Inner Speech and 'Mental Malware'

Some people can't stop thinking about this.

Disclaimer: As always, this blog is about my perspective and understanding. I don’t claim to have the final word on anything, but especially thorny topics like this. This isn’t a particularly pleasant exploration, so you can expect me to bring up heavy topics like psychological and physical abuse.
Reader’s discretion is advised.

The mind is a very powerful thing. I like to think of the mind as the bridge between the body and the soul. It impacts both, and can be impacted by either. Our general understanding of our brain is that it is quite adaptive. I know first-hand what this is like having suffered from a stroke that impacted my vision. Despite losing at least a quarter of my field-of-view, it is staggering how the brain tricks me into thinking I still can see just as well. When I play video games I’ll compensate by “blind-firing” in spots players are likely to be based off my understanding of the map. This compensation for my visual limitations does help me enjoy some of these games, but I’m like a fish out of water on maps I’m not familiar with. It’s hard to describe, but there are many similar brain quirks that people may know about.

In my experience, the incredible power of a human brain is a phenomenal blessing, but also represents unique challenges. The body, including the brain, has an impressive capacity to adapt to all kinds of situations. This adaptability itself has both positive and negative consequences. Many people lean on ’evo-psych’ for explaining many common behaviors, but I’ve become more convinced that you can explain a lot of bizarre behavior if you simply know the problem being overcome.

But nothing is more bizarre than the fact that people don’t all agree on the prevalence of an ‘internal monologue’. One would think that since we’re all essentially running the same hardware our mental software should at have some common attributes. Often times, those with an internal monologue can’t comprehend the idea that people live without it. (I’ve personally struggled quite a bit!) On the other hand, when I have talked with friends and relatives who claim not to have an internal monologue running all the time, their reaction is one of shock: “That must be so exhausting!”.

Dissecting the Internal Monologue

The academic term for having an internal monologue is “inner speech”. As I experience it, it is where one internally vocalizes a running stream of thoughts that can include anything and everything. Almost every waking moment my mind is racing from one idea or feeling to the next. This monologue has often been a roller-coaster of feelings, where I try to anticipate things. This regularly leads me to extreme reactions to particular events, details or information as a rush of feelings and ideas all try to fight for attention. Day to day, it’s like listening to an audiobook written by someone who tried summarizing a million short-form tiktok videos.

It has it’s advantages for sure. Playing with ideas is fun and easy. It is trivial to get lost in thought and entertaining oneself is relatively straightforward. When one has to fill so many waking hours with so many thoughts you definitely end up covering a lot of ground. Momentary obsessions become long explorations into all kinds of aspects of things, as one shifts focus from detail to novelty over and over. Because of this there is a peculiar arrogance by some who assume that having an internal monologue makes one intellectually superior to those who don’t.

Rather than deriding those without inner speech as “NPCs” or other similar derogatory terms, I would often recognize that these people were often much better “doers” than I was. I can certainly recognize ways in which a deluge of negative ‘self-talk’ has drastically impacted my life in a wide variety of negative ways. I always noticed that many of those without internal monologues also lacked particular struggles I took for granted. The more I think about it, having an ongoing internal monologue is likely a very inefficient way to use your thinking energy. If one is not careful on how their cognition is directed, it can easily get the best of them. True learning happens from taking action applying what one understands. The ways in which a negative internal monologue prevents someone from taking action also prevents someone from actually getting the important real-time feedback needed to grow. Through my own weight loss journey I began to realize that much of my inner speech included patterns I needed to overcome. There is a huge difference between rational self-doubt as and endless self-flagellation. As I’ve built up discipline, had time to reflect, and made a lot of progress losing weight I’ve begun to understand how much an internal monologue can get in the way of self-mastery.

Improving my situation required me to directly confront the root causes of many of my personal behaviors and thought patterns. This was not an easy thing for me to do. It took me quite a bit of time to finish reading Understanding and overcoming negative emotions which did put much of this into focus. I began recognizing how many of my behaviors were about soothing fears and seeking safety. Despite being quite physically safe, I recognized that I always felt unsafe in the labyrinth of my chattering mind. Only once I read Prometheus Rising did I begin to question the nature of having an internal monologue at all. Over time, I have become convinced that “inner speech” is an adaptation to stressful social situations in childhood and youth. I think this may come as a shock to many with internal monologues that believe that “everything was fine”. There was once a time I too thought everything was fine until information I was not aware of was brought to light.

I can definitely recognize there are advantages to having/using inner speech. It definitely helps me think through ideas that I’m wrestling with, and I think I’ve managed to make some good out of that. It has made me wonder in what situations were these advantages required. Why did I feel it was so important to be mentally hyper-active from a young age? Looking back, it’s so clear but also very troubling. It only takes a few times of your paranoia being proven right to start feeding the beast.

Inner Speech as an adaptation to trauma

Adaptations to particular problems don’t all need to be uniform. People who struggle with all kinds of addictions can often point to the same root causes like stress, pressure, or escapism. To make things even more confusing, not all adaptations will have wholly negative or positive outcomes. What may seem advantageous to others can be a solution to a problem that comes at a significant cost. It is typical for those with difficult family lives to end up as “people-pleasers”, extroverts or peace-makers. This doesn’t mean that these are inherently bad attributes, rather than there can often be tragic sources of them. It is for this reason I have come to suspect that because inner speech is not uniform across humanity, it may be such an adaptation.

Another detail here is that many of these things exist on a continuum. One may only need a relatively small amount of turmoil in their youth to have a particular level of adaptations. I do believe these kinds of circumstances can arise even in particularly extreme life events. I don’t see a reason to necessarily believe too strongly in a formulaic understanding of this. I definitely don’t think it’s as simple as someone having x,y,z set of experiences creates conditions a,b and c. If anything what makes this so complex is our ability to adapt to circumstances in a wide variety of ways.

I wholeheartedly believe that an inner monologue is a form of hyper-vigilance that develops as a survival strategy to some form of extreme or chronic insecurity. One thing I learned from Anton Wilson’s book Prometheus Rising is how brainwashing relies on the psyche’s need for safety. I think people vastly underestimate how high the bar for safety actually is. Dr Peter Breggin’s book discusses about how traumatic it is for children to merely perceive being unloved and the consequences that may have. Fundamentally the insecurity or danger can be relatively short-lived or even abstract. That said, I believe many people are prone to downplay the tragedies of their childhoods, to either protect their own conception of their parents, or to protect the parents themselves from any guilt.

To make matters worse I believe abusers weaponize this to keep their victims compliant and silent. One would assume that speaking in your head constantly would make speaking externally much easier but in practice it doesn’t. This is because the process of piecing things together in your mind has you building on information and context that is very hard to vocalize in a short period of time. Those attempting to explain their circumstances may simply confuse listeners if they can’t plainly state the important details. To the hyper-vigilant mind, you feel you can never prove your case and struggle with feeling understood. This is very likely because abusers often have information asymmetry advantages over their victims.

Mental Malware

Regardless of the actual source of an internal monologue, I wholeheartedly believe that people need to be on guard for the sophisticated mental malware that abusers weaponize against their victims. I believe that inner speech is a defense mechanism to various forms of abuse. Gaslighting means one either has to defend their inner reality or reinforce the false one. Someone with authority putting you down also requires you to either reinforce your own self-worth or belittle yourself on their behalf. A lack of physical safety can lead to one constantly assessing their surroundings and the people around them. All this often leaves little time for actually practicing being heard and understood.

I am convinced that all this is leveraged by abusers. The purpose of gaslighting isn’t truly to convince the victims, but to inflict the ultimate humiliation when they accept the false reality. This creates a debt of guilt and shame that can be an insurmountable burden on many. Because of this, I believe that any chronic form of negative self-talk is a sign of mental malware being deployed. Who does it ultimately serve that such a large portion of the public are not just doubting their selves, but their own comprehension of reality.

This is where I struggle with those who try to police language of fellow activists. Very often you’ll see people nit-picking language used on particular issues, yet others just continue on without any issue. I believe that language is important for those who are trapped in their own mind prison, but not for those who aren’t. Despite what many would believe, there are many ways of thinking and inner speech is just part of a bigger whole. Those of us with inner speech do have to consider “whose words am I speaking to myself?” and why.

It is absolutely crucial to understand this, because once you recognize this pattern you see it in many other dynamics across the world. Just as computer viruses aren’t an ‘accident’ to the power structures of the world mental malware “is a feature, not a bug”.

Suppose you’ll grant these base assumptions:

1. Serious abuse is something a non-trivial amount of people deal with.

2. That actual justice would have a destabilizing effect on power and order.

Those two assumptions are enough to explain a great deal of troubling but seemingly unsolvable problems we see today. Robert Anton Wilson’s book Prometheus Rising explains this quite well. To paraphrase: parents don’t hit their kids because it’s good for the child’s development, but because it molds the child into compliant units the system needs. Of course not every parent does this, but without societal stigma to keep it in check, this explains how it would become so prevalent. Robert Anton Wilson argues that our society creates the incentives for all kinds of abuse because the abuse itself maintains power.

You’ll know you understand this model of mental malware once you start seeing it everywhere. Incomprehensible lies by those in authority, threats, people being pit against each other, scapegoating, and many other tactics look like a lot more than just incidental slights. I worry that wrestling with this isn’t easy, especially for those afflicted with hostile internal monologues. In true Libre Solutions Network form, I wouldn’t write about such a dark topic if I didn’t have anything helpful to say. I promise you that your internal monologue can be transformed from curse to gift as long as you accept that you can reprogram your inner monologue.

Mental anti-virus protocols: overcoming negative self-talk

I can understand being skeptical that your internal monologue can change in substance and nature. Just over a year ago I thought it was something that was impossible to change. It is genuinely hard to believe change is possible when one has struggled with such a tragic mental prison for so long. While change is certainly achievable it is by no means simple, and does take time. There are many books on the subject, and I’ve read a couple. Some suggestions are simple, some are absolutely abstract to those in our situation. It’s genuinely hard to know where to start.

While I’m certainly no expert on the topic (is anyone?) but based off my personal development over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate how intertwined my mental and physical health journeys are. To put this into numbers, I’ve gone from having a (at least) 80% negative internal monologue to having a 50% positive inner speech with far more neutral and far less negative self-talk. I know the process will be different for every person, but these are the techniques I’ve found that really made a difference even in the worst of it all.

Curate your information intake

Mental malware leverages every minute piece of information we come across. Instead of you seeing something for what it is, you have to use it to add fuel to your mental machine. Something you see may drive you feel worse about yourself, or make you angry at others. It becomes easy to lose perspective and become strangely narrow-minded despite being exposed to so much variety. This can create a negative feedback loop where you seek out more variety which just adds more fuel to the fire.

I can only guess, but I’m convinced those of us with hyperactive minds “can’t look away” from tragedy and terror. It can be just keeping up with the news, or investigating various things, but we often fool ourselves into thinking the negativity has no cost on our psyche. I think the rational impulse to recognize and understand dangers goes into overdrive in a self-destructive capacity.

I won’t tell you to “digital disconnect” and just take breaks from it all. That’s a nice step, but I know from experience that’s a LOT easier said than done. I think the better place to start is to be more judicious about what information you’re exposing yourself to constantly. I think it’s reasonable to be afraid of hiding from the world, but it is important to remember you have to actually be able to face it, not just absorb the stimulus.

To help decide if something is worth your attention ask yourself:

• Is this going to help me today?

• Does it make me happier and/or fulfilled?

• Am I being properly informed or just entertained?

• If it is entertainment, does this help me relax?

• Could the presenter of this information have troubling motives?

• Is the platform I’m viewing this on addictive?

If you suffer from constant and cruel self-talk like I have, it’s seriously worth considering mega-dosing yourself with actual positivity. Whatever you find encouraging or pumps you up. It can be stories, memes, music, quotes, or even just cute animals online. Taking time to save and curate your own collection of inspiration and peace is absolutely worth it. Adding positivity is never about avoiding negativity all-together, but about ensuring you’re recharged enough to actually act to tackle problems. Instead of letting platforms and habit dictate your information do whatever you can to deliberately access what you choose to.

I have my own collection of motivational memes that have helped me quite a bit in my weight loss journey. Your collection should speak to you as a person. Find things that make you happy to be alive and prepared to take on your struggles. Filling your attention with encouraging messages can help drown out the maze of negativity you’re struggling with. You need to be told that you can do it, you can achieve things, and that you can make it all worth it.

This isn’t merely about drowning out all the negative noise. It’s about filling your life with a chorus of what you should be saying to yourself and others. Over time, you reprogram your inner monologue to work for the things you want, rather than against you. Making the conscious choice to change what information you’re passively and actively absorbing is what will allow you to change the inputs of your mind. If you don’t think you can do something, find all the examples of people who have. If you can’t find any real examples, find stories of similar situations. Challenge yourself to rewrite not only your own story, but your approach to it.

Choose life

When you’ve spent so long turning on yourself, it becomes very easy to turn against life itself. It becomes so easy to withdraw from everything. You start distancing from others, and it snowballs into hiding from the life around you. Shame and regret are difficult burdens. Overcoming them is no simple task, but to live in the moment you need to have a positive conception of the future. Fully committing to playing the cards you’re dealt as well as you can will help you salvage something you can be proud of. Once you’ve done that you’re on track to truly living again.

Developing self-awareness is paradoxically a critical step. We may think by overthinking we’re self-aware, but it’s highly likely that the mental malware is driving us to avoid being self-aware. Telling yourself that you don’t matter or that your needs aren’t important is not self-awareness, it’s doing the work of the enemy for them. Choosing life means not just choosing to participate in your life, but also to experience it. I can say this is no small feat. Giving yourself permission to actually focus on the moment is genuinely challenging when you’ve been taught that you need your mind running to stay safe. Overcoming this requires you to rebuild your confidence from the ground up.

Choosing life can be hard when we suffer hardship. The scars will be with us, and for many it can be terribly painful. I don’t have an emotionally satisfying answer to the Problem of Evil. What I can say is that while we can’t change the past, we can learn to appreciate the life ahead of us. Overcoming tragedy is never easy, and never simple. If you can give yourself credit for the heroism involved in willingly taking it all on, things can begin to fall into place. There is so much that can change, and you’ll be proud of what you can make happen.

Live life

This means learning to knowingly face your life for what it is. Instead of retreating to escapism to avoid your troubles and defeats, you can now properly prioritize taking care of yourself to face them. Choosing to actually experience your life is an exercise in gratitude, hope, and love. It takes gratitude to keep joy alive. You’ll need to fuel yourself with hope for the future, whatever it may bring. It takes love to endure the hardships, but it also makes it worthwhile. Escaping escapism requires tackling your pain head-on, and that demands a lot. Living life is about recognizing your troubles and making progress. Demanding perfection of life, others, or yourself is not facing reality but living in a fantasy.

I used to have a saying: “You’re not wasting time if you’re learning, creating, or sharing.” I’ve now decided that this was cope. I spent very little time creating or sharing under that mantra. I now realize that creating and sharing are what drives learning. Learning on its own, without application, is just collecting, and can absolutely be a waste of time. A simple way to start is to try making things out of what you’ve collected. If you’ve learned a lot about animals you can make art or memes about them. The hardest part is being comfortable sucking at what you’re doing. Your mind has likely tricked you into thinking that analyzing everything has made you adept at many things, once you finally start working on things it will be quite a humbling experience.

But it’s not all bad, once you get started you’ll be surprised at how quickly you discover an unfamiliar feeling that soothes your mind. When your body and mind are aligned on a task you enter the ‘flow state’ where things feel natural. You’re no longer distracted by your own petty insecurities, instead you’re fully engaged with whatever you’re taking on at the moment. This is the prize of transforming your inner monologue: being able to fully engage with the world around you. As you develop self-mastery you can finally put the immense power of your mind to accomplishing things you never would have imagined.

Once you’ve rebuilt your confidence, definitely take the time to connect with others. Appreciate those who’ve been for you in the difficult times, and find ways to pay it forward. We were put on this earth with others for a reason, and I think it’s best not to be trapped in our own minds to the exclusion of everyone else. There is a great deal of joy to find in connecting with people and working together. As your ability to truly engage with others improves, so will your interactions with the good people around you. It is ironic that after you decide life is worth truly living, you’ll never stop finding reasons to.