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How do you "see" your thoughts/inner mental process?

SilkRoad

Lay the coin on my tongue
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How do different types/people "see" their thoughts?

I see still images and moving pieces of film, pretty much all the time. I have to make a conscious effort to black things out and even then it doesn't usually last long.

I think that I tend to take past experiences that are part of my mental/visual bank of images and sort of springboard/expand/extrapolate from that. Like whatever memory/mental image I have is where the last movie ended, and I'll start growing the next movie from that. Sometimes those images/bits of film that emerge are so vivid that it's almost like they are memories too. Perhaps why I can take things so hard when I've allowed myself to dream too much and then my dreams are shattered. It's almost like those dreams are true memories.

Often there's a sort of audio track, but it's usually someone talking...usually me...sort of inner conversations with myself or with another whose presence I imagine, I suppose.

I hear snatches of music a lot too - often I'm not sure why and then I trace it back and realise that I'd just heard a word or phrase which triggered a song lyric ---> a song.

I tend to be able to translate all this into words fairly easily. I'm (partly) a writer by trade so it doesn't tend to be too difficult. It feels almost effortless sometimes. If I'm not finding the right word or phrase I sort of poke at or play around with what I have already and then the right word/phrase will emerge. Kind of like the Orcs being born in LOTR, haha.

It's really confused but really logical at the same time. Hard to explain.

I'm curious about what the inside of others' heads look like.
 

KDude

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I see lego pieces everywhere. But I like to mix it up a bit. I was never one to complete the set you got in one box.

Actually, not really. I'm not sure how to answer this.
 

Qlip

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While I can imagine what the OP might think like, while I can 'see' images and 'hear' sounds, my thought processess are less defined than that. I kind of think in a cloud of different ideas with different concepts with different densities and flows. If I think about a cup, the cup's existence in my mind is an archetype with streams flowing to 'wells' in one direction and 'pots' in another. My actual thought processess aren't very word heavy, or visually heavy.. things are like almost icons that are being manipulated/transformed.
 

CuriousFeeling

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When it comes to my thought process, I tend to see it as a big concept map with things attached to each other. Then I fall inside this mental network and then travel through concept to concept... seeing either images, memories running like a hazy film grain movie, with a musical soundtrack set to it. Almost everything I experience in my inner thoughts has a musical soundtrack along with it. It's almost my mental landscape is my own personal universe that I get to explore, and I don't think that I have explored all of it yet.
 

SilkRoad

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When it comes to my thought process, I tend to see it as a big concept map with things attached to each other. Then I fall inside this mental network and then travel through concept to concept... seeing either images, memories running like a hazy film grain movie, with a musical soundtrack set to it. Almost everything I experience in my inner thoughts has a musical soundtrack along with it. It's almost my mental landscape is my own personal universe that I get to explore, and I don't think that I have explored all of it yet.

Oh, I relate to this too. Somewhat at least, I think. I have "concept maps" (good term) of the timeline of history, and the timeline of my own life in my head. As you say, with images attached, sounds, words, whatever. And the two timelines/maps intersect and can overlay. They can also stretch or contract depending on what I'm "looking" at. And they seem to be going somewhere. They seem to have a point.
 

rav3n

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Strange coincidence. I was just chatting with an e-friend about this, the other day so:

My brain feels like there's a upper layer, where it's noisy through verbalisations, fuzzy pictures, need to x,y,z, etc. Then below that, there's this place where conceptualisations happen that pop answers in and out of the noisy layer, where everything is a fuzzy framework. And then there's a deeper layer.
 

KDude

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I still don't know how to answer this. When I get deep in thought, I see a lot of problems and obstacles. I'm not exactly "flowing". There's friction and head banging. Heh.

I visualize scenarios on how to manuever around or be clever around them. Or crush them. Or be discouraged, for that matter. I guess when it comes to people they're just realistic set pieces, like out of a movie or play. Nothing symbolic or focused on the concepts themselves. Many concepts usually have representatives, in the form of a person. I would say I'm usually very subjective, where I'm focused on my own sense of things and my position in them. I'm not detached from myself, where I'm seeing multiple points of view.

I like music, and play it as well, but it rarely comes into thought.. unless there's an actual song being played. I guess. I've never been one to remember lyrics either, let alone relate many songs to my own life. And my own music is composed with an instrument in hand. I rarely prepare anything like that.. even if I hear a new song idea in my head, it becomes something entirely different when I try to play it.
 

Stanton Moore

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I don't visualze all that well. I have more auditory thoughts. My ex used to make fun of me because when we would go shopping, I would tap an object to 'hear' what it was made out of...like a vase for example.
I have strong associations with some sounds, almost like flashbacks. Some are positive and feel good; others are unsettling. one of the stock iphone ringtones is very negative to me because of an association with an event.
 

Eckhart

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A topic that crosses my mind from time to time because I wonder about how different the description of other peoples thought processes seems to me than my own.

They say that no one "really" thinks just in words, that everyone would think in images or so. I cannot really see a lot of that. Yes, sometimes I may think visually as well, but it is not easy for me always, and often it is not a clear picture, more some kind of shade of a picture. More usually I just "talk" in my mind I would say, and often I jump from idea to idea seemingly spontaneously. Like, there is a problem, I immediately get an idea and formulate the idea in my head (or write it down / tell it to someone) and already while doing so I notice that I have to fix or add something here and there. I really cannot describe how I think any more precisely.
 

animenagai

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Most things are in conceptual charts for me. They're usually accompanied with color, mostly yellow if I find the concept dynamic enough. I visualise too, but I can't visualise things that are too complex. The concepts are often complicated but the visual is usually simple.
 

wolfy

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I just kind of feel it and there is some spatial and visual understanding sometimes too. Hard to explain, I don't hear so much.
 

strychnine

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I think in impressions, mostly... vague, incomplete things that flow from one to another. I also think visually, in video or image form, but I do that far less than in impressions.

And I only think in words sometimes. A lot of the time, I don't have the right words for what I want to say. I have a hard time converting non-word thoughts to words, but if they are already in words, then that's no problem. I can put non-words into words, but it won't be the right words, and the meaning will get misconstrued. It's probably happening right now!

To understand/solidify my non-word thoughts in more depth, I have to think in words. The impressions flow so quickly as to give me breadth, but little depth.

Also fairly often my brain will relate a present event to a song, and it will play the song in my head. It's usually a song I know well (like I know all the lyrics, how it sounds, etc.) So I see the event, and as I hear the song I know how it's related. I'm not consciously relating the two together, it just happens.
 

21%

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Interesting thread!

I don't know how to explain this properly, but I feel like I keep taking little random bites at a subject until I've got it figured out. I feel like I walk around an artifact, looking at it, but not even very closely -- if I look too hard it disappears -- or maybe I can describe it as the feeling that I'm flipping a foreign object in my hands, again almost unconsciously, casually feeling it. In my walk, suddenly something will come to me, and I'll leap forward and push the artifact at the right angle, and it flips over, unraveling itself in the process and becomes a new thing -- or I hit a secret switch on the object in my hands and a compartment opens -- then I look them in slight puzzlement and the process starts over.

So, if you sit me down and ask me to do something, I will stare at you blankly and shake my head, because I can't. I need all those 'walking around' and 'turning the objects in my hands' time that seem totally unproductive to other people before I can even start to do something.

:blush:
 

mmhmm

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blobs. they're just messy little blobs
in my head. i "see" clearest after
i hear myself speak.
 

INTP

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I dont see with my minds eyes, unless im sleeping and having a dream.

How i am able to imagine visuals is quite difficult to explain, its like knowing what something looks like, but i dont see it. Naturally i can zoom in and go to more detailed view that way. Also i visualize in frames, when imagining scenaries, like photos, except sometimes when there is just one object visualized. Its not black and white that i visualize and i can adjust colors, exposure, white balance, contrast etc, stuff that i use to edit photos. I sort of build the picture by visualizing the big picture and fill it in details, which sometimes happens instantly at least to some degree.
 

entropie

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blobs. they're just messy little blobs
in my head. i "see" clearest after
i hear myself speak.

^this

99% of the time I dont use the brain at all, when someone asks me for something the output just pops into the brain and the rest of the time its dormant. Its like the most unuseful organ there is.

Its main activator and director are basically emotions. if I feel heavy emotions, the brain is active and running generating scenarios and possible outcomes. If I am fascinated by something brain starts working like a puzzlebox and concentrates on missing pieces to complete the scenario. But basically its a bitch to emotions.

I am worst at visual thinking, cant remember geography tho I always find my way but cant explain it to others. I think best in numbers and words, where numbers are actually words what makes calculation in the head difficult for me. Besides that music directly affects via emotions the performance of my brain. When I need that brain I always need music as well.
 

Lark

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b00j7txt_640_360.jpg


Only Diogenes on the steps has got headphones on and the place is not simply filled with the sound of debate but also occasionally music, like the stone roses, ash, oasis and the white stripes (at the moment).

Then there's that thing that every six seconds or something men are meant to think about sex, well, I dont think I think about sex that much but I do think about women and then my mind is like an Ingres painting.

the-little-bather-in-the-harem-jean-auguste-dominique-ingres.jpg


Although all the women are red heads.
 

Rasofy

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Interesting thread!
Usually there aren't images in my thought process. Mostly it is like I'm talking to myself and responding at the same time. It's like a entity called NeSi, that I can't control, is talking to me, presenting random solutions and possibilities and TiFe, which is basically me being me, raises objections to a number of ideas, until NeSi finally kicks in with something that TiFe accepts as reasonable.

The size difference is meant to roughly represent the weights of the functions in the thought process.
 

Octarine

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so
I have a surface level - language, fuzzy visualisations (I like to call them 'artist impressions') etc and a deeper level where thoughts arise in an indescribable way - you can feel it before you know what the thought actually is.
 

cascadeco

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It really depends. If I’m actively thinking of something, or analyzing things at work, I believe I think mostly in words. I’m ‘speaking’ and talking things out in my head. My eyes might be focused on things around me, documents I’m reading, etc, and I’m aware of what’s around me when I’m doing this.

If I’m not actively thinking about something in particular, and it’s a broader more general topic I’m musing over, it might be rapid thoughts/phrases/ideas/words going through my head, to match the specific thoughts I’m having, or it’ll be a combo of that plus my morphing into ‘seeing’ things entirely in my head and not focused on my immediate surroundings. Combo of words and images – my being in whatever context I’m thinking about. Imagination, playing out scenarios/possibilities, like playing a movie in my head. Highly visual, it’s as if I’m there. Again, am not seeing anything in front of me.

And sometimes if what I’m musing over is even less substantial/clear to me, and I’m not sure what I’m thinking about or not sure how I feel or what I want to do, it’s even more ‘primitive’, I would say… it’s almost as if I’m thinking of absolutely nothing, I’m just in this zoned out state with impressions and feelings and suspicions and inklings. Pre-thoughts. I let everything just ‘brew’ and sift around, let things congeal and aggregate of their own accord – I WAIT for things to become clear. Occasionally there’s active noting of certain ideas that I want to tie off, but a lot of this is very, well, nothing. I’m doing nothing. But my brain is working / I KNOW things are happening in my mind – I just let the various things float around up there of their own accord and gradually substance develops of its own accord. Once substance forms (and depending on the topic/area of concern, I could be in this pre-substance state for a long time, while I’m doing other things/living out my life outside the context of that Idea that is still Unknown/Unclear), THEN the active thinking/analyzing begins.
 
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