Is it true that up to half of people have no inner monologue? I investigated

S ometimes I like to start a column by asking myself: should this really be a column that will live on the internet forever, for all and sundry to see? Or is this really an airing of my many neuroses that is better shared privately, with a therapist?

Not infrequently the answer is the latter. But therapy is expensive and comment is free, so I’m afraid, dear reader, that you’re going to have to be my shrink today. And I’ll get straight into my issues: I have a voice in my head that won’t shut up.

Before you get too alarmed, the voice isn’t telling me to do dastardly things, or trying to convince me that I’m Jesus. It’s just a constant inner monologue. This inner voice isn’t a bad thing per se; often it’s useful, occasionally it’s entertaining. Sometimes it’s annoying as hell, though: it keeps me up at night replaying past conversations I’ve had and coming up with all the things I should have said. When things get stressful – and the world has been very stressful lately – then all this inner chatter can get very overwhelming.

Chances are you know exactly what I’m talking about, because you have an inner auditory narrator too. A lot of people do. I used to assume everyone in the world did until a tweet went viral a few years ago announcing that some people don’t. Now a variation of that tweet seems to go viral every year. “Yo wtf…just saw a stat that said only 30-50% of people have an internal dialogue,” one podcaster tweeted in 2022, for example. “There’s really 50%+ of the population out here walking around with NOTHING going on in their head?? Everything is starting to make much more sense.”

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