Me, myself and I?

Random question, do you have an internal voice/monologue/dialogue? If yes, do you refer to yourself in first person singular (I), first person plural (we), second person (you), third person singular (she/he, name specific), third person plural (they)?

I'm interested to see what people say as there seems to be a spread amongst my friends.

Parents
  • This is a great question! I switch between these depending on the situation or thought. Most commonly I'd say I use the first person singular. I'll use a mix of "I" and "we" if i'm trying to stoke myself up to doing something (e.g. "I/We can do this!"). Now that I think of it, I tend to use second person "you" mainly only if I'm criticising myself (e.g. "You're so stupid/You need to do better/ You've screwed up") which i find interesting actually. I rarely use third person or name specifically. 

    Thanks for this question it's really got my mind thinking!  

  • I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with it all now, I think I may be thinking about thinking to much Joy

    Personally, I appear to mostly go with "we", though an occasional "you" slips in for the self critical thoughts much like you. I'm now wondering whether the pluralism of thought means anything.

    Joy

  • It's really fascinating isn't it? Recently i'v been looking into a lot of psychology stuff (started from my own therapy work) about things called schema modes. Basically at any one point we can switch between different "modes" characterised by types of thoughts, feelings and behaviours, such as "healthy adult", "critical parent", "vulnerable child", "healthy child" amongst others. Maybe these could be seen as different facets of our "self". So maybe when we are thinking in "we" terms, it's we in terms of all of these different selves that make up our whole self. 

    Apologies if none of that makes sense, I just find it really interesting. 

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  • It's really fascinating isn't it? Recently i'v been looking into a lot of psychology stuff (started from my own therapy work) about things called schema modes. Basically at any one point we can switch between different "modes" characterised by types of thoughts, feelings and behaviours, such as "healthy adult", "critical parent", "vulnerable child", "healthy child" amongst others. Maybe these could be seen as different facets of our "self". So maybe when we are thinking in "we" terms, it's we in terms of all of these different selves that make up our whole self. 

    Apologies if none of that makes sense, I just find it really interesting. 

Children