By Steve Taylor, Ph.D.

Guest writer for Wake Up World

When did the voice inside your head start talking? I became aware of mine at about the age of 15. Up till that point, I had been a very happy and carefree child, but in a short space of time, I became acutely self-conscious and socially awkward. There was a commentator inside my head, observing and criticizing my actions. My behavior could no longer be spontaneous or natural, because I was thinking too much. At night, I sometimes found it difficult to get to sleep, because there was so much “thought-chatter” inside my head.

In fact, “thought-chatter” is completely normal for human beings. Usually, whenever our attention isn’t occupied, a stream of mental associations flows through our minds — thoughts about the future or the past, fragments of songs or conversations, daydreams about alternative realities or friends or celebrities. Usually we call this mental activity “thinking,” but this isn’t really accurate. Thinking suggests something active, over which we have conscious control, but almost all of our thinking isn’t like this. It’s almost always random and involuntary. It runs through our heads, whether we like it or not. That’s why I prefer the term “thought-chatter.”

Real thinking is when we consciously use powers of reason and logic to evaluate different options, deliberate over problems, decisions, and plans, and so forth. We often like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, superior to animals because we can reason, but this kind of rational thinking is actually quite rare. And, in fact, thought-chatter makes it harder to use our rational powers, because when we do have issues to deliberate, it streams through our minds and diverts our attention.

Read the rest here: https://wakeup-world.com/2019/01/03/the-voice-inside-your-head/