People with neurodivergences ranging from mild autism to major life-ruining conditions have been hearing “I don’t believe you, you’re just doing it for attention” forever, and that’s a crappy and potentially very harmful position for someone outside the situation to take.

I’ve never had an inner monologue and I’ve had a conversation with a friend (who has an inner monologue) about this. He said the same thing about “specialness”, but I don’t really understand why one would be more or less special than the other.

It’s just simply another way to be.

And to answer your question, I go with a list and go and look for what I wrote down. Usually it’s images that go through my mind rather than a structured sentence, which makes no sense to me - but I don’t think it’s unspecial or anything!

Do you see things in your brain?

And maybe reflect a little bit on why you immediately reject the experiences of others just because they differ from your specific one?

Fantastic attitude. Do you always discount things you’re too stupid to understand as lies or is this a special case?

While I have an inner monologue, I’m also able to shut it down and still think. The inner voice is likely an artefact of how we learn. So much learning is done by voice instruction that it becomes the default for most people.

I have a head voice, but not all the time, I see images, but not all the time, I can hear music in my head, most of the time.

When I write things down, I often speak the sentence in my head as I write it, but sometimes the words just fall out of me with no voice leading them

when im planning a food shop, I visualise the shop and walk around it in my head so I put the items I want in the right order on my list. When working out what i need it’s a combination of visualising the fridge/freezer and cupboards and physically looking in them to see what I have and then looking at my meal plan to see what I need. The meal plan i made by just sensing what im craving that week.

When I learn to play a song, I hear the music in my head and can sound that out to work out chords and melodies.

When I compose music, I can hear the next chord I want in my head and then have to sound that out on my instrument.

When I make silly videos to send to my family group chat, I think visually.

People are just different. If you struggle with that concept, then I feel sorry for you.

You say it’s for people to feel special, I say it seems to me that it’s more you feeling like you aren’t special because you wish you could think the way other people do.

In reality, it doesn’t matter how you think. I envy my wife as she is much smarter and more organised than me, but she can’t visualise anything or hear music in her head and thinks more systematically. She is jealous that I can do these things.

We both agree it’s silly.

When I used to come out of the closet as a teenager, this was a common response: “it’s not real” or “you’ve decided to do this”.

It didn’t occur to me I could have righteous indignation about it, but it did lead to me to a place where I’m still enthusiastically delighted/shocked/vindicated when straight people literally don’t care about gays, or aren’t disgusted by gays, or when they wish noncishet people happy anniversary.