have no issues with this as long as I can visualise what's going on. The words kind of fade away as I start reading. This is how I read books, they play as visuals in my head.
So as long as whatever is being said is building an idea, following a story, instead of simply listing numbers or factoids, I have no issues following and understanding. Reading and understanding something like research papers - outside the 'abstract' section and so - is borderline impossible for me though. If I can't visualise what the results mean and build a story out of it, it's not sinking in even a little bit. Understanding even a single sentence like that takes immense effort in converting it into an idea of some sort. Then needing to hold that idea while I convert the next sentences or paragraphs into one feels like my brain is going to fry.
I have a lot of inner speech, I would say my inner speech is very rich, but it is very rarely useful in driving behaviour, and it's not always easy to follow. If I am trying to work something out in my mind, I often can't do this, this was something I had idenfied in myself even before diagnosis. I tend to either talk my thoughts, worries, plans through with a trusted friend or my spouse, or I will write them out, sometimes online, sometimes just privately, and from there it makes a lot more sense and I seem to be able to translate or transfer or organise it into a plan or even just a track which somebody else (including future me) could follow. However, this can be a very exhausting process.
When I try to keep steps of a plan in mind I get muddled up, I re-do tasks which I have already done or decided not to do, I skip parts which I had decided to do, I do things in the wrong order, in a way which I later realise I had already realised was illogical or I abandon the plan halfway through.
Unlike a lot of ADHDers I don't mind my "chatterbox brain" and I don't find it quietens down with medication, which I am quite glad about because I think it would seem strange and lonely without this! I do seem to keep on task much more with medication, and I tend to have the ability to mentally think ahead to the next step, so perhaps my "mind's voice" is more focused in this way.
…now at 70yo I’ve been “chemically enhanced” (stimulants) since my diagnosis 13 years ago…while the use of stimulants keep my cognitive abilities engaged their efficacy related to reading comprehension is minimal as well as verbalized instructions/directions. I rely HEAVILY on mental pictures to best comprehend information. Therefore, internal speech while active, it alone (without mental visualizations) does not afford me the ability to outwardly execute/perform actions/tasks related to my internal speech/thoughts in any meaningful way. I mentally rehearse in great detail through mental imagery much of what I intend to act out prior to doing so. My Dyslexia affords me the ability to visualize with a felt sense which then “colors” the imagery.
Hi there! I also have heavily relied on mental pictures in cognitive processes.
Unless we’re talking about basic vocabulary that is used incessantly, I can only retrieve terms & names if I codified them with an image when I learned them. If nothing very pictorial was used, the minimum is the image of the word spelling.
I have great difficulty retrieving words & names (even though I have a pretty advanced vocabulary, apparently), but I usually know how many syllables the word I’m trying to recall has,which letter it starts with, at least 2 vowels, at least 2 consonants! It’s ridiculous.
In any case, visualizing and observing the visible world contribute a remarkably large part of my cognitive processes.
Repetition, making sure everything has an image, practicing… these things help me from flopping in professional situations.
Thanks, I'd really like to know more about internal speech..
People, please realize that our racing thoughts are not inner speech. As the doctor said, when you are little, you talk to yourself bc you are learning self-management and self-regulation.. At 2, I used to say No No! when trying something my mom wouldn't like. In time, you internalize this (or not).
From exercise coaching, I learned that lots of people have this actual negative voice that says: you bumbling lazy whatever... They are taught to talk to themselves as a good friend instead. Me with ADHD have no "you" inside.
I also can't do affirmations in the mirror. I can see that hair needs to be brushed, but seldom have any human connection with that mirror person.
I'd have to practice, from talking out loud again, playacting, fake it till I make it. That is not masking, that is reparenting yourself.
I do a lot of self-talk when I am on my own. like commenting everything I do and also having loud conversations . also when I work concentrated I do that alone or if there is someone else in a concentration atmosphere .
I would say I have inner speech and haven't always got the need to talk , when there is people around.
I'm autistic, not ADHD but have no inner monologue unless I concentrate and then I don't hear an inflected voice mostly just the sound of the words as though I'm working out the pronunciation or it's like a screen reader, flat. The only difference I've noticed compared to people with noisy inner monologues (most of them ADHD or AuDHD) is that they tend to remember exact quotes more than I do, whereas I tend to pick up on symbolism to a far greater degree. I suspect because my thoughts are a series of visual media or sensory and thought flows. I absolutely remember the mood of a piece far more than most people I have met. I talk to myself out loud all the time to process language and thoughts audibly so that I can interpret the emotion of a piece of writing when reading, for example. I'm also just shy of profoundly gifted, and have hyperphantasia so I'm not sure how/if that plays into the mix.
I have never heard of this. This is so very interesting. I have thought once I heard of aphantasia that it explained why I could do math in my head but I wasn't taking language into account for my math or orientation (directional).
I'm not sure how I would figure this out. If I have directions for say a recipe, I still cannot keep it in my head.
I do have lots of parallelized and accelerated thoughts throughout the day. Sometimes, specially after a reading session, I can't synthesize what I've read right away in an internal speech.
I have no problem with this at all. Mg inner dialogue is always going. Especially when I’m not relaxing. It guides me through everyday life and tells me right from wrong. It’s the problem of am I going to listen. I have noticed that I do talk out loud to myself so I can fully understand. Like if I don’t read something out loud it might not sink in like it should if I don’t read it out loud.
i have no inner monologue and i find it helpful to talk out loud to think through things or write it down or externalize things somehow. i have a hard time focussing on writing papers and a big part of that is remembering where i am in the paper and what order things are in and what order it should be in, etc.
i also always forget tasks and events. i have to put it in a calendar and a to-do list.
previously i had very bad anxiety and that actually cancelled the forgetfulness out a bit because i spent so much time worrying. once i started to lose that anxiety i became less punctual and forgot more tasks. i had to strengthen the coping mechanisms.
Personally, I have found that I have a hard time with internal speech and typically need to externally process as a result. My ADHD medication seems to dramatically improve how well I can talk to myself in my head so much so that I don't feel nearly as compelled to externally verbalize my internal speech. It's hard to say whether it's an Anendophasic or a non-Anendophasic impairment in verbal working memory because it's hard to distinguish between a lack of internal speech and loosely cohered internal speech.
I don't believe that Anendophasia is linked to ADHD. On the contrary, I have excessive internal speech.
As you later said, the problem is a reduced capacity to use self-speech to guide performance.
I still to this day (44yrs) have trouble working things out fully in my thoughts. I definitely work through a thought process better by saying it out loud. It's only since being medicated that my external thinking is more fluid. Before this I had many long pauses and much more trouble recalling my words. But, because of my external thinking, while verbally working things out I say the wrong conclusion and also correct myself a few times. This to others around me invites interruptions to correct me, which in turn stops my process while someone else worked out the conclusion. This frustrates me so much.
Interesting video Dr Barkley. I have to say, I'm not quite sure on this one. Most of the people I know have worked with that have ADHD describe almost a hyperactive inner voice or a racing mind of inner speech. The idea that it could be from a lack of inner speech doesnt mesh too well with my experiences.
Although, it could relate to difficulties filtering and organizing inner speech for task relevant features perhaps? Curious to hear what your take is on this.
When I read a book I often forget what happened in the last chapter.
I don't have my diagnosis yet, but after informing myself I am pretty sure I have ADHD.
As an AuDHD myself, I have a weird thing on which I haven't found a name yet, maybe it's this, but I'm having some difficulties finding my words at times. When I write novels or poetry, I have to use synonyms dictionary because I definitely have a deep understanding of the things I want to convey, but I find myself oftentimes blocked on more generic words that aren't as adequate as I would like them to be. To know deeply the meaning of the words without being able to get back the actual words by myself is a very frustrating experience. It feels like I have a crutch in my mind.
At times, I also feel my inner dialogue to be more blurry. At others, it's very clear.
I have something similar, where even as a kid I would sift through all the words I knew to find the ones that fit my meanings and feelings best and get very frustrated when people used less specific and less fitting words to describe what I had said. I care deeply about precision of words when it comes to expressing myself
to people who didn't watch the whole video - it is not qbout having inner/at load speech, it is about how much it is vonnected to the tasks and what you are doing...so if you are thinking about dinosaurs but should go check on the kettle it is not the inner speech that is typical
I often wonder what people mean by an inner "dialogue", that indicates two parties. As a rule I never talk to myself, because I'm genuinely worried I'll answer back, instead I imagine holding conversations with other people but the other party is entirely silent in the matter and I decide what they want to know. Even before I internalised the speech I would explain things out loud, like tying my shoelaces, to some imaginary audience.
i have an inner speach, i do not have an inner dialogue. my inner speach is not constant nor is it too effective in guiding behavior. it's just something that happens sometimes when i make commentaries to myself. mostly my thoughts are not in speach or image format, they're just vibes
At 10:41 you say that the signal from the brain doesn't enter the spinal cord to creat external speech, but speech is only partially a function of the spinal cord. Many of the main functions of speech are controlled by the vagal nerve which doesn't travel through the spinal cord at all.
From limited unscientific comparisons with a few close friends it does seem check out that I (as the one with ADHD) have less inner speech than they do. I don’t know how representative we are of course or how robust our introspection about it is. But still.
I do have plenty of experience of inner speech that doesn’t easily turn into action and sometimes it can work to deliberately repeatedly intensify the inner speech or even make it into external speech and that sometimes gets me over the hill to do the action.
It’s frustrating, because sometimes when I’m around people I need to say “I’m thinking about doing [something]” as a way to make my self be able to do it, and then they take that as a cue to do it themselves.
It’s doing all the mental work to build up to doing it but then having the reward of having contributed being taken away.
I wouldn’t say I lack inner speech completely though. And if there is not speech there is usually something else going on. Music, vivid visual imagery or problem solving of some kind; to name a few. Though not always. I can reach some mentally calmer states some times.
I don't really use internal speech. I have a little of it, but I don't use it for problem solving.
If I have a complex physical task to do I'll literally close my eyes and visualise myself doing it to work out the steps.
If I have an abstract task, like writing code, I'll draw a diagram with shapes representing different bits.
Maths and coding feel more like shapes in my brain than words. I like how they feel!
Writing is the worst! I can't write complicated content and a grammatically correct sentence at the same time. I forget what I was writing about! Also, I don't really understand grammar.
I'm ADHD and ASD.
My internal speech never stops. She even reads the books to me 😅 I am actually glad my medication doesn’t quiet the internal speech. I don’t know what I would do without it because I have had it so long.
Edit: I love that you always include references. ❤
Personally, I talk through tasks a lot or read aloud if I'm having a difficult time understanding something. From a lifetime of masking, it is a bit more and liuder if I'm alone. I will talk through things I'm typing a lot too.
OMG Dr B has just opened a giant can of worms & for myself I can't get a coherent response together on a phone... Extremely interesting video tho. A little bit terrifying...
Are you guys sure you don’t (also) have autism? I feel what is described in this video sounds more like autistic traits. Often times there’s comorbidity. I know someone very well who what he described in this video would apply to but this is person is also autistic as it strongly appears. Or maybe I misunderstood what that inner voice and other things mentioned in this particular video is specifically referring to. Examples would be great
My biggest issue with internal speech is how it never shuts up and is *very* difficult to control. If I'm trying to do my literal job and preform calculations, my mind will start talking about numerous things at once. I often refer to it as my "monkey brain." It's exhausting and never turns off. I genuinely can't imagine what true silence must be like.
This does sound exactly like my children. Particularly, my son who has had a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism at 3 as well as ADHD when he was 6.
Fascinating, gratitude for connecting the dots, how does the inner voice of self-speech relate to the inner voice[s] of other-speech as in Schizophrenia. If endophasia is inner speech and anendophasia the poverty of inner speech how would or could this affect the pathological development of xenophasia or inner other speech. Persons with Schizophrenia always point out that the inner voice[s] tormenting them are not their own inner voice. Also in most meditative practice one seeks to minimize endophasia to the point of inducing a state of anendophasia. Endophasia is believed to be inner chatter of the monkey mind. Most persons starting meditation find it hard to stop inner speech...
I would pay money for the absence of internal brain chatter. Mine talks my head off. So yappy I could refer to it as something like a chihuahua looking out the front window. If I did speak it all out loud I wouldn't have time to breathe. I have a virtual 'yappy' box in my brain that I can sometimes stuff it all into if I can catch it. Usually I can't catch it. I'm quite literally watching it's chaos as I am listening to this video and typing this message at the same time. None of that inner chatter has nothing to do with anything else that I am doing or thinking either. Sometimes, it's only usefulness, it asks the question: "Have I taken my meds?".
And yet, you will never catch me in a grocery store without a written grocery list in my hand. It has to be in my hand. With my handwriting on it. If I lose my list, it's over. I cannot process. I feel like a lost kitten in the middle of an ocean. It is actually very unnerving. To have so very much room in my brain for all that yapping but none of it is useful and I cannot remember the things I need to remember. How can that be? You'd think I could recite the phone book (yes, I remember phone books) with the amount of information and inner chatter going on. But if you asked me to find just one person's phone number in an actual phone book, I'd forget who's name I was looking up by the time I located said phone book. And, yes, I have done this very thing back in the days of phone books, and before I knew I had ADHD. The key has always been to write down the name of the person first. Then open the phone book, piece of paper with name on it in hand. Inner chatter, outer chatter, it's all just chaos to me. The only thing I can rely on is that written list. A solid foundation that I can rely on. Now I'm rambling....ugh...
Dear Dr Barkley, how would you say internal speech is different from rumination? Thank you for your excellent videos.
While rumination involves internal speech, it is the repetitive, useless nature of the repetitions that makes it, by definition ruminative, not to mention its focus on past humiliations, unresolved conflicts, or fears of such in the future. Be well,
@russellbarkleyphd2023 Thank you for your answer and all your excellent videos and dedication to this area. So grateful!
Dumb question, are there diffedent types of ADHD? Me and my friends are all diagnosed ADHD. I think all our brains work mostly the same. As in has internal dialog. Is there a kind of ADHD that is high reading comprehension and has a strong inner dialog/imagination and the kind you describe in this video? My wife and her family have aphantasia. I think there is some undiagnosed ADHD there. Their brains do not work the same as mine. High IQ straight A types but teen pregnancies/hoarding/law issues for some of them.
Dr russel berkley So those who have private speach do you hear those voices or are they silent thoughts. I also cant hear music in .y head. I always talk aloud to myself.
Really will help a lot to know what actually internal.speach is
I'm curious, Dr. Barkley, in the same way that autism used to be thought of as a deficiency in empathy, but now it seems as though it's an overabundance of empathy, leading to infants avoiding eye contact due to information overload, but this reduces the amount of dyadic pairing that they engage in, which reduces the number of opportunities to learn about other people implicitly, could this Anendophasia and low verbal working memory have a similar (scaffolding) relationship?
I have some internal talk, some external self-talk and A LOT of talking to/at people. As is typical, this is often because I have a lot of ideas rattling around in my head and if I don't express them, they'll be lost. OK, so that looks like mild Anendophasia. However, what if *because* I have so many ideas rattling around in my head I get used to expressing them so as not to lose them and thus do not get into the habit of internalizing self-talk, so there's less self-talk. That seems like a plausible mechanism. As such, there could be two very distinct routes to Anendophasia and reduced internal speech.
I have 3 of them
My internal speech is non stop and plays music but I cannot visualize or remember faces or smell
Do I understand the distinction though - which would then make adendophasia slightly different from aphantasia? In the latter there is an absence of that sense in the mind (mind blind) but while you start out with adendo being the speech equivalent I'm hearing a nuanced difference (and it does make a difference for me, bear with my personalisation).
I am aphantasic (all senses) but my knee jerk was that I am definitely not adendophasic because I have a hyperactive internal dialogue (we can debate whether internal speech is "heard" or experienced separately). But listening further you posit that adendo is not so much the lack of internal dialogue but rather the lack of task specific dialogue (obv. simplified), and that one can have a chaotic internal dialogue that interferes with task management?
This, for me, suggests that we would not read adendo- in the same way we read aphantasia (at least for ADHD) because its not the absence of, but rather than absence of ordered thinking/innerlogue?
I'd also wonder whether a distinction could be made as to which presentation is more affected - or, as some speculate, that adult ADHD internalises hyperactivity anyway - in that Inattentives tends to exist more internally (daydreaming) and therefore may, in childhood, be missed because its not understood that their inner world is in fact interfering with their experience of the outer world? With hyperactives their external disruptions make it obvious that they are distracting themselves?
Thank you for your video everyday. How about mct oil? Is it beneficial to adhd?
My inner speech is overwhelming and my memory is like an elephant. Work it!
Help me here, is this covering delay or inner speech or speech in general.
My granddaughter understands everything, was evaluated and not diagnosed autistic, yet her language skills are delayed. Words ...sounds were garbled. She learned some sign, and animals by are the sounds they make. She is 3 now but she has learned not to act out when others cannot understand her. I'm not sure what preschool will look like for her next school year.
I hope someone more knowledgeable/experienced can respond.
But I have to say it sounds like your granddaughter needs further assessment. If it’s obvious she has delays, that should be specifically identifiable as a diagnosis, & it needs to be addressed.
If, for whatever reason, your child runs into a wall, in terms of getting more help/testing to identify your grandchild’s problem and providing recommendations, I imagine there are developmental psychology departments at universities &/or appropriate departments around university medical schools that do testing & assessments. And likely they will have someone to talk to about financial assistance/reduced cost (for example, social workers at med school hospitals).
I’m wishing you guys well in getting good help.
@@sfstucco Thank you because I believe the speech therapy assistance is backlogged for years.
Depending on where you live, there may be community resources for young children who have delayed language. These exist in the town where I live.
@@kathrynturnbull990 My daughter had her evaluated for autism and speech, I have mentioned this to her. Maybe there is some help. Thank you.
1:29 omg is that really what the internet looks like without an ad blocker?
Lol, I couldn't stop looking at it!
I have Aphantasia and this. It’s silent in my mind.