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Talking to yourself.
Why is it looked down upon?

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Talking to yourself.
Wosret
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Posted 04/22/08 - 06:51 PM:
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#51
When I used to do drugs my thoughts would stutter a lot, and repeat over and over in my head, so I would think out loud. When I'm reading somethinging boring and I keep getting lost in thought I start reading out loud. When I am memorizing something by means of developed mnemonic devices and repeat them fifty times out loud while tapping a rhythm on my left arm with my right hand, and studying them with me eyes. This is down to develope audio, visual, and physical sensory memories related to what I am trying to memorize. With long strings of numbers doing this once works almost indefinitely. I can recall every phone number I've ever done this with, and I've done this for years. For words it sometimes takes a couple reiterations. It never works with spelling (I'm just dylexic and sometimes can't recall how to spell words as simple as "that") and takes multiple reiterations with names.

I sometimes laugh out loud at my own thoughts. I generally don't talk to myself, though my dad does a hell of a lot. Which was annoying to wake up to when I was a kid.

Personally I think that it is frowned upon because it is unnecessary, and causes confusion. We use vocal dialogue to talk to other people, so when you aren't using it that way (as it was developed to be used) then people get confused, and see you as using it improperly. For all of these reasons I think people frown upon it, and think you must have some mental problems, or at least be slow to not conform to how the overwhelming majority uses vocal communication.

Sam Harris talks about this in his book, how we can go around constantly talking to ourselves, in an inner monologue, and consider this normal, while if you begin talking to yourself, people are going to think you are quite insane. He argues that perhaps it isn't even normal to go around constantly inner monologuing. He then goes on to talk about meditation and practicing to stop even an inner monologue.

Personally when it comes to inner monologue I often go quite awhile without it. When I'm typing like this, it feels more like I am dictating the words to myself, or rathing thinking them at the precise time that I am typing them. Normally I only think in words when thinking about things I've said or things I've read or read. Quite often I stare blankly and think of things I've seen, and no words are used. I also go lengthy periods of time watching things without thinking any mores. In fact, as I said about dictating. I using thinking of jokes conceptually, or ideas to voice, and they become words as I'm thinking. I don't think the words before I speak them.

Oddly though, occationally I'll get like crossed thoughts or something, and be repeating something over and over in my head as I'm thinking about something else. It would be significant, or really mean anything by itself, just a fragment of a sentence or something. Like maybe I'd get stuck there and repeat "or something" over and over again for a couple minute before I realize I'm doing it.

So those are instances of my weird quirks. So, on the subject, I don't think it makes one insane, I think it makes them inconsiderate of the people around them, and what they think.

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Posted 05/08/08 - 12:55 AM:
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#52
Although I have not researched this, I suspect that this is frowned upon out of fear of being accused of mental illness. In the past -and even today, people were committed to mental institutions by others and these were typically very nasty places to be -even worse than prisons. No one wants to go there. Even further back, it was possible to be accused of witchcraft or possession. I suspect that these types of associations with social oddity are the root of the frowns from society. It is a combinaion of fear of difference, and fear of being labeled dangerously by others.

I'm assuming that we are differentiating talking aloud with internal dialogues. As has already been demonstrated by numerous posters, it seems that everyone has internal dialogue to a certain degree. Even here, however, there is fear as such dialogues can be associated with "hearing voices" and schizophrenia. I have done a bit of research on this one and it seems that schizophrenics are not suffering from typical internal dialogues but actually hear disembodied voices in the form of an auditory hallucination.

You display a good deal of inner self awareness wosret, do you practice meditation?

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