For me there’s two separate participants, a ‘talker’ and a ‘listener’. My mind identifies more with the talker, because that’s the one that has agency. Since there are two participants, both of which are me, I talk in 1st person plural (‘we’ve got to do …’, 'we thought about this earlier’). I stopped being afraid of being alone after I started having an internal dialogue around the age of 11, since having a second participant in the conversation meant I was always in company.

Edit: Wow, looks like there’s a lot more diversity in this than I was expecting

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    I probably shouldn’t answer this tbh.

    I have three main “voices”, plus a couple of situational ones. As you say, a talker that’s mostly “me”, my conscious self. A listener that isn’t just a listener that’s essentially my subconscious throwing up images and memory in response to my conscious self. Then there’s the other self, the third thoughts, the meta mind, whatever you want to call it.

    That third voice is observing the “conversation”, and making commentary and corrections as needed. Like “that’s not how that really happened” when images flash up that are nebulous. Or “no, that’s not who you want to be, stop being a dick” when my conscious self is under stress. Or “go fuck yourself” when thoughts triggered by mental health issues come up.

    Plus, and this isn’t some kind of bullshit DID¹ thing, I have fictional characters in my head. There’s this thing I do when I write or DM where I kinda spool up a virtual machine in my head where a character “lives”. These aren’t real entities, they aren’t split off from me, they’re just a construct that’s useful. They can be “deleted”, they don’t take over, nothing like that.

    I can, however, have conversations with them if I do a bit of mental prep work to sort of fake forget that it’s just my imagination playing a game with itself. I used to participate in some Mastodon writing prompt hashtags and I’d sort of interview my characters with them sometimes surprising me with what they said. Alas, the instance I used shut down without warning, and I didn’t have a recent backup, so I lost most of it.

    While I was writing that paragraph, one of my characters got switched on for a second and grumped at me. I know it’s not a person, it’s all imagination. But it is a fucking trip anyway.

    Yeeeears ago, I was running a game. It included a deity coming back to life. During the process, I had been wrapping my head around what they’d be like, and one of the players had communed with the deity a good bit. During a session, the player had their character call on the god to manifest. My ass just started talking as the deity. Full on zero conscious control over what came out. It felt creepy but cool. This imaginary part of myself took over, my voice changed, I stood up and moved around, but none of it was “me”. My conscious mind was starting to freak the fuck out a little because it felt like the imaginary thing was taking over.

    That wasn’t the last time it happened, but I’ve never been able to make it happen. Well, not to that degree anyway.

    I guess what I’m saying is that my internal monologue isn’t a monologue. Shit gets loud up in here.

    Edit: ¹

    My bullshit DID thing, I don’t mean that did isn’t real. I mean that it isn’t me pretending to have DID or some other dissociative disorder. People do that, and it’s fucking weird

    • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlOP
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      11 hours ago

      Wow, that’s really sophisticated. I don’t think my mind would have the capacity/bandwidth to play a totally independent, second active participant

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        In fairness, I have a weird capacity that’s the opposite of aphantasia. Some people can’t picture things in their minds, the same way some people don’t have an inner voice. I call my thing hyperphantasia.

        When I’m reading a book (or writing something), I can see and hear things as they’re described to the extent that I stop perceiving the real world fully. If the author describes smells, I sometimes get those. It’s a very immersive experience beyond what I’ve seen other people describe as their inner imagery. I’ve even gotten hints of feelings on skin if I’m deep enough and the descriptions are right.

        I know I’m not the only person that experiences things that way, but it does seem to be rare based on responses when I talk about it online.