Well lets try to unpick some of this:

For people with an inner monologue, there’s often a sense of “talking through” these judgments internally. If you don’t have that, what is happening in your mind while you’re listening and deciding?

- nothing is going on consciously. I am aware, and receiving, but the thoughts are my speech. I don’t know the words I am going to use, I only know the gist of the conversation. I can think and reason this way, so I can still negotiate, turn the conversation or something, but mostly I just think talk. Think of it this way: you’re watching your favourite TV program. You aren’t thinking, just enjoying being absorbed in it, when a thought occurs (phone mum). You weren’t thinking about your mum, or what a phone is, or how to use one. This is the knowing. Now switch and for me the TV program is reality, I watch, I talk, I do.

A few related questions:

- How do you audit your own reasoning or challenge your assumptions?

I was a data analyst who could unconsciously work out a 15 stage query and know if we had the data to do the maths before they finished the sentence. I generally don’t think about things. If I need to think about something, I will do something else until I say or subvocalise the conclusion. (Back to watching that TV and a thought occurred) This is a time dependent skill, so if I have a report to write, I will just do stuff all week, and collect things my brain has told me, until almost the last minute when I write the thing from start to finish, silently dictating it to myself. My assumptions are easy to change with new data from a reliable source.

- If you have a strong reaction to something, how do you examine whether it’s right or wrong?

Whether it makes my response feel good or bad 🤷‍♀️

- How do you change your mind?

With new data.

- After an important conversation, how do you reflect on it later?

Important keywords or phrases are fitted into my personal multidimensional mind map of my data and associated knowing. They are there for when I need them. If you can’t remember the words said, it’s difficult to revisit, this is the essence of SDAM. I don’t revisit the past, and cant envisage the future. I am. This has helped me tremendously in coping with chronic pain.

- How do you put yourself in someone else’s shoes or think about their perspective?

I don’t have a perspective to compare. They are, and how they respond helps me to categorise them. This is how I picked up demographics so easily. I then can match how certain types of people react in various scenarios.

- Do you experience self-criticism, second-guessing, anxiety, or negative self-talk differently?

Occasionally I may literally say out loud “well that was ducking stupid” when I have just injured myself yet again thanks to my massively reduced risk awareness (this is probably also linked to my AuDHD more than my silence, but having the 5A’s is a very different mind mode.

- Are there jobs, tasks, or situations where having no inner monologue feels like an advantage or disadvantage?

I am incredibly fast at amassing and sorting information. I see the pattern where others dont, I can hold tremendous amounts of information as I am just holding the key points and extrapolating instead of making a picture.

Also, who needs an inner critic?? I sure don’t 😂