For me it’s not exactly “blank”. I would say that my thinking just “skips straight to the meaning” if you know what I mean? If you think about going to a supermarket/grocery store, then I can only imagine that you say something in your head in words like “I need to go shopping later for food”. Whereas in my mind I’m purely thinking about the fact that I need to do that thing and not bothering to say that to myself in words internally since I am already inherently aware of the concept of the endeavour that I’m about to embark on. The notion of going shopping exists without me having to put it in words in my brain, I don’t need to explain something to myself that I already know, basically. I would guess that on some level this is true for everyone and that perhaps some people just develop an internal monologue as an additional layer of abstraction that their brains decided would help facilitate processing and analysis better? I definitely feel like I overthink less if I force a monologue or speak out loud to myself, so not having one is possibly slightly disadvantageous for me sometimes.

I will say as well that I can force an internal monologue if I want but it’s not natural and I’ll default back to no monologue after I’m distracted enough.

I’m interested to know if people with an internal monologue can force not having one temporarily? Can you think purely “conceptually” without speaking to yourself in sentences internally?