I have always had an internal voice like a narrator in my head of my own voice

My friend is bipolar and adhd also.

He has the voice and constantly talks to himself using different voices, he makes up his own songs and repeats phrases a lot. 
I don’t see him much anymore but we both had a great way of communicating and entertaining each other. I miss our deep and crazy conversations.

I'm constantly under pressure, when driving, due to the negative critical voice in my head.

So generally are we saying that NT’s don’t self talk or have I misunderstood that? I have had my own voice in my head for as long as I can remember. This is usually re runs of past events and going through a story of what may happen at a social event or get together. As Rainbow said it’s my voice but in my head. I am alone most days when at work and very often talk to myself a lot. I’m just wondering if I’m actually having a conversation with that internal voice now. Think I must look into this and pay a bit more attention. The voice is very repetitive as well which can be annoying and can get stuck on the same thing for quite some time. I do the same with music I like all the time, I will play over and over until I’ve exhausted myself and then I can move on.

Several times Co in my whole life I heard some sort of voice in my head, that was inside (I’m aware of that) but I felt it like coming from outside. Interrupting my thoughts and talking to me. These were short moments, during which I heard and saw and also felt events that did not happen yet. They happened later. In autumn 2018 I saw something that I described as dead cities. There was no sign of war, no damages to the buildings, no blood, no weapons. Everything was closed. Empty streets. I got scared, I already knew that if I see and feel such things, probably something gonna happen. I asked myself, is it gonna be apocalypses or what? Then I heard that voice telling me, that these events may affect my ability to graduate. I was lucky to graduate in February 2020 just two weeks before the lockdown. Am I Crazy? There were much more visions or strange things I perceived somehow and they happened. Mostly related to me personally or someone who I know. Sometimes it happens that I meet a person at work and I get a feeling about their future. And later it happened. For me it’s hard to believe in such things but unfortunately I have no explanation. I’m probably psychically sick. 

I agree Neil, I wonder how people process their thoughts, without self talk? Do they not mentally repeat the steps needed to complete a new task that they've learnt or are learning how to do?

I don't think it's a sign of a schitzoid illness, not always, anyway, although they can be, I think it depends on whether the hearer precives them as coming from outside of the self, that tends to be more problematic than when you know they come from within the self. I've spoken to many people who've been worried sick by their self talk, afraid they've got a serious mental illness. But even if the voices are percieved as coming from outside the self it dosen't automatically mean that "it's bad", the person could be a medium or something similar? I know the purely scientific among you will start jumping up and down, but it does happen and some people genuinely do pick up on things outside of "normal" perception.

I usually do that with negative things, stuff I thought about that ended up a worry or if I've  come to the conclusion something bad would happen.

Rumination/perservative thoughts they seem to be called. It's almost the same unstoppable worry pattern as OCD.

The most shocking thing to me - more shocking than the possibility that there may be alien life out there - is that there are people who do *not* have an internal monologue. I can't wrap my head around that. I spend every day (and most of the night) bickering with myself and over-analysising and ruminating and conjuring the worst and the best case scenarios. Being autistic is exhausting.

I have at some point irritating repetitive thoughts. They are often some scenarios, I imagine a conversation with someone about a topic I would like to discuss or about my interests with some famous person who I would like to meet and talk to. So first second and third time it goes in my head - it’s ok, I like it. But later the repeat repeat repeat repeat… it’s irritating. I tell my brain : stop! It’s enough! The answer: no! Not enough! Play again! A psychiatrist offered me some neuroleptics with serious side effects for that (lactation or weight gain). So I decided to fight the thoughts alone. And whenever I get distracted in the middle of the scenario (by barking dog for example) - it starts again. Otherwise I think such inner voice is just normal. My thoughts often repeat for days and weeks till my brain something else to chew 

TheCatWoman said:

normal, if your self talk starts to become destructive, asks you to build it an ark or murder prostitutes or the like then worry.

My inner voice is more likely to tell me to eat crisps 

Self talk, everyone has an inner narrator/critic/etc. You're not mad, you don't have some hard core mental illness, you're just normal, if your self talk starts to become destructive, asks you to build it an ark or murder prostitutes or the like then worry.

When very stoned at uni, I had an inner David Attenborough explaining the exploits of me and my group of friends, like one of his nature documentaries, but for an alien audience! It was quite fun.

I thought most people had an internal inner voice, not just autistic people.

I can “talk” inside my head but it’s a bit more complicated than that - my thoughts aren’t verbal, they’re silent and atomic, non-linear, and there are lots of them overlapping all the time.

Converting a given thought to linear language is what makes talking so tiring for me and why i prefer written communication - I get more time to do the conversion.

I have a constant inner voice sometimes helpful sometimes not. It is always chattering about something unless I can hyperfocus or distract it with audio visual stimuli. That why I need meds to sleep.

That's interesting! Yes, I can switch to faster visual processing, or a mix of both. Words do slow things down, I think that can sometimes be a useful thing and sometimes not so much.

AuTriker said:

Do you not have an inner monologue then Iain?

My brain will interprit what I read with a similar experience to hearing someone say it if that is what you mean but when working on projects, assessing a problem etc my mind works much faster than the speed of speech so it stops and a very different, more visual representation of issues begins to form in my mind.

I find this great for working on very complex situations or where there is too much "wordiness" to deal with - I guess something a bit like in the film Minority Report where they are working with touch screens and moving info around.

Changing from the voice to more visual thinking also helps a lot in getting to sleep as I can visualise scenes that are much more relaxing.

I do also read a lot - I'm reading 200-300 pages a day at the moment, mostly fantasy (Brandon Sanderson at the moment) as this is one of my favourite genres.

Oh, I'd never considered if it contributed to fatigue! Hmmm....

OK, thanks. I do think there is a difference between hearing voices/auditory hallucinations and having an inner monologue (I had to google it! Apparently many people do have an interior monologue, but only between a quarter and a half of people depending on source. And there are plenty of examples in literature, which would be why I thought it was normal.)

With an inner monologue, one is aware that it is oneself, it is like talking to yourself but not out loud, where with the hallucinations one thinks it is coming from somewhere else, outside oneself. It sounds to me more like the OP (original poster) has an inner monologue which never shuts up rather than it being auditory hallucinations, but she might clarify that.

For myself it's like when I am reading, it seems like my inner voice is reading aloud to me in my head, though if I skim read I skip that part and sometimes it is a mix of both ways of reading. So when I compose a reply I think the words to myself then type them. Then when I am just thinking, it is usually in words like that, but not always. It's not always a narrator as such, like I am not thinking, 'now I am typing, now I am pausing to think' it's a bit weird trying to define it! I shall stop trying as I may be going off topic a bit too...

Do you not have an inner monologue then Iain?

I’ve always had this, I thought everyone else did as well. It’s one of the reasons I’m never lonely when alone.

AuTriker said:

I am surprised you think it is bipolar?

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/hearing-voices-with-bipolar-disorder/

The worst part of this is not knowing how long it will go on for, and knowing I can’t escape it.

The fact that Rainbowgirl cannot shut it off may suggest this is a bipolar trait or possibly schizophrenia (this also has a high association with autism).

The auditory hallucinations are called psychosis and it depends on the interaction with them that can point to bipolar. Hopefully the link above may provide some additional guidance, but a professional with a specialism in the field is worth consulting with once it begins to cause problems.

There is a rather heavy going article into the subject here that explains it in more depth:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../

Yes I basically have the same thing. I wonder does it contribute to my chronic fatigue, that I'm structuring nuanced internal sentences more or less continually. When I sporadically talk aloud when in private/alone it's often a way to let that inner voice out. And I notice that I'll often say something like 'Now, what were we supposed to be doing', or 'where were we?' - as though talking to another person... who's me. 

Huh? You mean it's not normal? I kind of always assumed everyone had it actually, but it seems not. And some autistic people don't think in words at all (Temple Grandin for example) but I am surprised you think it is bipolar?