Your internal dialogue is just thoughts, a quiet voice in your head that comments on all life situations, regardless of their complexity.
Everyone has an inner voice; it accompanies us all our lives until death. This can happen consciously, but most often at the subconscious level, uncontrollably.
Fortunately, some of us are able to take control of the situation, figure out how to stop the internal dialogue in our heads, and use these skills to our advantage.
Many people call this skill logic, although it can also be distorted under the influence of emotions and experiences.
The importance of self-talk
Internal dialogue makes us human, in particular, it gives us the opportunity to reason and think about the current situation.
But these thoughts and the tone with which they are spoken have a powerful impact on our mood, self-confidence and self-esteem. This is the basis of neuro-linguistic programming.
Examples of useful and unhelpful internal dialogue:
- If you are prone to anxiety, then your inner voice only intensifies this feeling tenfold. As anxiety increases, the inner voice becomes even more active and a vicious circle results, which is almost impossible to break.
- Just like smiling makes you feel happy, negative thoughts make you unhappy. This is the benefit of stopping the internal dialogue - stopping self-flagellation.
- If you have learned to conduct a positive internal dialogue, praise yourself for your achievements, encourage, calm, motivate, and instill confidence, then this skill can become the most important assistant in your life.
Based on this, we can conclude that the skill of managing your inner voice will be important both for your inner well-being and for success in life.
Irina
translator
My internal dialogue is framed as the voices of my grandmother and friend Masha. These are people whom I considered close and important: I lived with my grandmother as a child, and Masha was there during a difficult time for me. Grandma's voice says that my hands are crooked and that I am incompetent. And Masha’s voice repeats different things: that I have again contacted the wrong people, I am leading the wrong lifestyle and doing the wrong thing. They both always judge me. At the same time, voices appear at different moments: when something doesn’t work out for me, my grandmother “speaks,” and when everything works out for me and I feel good, Masha speaks.
I react aggressively to the appearance of these voices: I try to silence them, I mentally argue with them. I tell them in response that I know better what and how to do with my life. More often than not, I manage to out-argue my inner voice. But if not, I feel guilty and feel bad.
Causes
To overcome negative trends in life, people try to develop new habits. This also applies to a healthy lifestyle.
This is necessary to overcome negative emotions. Start going to the gym, eat healthy, try to reconnect with friends, find a new job.
All this would help, but there is one important “but”: many people practice harsh self-criticism in case of failure. Thoughts constantly swarm in my head that everything is in vain and nothing will work out.
This pessimism has its roots in early childhood. If you had strict parents, then you constantly heard criticism, reproaches, accusations, they compared you with other children and said that you were lazy, a burden and a loser.
Or, on the contrary, you were overprotected and not allowed to grow up. A caring mother and grandmother did not allow you to make independent decisions, take risks, experiment, act spontaneously. You had to constantly hear that you are small, weak, unhappy, sick, it’s better not to go outside, there will be trouble.
In this case, a hard stop to the internal dialogue is the only way to salvation, otherwise you will remain a pathetic loser for the rest of your life.
Bottom line
Internal dialogue is not pathological until it takes on permanent forms. Every person periodically communicates with himself. However, often internal dialogue occurs on its own, without the person’s conscious participation. If an individual does not control the course of his own thoughts, then they begin to control him, which leads to negative outcomes.
Firstly, a person is immersed in the world of his own emotions, which are completely subordinate to thoughts. A person does not control how he feels, since he himself obeys the thoughts that arise in his head. As a result, the world around us seems to have some colors: sometimes black, sometimes white. There is no critical thinking, a sober look at the situation. Everything that happens is perceived through emotions that make events pleasant or unpleasant.
Secondly, a person’s perception of the world is significantly narrowed. He perceives events not as they really are. He is guided solely by his own knowledge, which may be limited. He does not perceive what is not part of his own experience. As a result, a person does not understand what is happening, labeling it as “Everything is bad!”
Thirdly, there is no opportunity to make a decision. There are no hopeless situations. It’s just that a person focuses on his own thoughts, and not on what the situation is, what circumstances are developing, how they can be taken advantage of, what can be done, etc. Hesitations in decision-making also indicate that the person is not noticing something or doesn't know. To fill in the gaps, you need to take a break from your internal dialogue.
Managing Internal Dialogue
Recognize the problem
Before you understand how the internal dialogue stops, you need to understand how much it harms you.
For some, this internal dialogue becomes painful, it drowns out common sense and causes a panicky fear of moving on.
One way to become aware of a problem is to focus on your thoughts and analyze several specific situations.
Get a special notebook for this and write everything down on paper:
- What thoughts come to you most often?
- In what situations does internal dialogue intensify?
- What kind of thoughts are these - positive or negative?
- What do you think about most often - about the past, present or future?
- Your motivation: you want more good things or less bad things.
The second way, no less effective, is to consciously think: “What will my next thought be?” This will cause a certain glitch in the system, disrupt your internal dialogue and distract your brain from negativity.
Change your internal dialogue
Once you understand your train of thought and the types of patterned thinking, it will be easier for you to change it. You will understand how to learn to stop internal dialogue and how to get along with it.
There are several effective ways to help yourself in this matter:
- Positive thinking . As soon as self-criticism or internal dialogue begins in your head, immediately switch your thoughts to something funny or pleasant. Turn on trash videos, cool comedy. Drown out your destructive voices with something bright and positive.
- Live the present . Stopping internal dialogue is only possible if you concentrate on the present, on what is happening at the moment. Typically, self-talk focuses on the past (“If only I had done things differently back then”) or the future (“When will I have…”). Concentrating on the present calms these feelings a little and helps to assess the real state of things.
- Be grateful for what you have. An evening summary in the form of gratitude is the best way to stop the internal dialogue before bed. It could be a prayer, a journal entry, or an appeal to the Universe, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is to be able to recognize all the good things that you have in the present. Monotonously and methodically list all the points of gratitude until you fall asleep. It's like counting sheep, only with more benefit.
- Say: "Stop!" . Stopping internal dialogue with the help of willpower is one of the fastest and most effective ways to control your thoughts. We all have moments when our internal monologue starts to devolve into a negative tirade.
As soon as you feel the first signs that negative thoughts are spreading their tentacles into your brain, immediately say loudly and decisively: “Stop! Enough. I do not need it".
The benefits of turning off internal chatter
- Objectivity of perception.
When a modern person stops his internal dialogue, he becomes himself . This is a fundamental condition that in itself changes life for the better. Want to know when we make the right decisions? Then, when we stop the internal dialogue with ourselves, because it to some extent interferes with the objective perception of reality. Those. with internal dialogue as an intermediate link, we do not perceive reality as it is, but through the prism of words. Reality is described, as if squeezed into words, becoming a stripped-down and distorted version of itself. There is a kind of blocking of the ability to see the world beyond the ideas about this world.
Note. When the average person encounters something new, the first thing they want to do is know what it’s called. The answer to the question “what is this?” usually implies the name – i.e. some word.
Having hung a label in the form of a name on an unfamiliar phenomenon or object, people in most cases calm down and begin to perceive the novelty as something ordinary and familiar. Although just knowing the name does not advance understanding one millimeter.
- Rational use of mental resources.
If internal dialogue is purposeful and completely manageable, it can be useful. But loading the mind with constant chatter means unjustifiably using one’s own mental resources, forcing the mind to support unnecessary and costly processes. Speaking thoughts to yourself takes a lot of energy. You will understand this when you learn to stop them.
- Speed of thinking.
And that is not all. Internal dialogue greatly, greatly slows down the speed of thinking. If you have sufficiently practiced meditation or studied this issue, then you know one feature of the thinking of modern people. Thoughts appear in the head as concepts, as understanding, as knowledge. And then the mind turns conceptual thoughts into words - we essentially say to ourselves what already know. Doesn't seem entirely rational? But that's how it is! It is very irrational and incredibly slow thinking to duplicate ready-made thoughts with “mental words.”
How to quiet your inner dialogue
It is impossible to stop internal dialogue forever, because life is full of surprises. We are constantly faced with situations that require careful analysis and this is normal.
If you don't take drugs or have mental illness, then the voices in your head are just a reflection of reality. There's just a glitch in the system and instead of moving on, you're stuck in one place.
So why stop the internal dialogue if it arises again?
Imagine a parallel universe where each human organ lives its own life and does its own job.
If you tell your stomach: “Stop producing gastric juice, it’s unpleasant for me!”, then it will not listen to you, because that is its job.
In the same way, you can say: “Brain, stop thinking!” It won’t stop, because that’s its purpose.
And observing this entire universe from the outside, realize that the most important observer is yourself, your own “I”. Is this “I” different from the characters in your head? What is the difference? If it's not you talking, then who? Whose voice and intonation do you constantly hear? Maybe it’s the voice of your mother or a strict teacher whom you were scared to death, or maybe a grumpy neighbor or an envious friend.
Get to know this character and as soon as the need arises to put him in his place, clearly imagine the face of this person and address him specifically.
You can say out loud: “No, Mom, I don’t regret turning down a lucrative job. Now I’m gaining invaluable experience, and this is better than a penny extra payment.”
If you conduct a dialogue with yourself, with your own voice, voice your thoughts and no outsiders influence this, then treat your thoughts like little children. Don't lash out, but become a kind and patient parent. If “children” communicate productively for the good, don’t interfere, listen. But if a conflict breaks out, immediately distract them with something interesting.
How to stop the dialogue?
If you have already wondered how to stop the internal dialogue, then in this article you will find several exercises to turn it off and muffle .
On the one hand, it seems that everything is very simple. But first, try not to think about anything at all for a minute, throw all thoughts out of your head and don’t let them in there anymore, leave only emptiness in your head and nothing but it.
If you manage to do this, you will most likely be surprised at how quiet, and maybe even empty, your mind becomes.
This is extremely difficult for an inexperienced person, usually only for a few seconds, and then he doesn’t even have time to notice how thoughts are again flowing like a river inside his head.
Stopping internal dialogue is a very important point in self-development. All his life a person says everything possible to himself, but by turning off your inner voice, you can noticeably speed up your thoughts. A person's thoughts can be like the speed of light. By saying all sorts of nonsense to themselves, people greatly limit themselves and continue to think at the speed of their inner voice.
By removing this limitation, a person can significantly improve his thinking abilities. He will be able to read at the speed of seeing the text, which will increasingly appear in bright colorful images and visions. And in order to come up with some kind of plan, you don’t have to turn your thoughts into words, or more precisely, you don’t have to think discretely, that is. words and their categories.
Words are just a way of speaking, said Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's book Tales of Power, in one of the dialogues with the main character with a hint of his inner speech and constant indulgence due to various questions that arise in him.
So why limit yourself to words and their categories, why do you need this discreteness? After all, the human brain captures images best and works best with them. Visualize how you go to work, where you go along the way and what you do. Think of it as a movie being shown to you in fast motion. Now describe all this in words and compare which took less time and where the completeness of the description is deeper. With developed visualization, you can always see anything in front of you, from a simple map to some working mechanism.
Consequences of stopping internal dialogue:
- Development of Lucid Dreaming
- Development of speed reading
- Possible spontaneous manifestations of vision or clairvoyance
The Negative Impact of Self-Dialogue
If it is impossible to completely get rid of memories, introspection and self-criticism, then maybe it’s better to come to terms with it and leave everything as it is? Why do you need to stop the internal dialogue if after a while you begin to mentally talk to yourself again?
For me, the main reason to fight this self-criticism is that during this period you fall into a kind of trance and stop objectively assessing reality.
This feeling is similar to the effect of hallucinogenic drugs, when your consciousness begins to produce false, untrue information. These thoughts cannot be trusted, but they can be analyzed.
Why you need to stop the internal dialogue:
- It goes beyond the norm, becomes the cause of wrong decisions, and interferes with life.
- You are drowning in your own negative thoughts and are afraid of the world around you.
- You stopped living a full life and became an outside observer to yourself. You perceive the world through the prism of your voices.
The main reason why people engage in internal dialogue is fear, a defensive reaction, the illusion of control over what is happening. But in reality, your thoughts have much less impact on the world than you would like.
If we objectively evaluate the course of your thoughts, then they are more in the realm of science fiction. Of course, thinking about the past or the future gives you temporary satisfaction. But I’ll give you a simple example: you think that it was in vain that it rained yesterday and ruined your weekend, and you dream that it won’t rain tomorrow. But the rain doesn't care about your wishes. The problem is not the rain, but the fact that you don’t know how to quickly change plans and adapt to the situation.
The consequences of stopping internal dialogue can be very different, it all depends on your psychological state, ability to concentrate and manage your emotions.
The voices are trying to retell the events in their own way. If one voice says: “You need to move to Moscow,” and the second: “What should I do there? I’m not bad here either,” this means that there is a real problem with making a decision. You need to carefully weigh all the pros and cons and come to internal agreement and harmony. You cannot cut from the shoulder, because by accepting the position of one of the voices, you will offend the second, that is, in any case you will remain dissatisfied.
You must find a solution that satisfies both sides of your internal dialogue. Take the side that is most pleasant for yourself and gently, delicately convince your opponent that you are right.
This is where the expression “inner harmony” comes from. Even if different ideas and desires arise in your thoughts, you can always find a peaceful solution to the conflict and calmly enjoy the feeling of inner unity.
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Constant internal dialogue is a state when a person spends most of the time inside himself, grinding an endless stream of thoughts randomly emerging in different corners of consciousness. Introverts are prone to constant internal dialogue, preferring their inner world of thoughts to the outside world. It is much more common for them to indulge in reflection than to communicate with people. internal dialogue is a state when a person spends most of the time inside himself, grinding an endless stream of thoughts chaotically emerging in different corners of consciousness. Introverts are prone to constant internal dialogue, preferring their inner world of thoughts to the outside world. It is much more common for them to indulge in reflection than to communicate with people.
Many people, after training in system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan, talk about stopping the constant internal dialogue, which literally did not allow them to breathe deeply: everything outside was dimmed by the incessant tension of thought. Along with the obsessive state, headaches and insomnia disappear, even suicidal thoughts recede.
What causes the problem of internal dialogue and how to deal with it - we’ll figure it out in this article.
Who has a problem with internal dialogue?
The problem of internal dialogue appears in people with the so-called sound vector. According to its specific role, the sonic bird is the night guard of the flock. Since time immemorial, the soundman's job was to focus on the sounds outside - only he was able to hear the rustle of an approaching leopard while the entire flock was sleeping. And only he was the only one who spent sleepless nights under the starry dome of the sky, alone with himself.
One day, while focusing on the sounds outside, the sound engineer made a discovery that became the beginning of a new stage in the development of human society. He was the first to separate himself from the world outside and ask the fateful question: “Who am I? Why do I exist? To this day, understanding oneself and the world around, searching for the meaning of what is happening is the main occupation of any sound person, whether he realizes it or not.
And today, at the peak of civilization, we are forced to admit that the answer to the question of the meaning of life has not been found. We know a lot about the world outside, but we continue to wander in the darkness of misunderstanding and ignorance of who we are from the inside, why we came into this world and where we will go. Vegetating in hopelessness and depression, the sound “lags behind”, fails to cope with its task, sliding into the pitch darkness of suicide.
For the most part, sound people are in very bad conditions; they turn away from solving unsolvable issues into excessive sleep, drugs, alcohol, and heavy music.
Intrusive internal dialogue is also a manifestation of sound that does not fulfill its task. There is nowhere to hide from thoughts. They are always with a person, wherever he is, wherever he hides. Neither work, nor family, nor entertainment makes you happy - they are illusory, but the state inside is more than real. And it's exhausting.
From a physiological point of view, intellectual activity is associated with enormous mental stress, which is caused by concentrating attention on a limited range of objects and phenomena. This leads to rapid fatigue of the involved nerve centers. A working brain consumes much more oxygen than other body tissues.
Constant overwork, caused by incessant, unproductive mental dialogue that does not bring satisfaction in the form of solving specific problems, leads to loss of interest in activities and the environment, increased irritability, inadequate reaction to other people, decreased appetite, dizziness and headaches.
According to Doctor of Psychological Sciences K.K. Platonov, with severe mental fatigue, sleep disturbance is observed in 65% of cases, fatigue - in 40%, increased irritability - in 32%, decreased appetite - in 27% and headache - in 26% . Portrait of a sound engineer, isn't it?
What is the sound guy thinking?
Not always about the meaning of life, because many sound people are not aware of their basic need - self-knowledge. The most common questions that he may try to solve within himself are: “Why all this? Who needs all this? Why are these stupid people fussing? Will this change anything? Why am I living? There’s no point in it anyway...” Sometimes these questions are not even formulated, but create a certain negative background of general dissatisfaction with life. Thoughts inspired by the shortages and frustrations of other vectors are scrolling through my head. After all, a sound artist in his physical life relies on at least one more - the lower vector. And in the modern world, a person can have a combination of 3-4 or more vectors.
A stressful skin vector can bring up thoughts that there is always not enough money, scroll through some combinations of how to get it, where to earn money. Given the greatest hatred of the sound artist for the material world, these thoughts can give rise to great internal contradictions: money seems to be needed, but it seems to be not - what is the point of it if it still cannot relieve this incomprehensible pain inside?
An undeveloped and unrealized visual vector, located in fears, can give rise to hypochondriacal states, when thoughts constantly revolve around imaginary illnesses. Waking up in the morning, the first thing a person will do is focus on the sensations in the body: “It hurts again... It must be some kind of terrible illness, since it hasn’t let me go for so long (a slight illness can last only two days, but vision has the most subjective perception of time ). We need to go to the doctor and get examined.” There may be an obsession with unrequited love, with which a person will run around in his thoughts day and night, or fruitless dreams that give nothing but an even greater immersion in the world of illusions.
But the most difficult internal dialogue can result from a combination of sound with an undeveloped, frustrated anal vector. The specific role of a person with an anal vector is the collection and transmission of information accumulated over generations. This gives him such a mental feature as a focus on the past, a craving for accumulation of experience. Anything – including negative ones. Resentment is the most difficult feeling that occurs only in the anal vector. An offended anal sounder will spin an unpleasant situation in his head for days, unable to let it go or forgive the offender.
The frustrated state of an anal person, caused by the opposition of his innate properties to the modern skin phase of human development, will make the subject of his internal dialogue a feeling of his own inferiority, a lack of respect and appreciation of his abilities, and their lack of demand in society. A double introvert, an anal sound person is most prone to immersion in internal dialogue, especially since his slowness, clumsiness, and difficulties when starting any new business create the most favorable conditions for immersion inside and refusal of active actions.
The Pill for Internal Dialogue
The problem of constant internal dialogue has always been relevant for a certain part of people. Now we understand which ones, namely for sound vector carriers. This is not for you to wave a shovel. It will be harder to think. Therefore, many remedies were offered for this scourge.
Since time immemorial, various spiritual teachers have offered a recipe for enlightenment - stopping the internal dialogue. That is, internal dialogue was seen as a problem that prevents one from achieving “enlightenment.” Various techniques of meditation, concentration, and breathing were proposed as methods, which give short-term altered states of consciousness, expressed in stopping the thought process. For example, meditation gives you the skills to turn off certain areas of the brain responsible for temporal and spatial characteristics. During breathing exercises, the brain is simply pumped with oxygen. And now we are already in “nirvana”.
Physical activity, which is recommended by physiologists and doctors to relieve mental fatigue caused by intense intellectual work, which includes the sound engineer’s incessant attempts to solve eternal questions within himself, has approximately the same effect (directed purely on brain activity).
The advice of psychologists on this matter is sometimes simply touching. For example, they advise you to talk about your problem. This, they say, will not solve it, but it will make it easier (a good solution to the problem, considering that this will require finding someone who will listen all the time). “Don’t be led by negative thinking, think positive,” they say. - If you feel like negative thoughts are dragging you down, switch to something constructive. Instead of thinking about a problem, solve it, take action.” Good advice, considering that physiologists know that mental activity cannot be stopped arbitrarily; it can continue even in sleep. And how to switch to solving a problem if you don’t even know what it is? In the case of a sound engineer, it is too abstract, the ways to solve it are not on the surface.
It turns out that everything that has been offered so far as a remedy for constant internal dialogue was only a pill that temporarily relieves the symptoms of the disease. One could only guess about the causes of the disease itself.
What is internal dialogue and how to overcome it?
Today, the reasons for this phenomenon are understood, and there are already practical results of this awareness, which are spoken about by people who have completed Yuri Burlan’s training.
Thoughts are not ours. They are created to serve desires. It is impossible to completely get rid of thoughts, just as it is impossible to get rid of desires. Man was created to enjoy the realization of his desires, and not to run away from them. This is the essence, the root of man.
For a sound engineer, thinking is a pleasure. It's made for this. Making him stop thinking is like talking yourself into giving up food forever. And if we consider that desire in sound far exceeds material desires in other vectors, then for him this is simply impossible.
Concentrating on breathing, white light or a mantra in order to stop the flow of thoughts is useless, because thoughts will still return to the desire that they are designed to serve - knowledge of oneself and the Universe. All attempts by visual gurus to replace the search for the meaning of life with various images on which it is proposed to concentrate do not give the sound artist true satisfaction, because knowledge of oneself and one’s purpose is achieved not by withdrawing from the world into the isolation of one’s own sensations and states somewhere in the depths of “nirvana”, but on the contrary, by focusing outside - on people and society, the entire integrity of the world and the fulfillment of one’s task in this world.
Sound needs to come out. Trying to answer the question “Who am I?” only within himself, he will never find the answer. His desire for mental activity must be directed in the right direction - to search outside, to create. In the professional sphere, this can be solving engineering, inventive, programming, scientific problems, introducing an intellectual component into any field of activity.
However, the power of desire in the sound vector is now so strong that even this will not be enough. A modern sound artist has few indirect fillers; today, every sound artist is required to fulfill the main task - self-knowledge, awareness of what we live as a mental species.
With the correct concentration of thought, focusing on the main thing and not the secondary, every sound artist feels incredible relief, begins to literally feel life, its meaning and significance, the meaning of oneself in this world. At the same time, we are solving the very problems that we do not know how to approach, and therefore we “cook” them within ourselves. The internal dialogue has nothing to base itself on, the endless conversation in the head becomes silent forever, giving way to creative, accurate and constructive thoughts.
You can check how this works at free training sessions on system-vector psychology.
