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Marybird
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21 Feb 2013, 12:12 am

I get words and phrases in loops in my head or mumble words, I move my mouth but hardly any sound comes out. I don't want to count them, thinking about it breaks the chain, but just a few, or maybe more. It depends. When I am out I have music in my head or humming and at the same time I have movements with my fingers and hands and nodding my head and sometimes I mumble in a whisper to myself. I have a lot of rhythm. It's not annoying, I like it. If I stop it, I can't think. I feel like I loose myself and I may stop breathing.



CyborgUprising
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21 Feb 2013, 5:53 pm

Yes - quite often.



LostInEmulation
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21 Feb 2013, 7:21 pm

constantly.


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HauntedKnight
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22 Feb 2013, 9:18 am

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has this. I tend to latch onto 'interesting' or unusual words or phrases, and then break them down into their individual letters, and into their syllables.

I've presumed it was my version of stimming, I'm lucky I can keep it inside my head, and it only tends to occupy my thoughts when I'm not concentrating on anything else.

I also get the same bits of music going over and over in my head. It's annoying when it's a rubbish song, so I try to overwrite it with a Bob Dylan song instead when this happens :).



alpineglow
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22 Feb 2013, 9:31 am

I do this unintentionally all the time. The phrases can be from a song or a conversation or from a book. I have trained myself not to say them out loud because that kind of locks them into place, if that makes sense, and it gets annoying. If I switch to another one sometimes it can help erase one that is bothering me. This is especially true with music. So I guess over the years I have not ever gotten rid of it but can control it a little.



CyborgUprising
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22 Feb 2013, 4:57 pm

For the past 5 weeks, the phrase "tighter than a turtle's pecker" has been going through my mind. A coworker said this after I showed him how tight the seal rings on some parts (transmission shafts) were becoming.



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23 Feb 2013, 7:01 am

rastiazul wrote:
y0
who does this?

i find myself repeating phrases over and over again in my mind, sometimes is hard to stop, can be any phrase , important or not, i dont know how my brain chooses them, maybe its random
i want to know if there is a name for this, i searched online and found something similar but it was verbal

how to stop it? is stressfull


OMG yes. It drives me bonkers. It drives other people around me bonkers when it's 1-3 lines of a song that I keep humming... With that it's an easier fix though as I'll just over-listen to the song until it wipes from my mind. Sometimes thats the only way to ditch it.



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23 Feb 2013, 7:26 am

Eloa wrote:
It's a vague theory, but could it possibly be a sort of "mental stimming"? To me it feels like that.


I concur. Most of the time I'm repeating numeric sequences without stop. Occasionally there are phrases that repeat too. If I'm in a stressful encounter with something/someone I can be repeating very fast 1 2 3 4 5, 1 2 3 4 5, 1 2 3 4 5, 1 2 3 4 5 in my head until the stress stops.

Occasionally music gets stuck in a loop or more annoyingly catchphrases from adverts.


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Jinks
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23 Feb 2013, 7:46 am

Eloa wrote:
I have it with music in my head, I can keep on "hearing" the same piece of music. There is a waltz from Chopin for example which "accompanies" me now for several years.
It happens especially when I have for example to go downtown, because I have to go and buy clothes or anything and to me it feels like a "protection" from all the stimuli in this big city with all that people and sounds and movements and colors, because I have severe sensory issues.

It's a vague theory, but could it possibly be a sort of "mental stimming"? To me it feels like that.


I also have this issue and agree with the "mental stimming" - reading this topic I actually wonder how this has been missed in the diagnosis criteria, I think it's probably just as significant as the physical stimming. I wonder if it develops in some of us because we are taught that most physical stimming is annoying/unacceptable to others. As an adult all of my stims are "invisible" to other people because they are either things I can do without anyone noticing or things going on in my head, because of the way people responded to the ones they could see.

I would really like for my "mental music stims" to be Chopin waltzes, but actually they are usually children's songs! They seem to be the songs I memorised in early childhood (I was good at that) which have stayed in my head ever since. I often find myself humming "The Grand Old Duke of York" or "How Much Is that Doggy In the Window" or "There Once Was A Windmill" without realising I'm doing it and it's a good thing I live alone because that kind of thing could get very embarrassing very quickly! I also have random little tunes which will repeat themselves which I think I made up. I often find myself humming those too. Actually, I guess humming is also one of my stims, but it's kind of only the result of the mental ones.

I do sometimes do it with phrases - often words or phrases will come into my head and I will find myself turning them over and over, especially if I'm not paying attention - but my repetition is most often musical.

I remember when I was a kid, especially when I was just going to sleep, I would hear lists numbers in my head going by very very fast. I tried to explain it to my mother and she had no idea what I meant. Perhaps that was the same thing, though I don't hear numbers any more.



TallyMan
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23 Feb 2013, 9:50 am

Jinks wrote:
Eloa wrote:
It's a vague theory, but could it possibly be a sort of "mental stimming"? To me it feels like that.


I also have this issue and agree with the "mental stimming" - reading this topic I actually wonder how this has been missed in the diagnosis criteria, I think it's probably just as significant as the physical stimming. I wonder if it develops in some of us because we are taught that most physical stimming is annoying/unacceptable to others.


That is the origin of my inward stimming. When I was around 5 years old I was picked on because I used to flap my arms up and down against my sides and one day I discovered I could substitute the physical stimming with mental stimming... counting or creating geometrical shapes in my mind.


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kouzoku
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23 Feb 2013, 10:20 am

This is almost constantly happening to me. For example, one day I was working on this Korean guy's account (I'm an accountant) and since then (about 2 weeks), I have been repeating his name over and over in my head and out loud when I'm alone. I really like the sound his name makes and it brings up beautiful abstract images in my head. All words and numbers evoke visual imagery from my brain.

I also do this with words that rhyme. I cannot tell you how many times I tell my cat that she's an "itty bitty pretty kitty" over and over. If she were human, she would have murdered me by now. :lol:

Sometimes the compulsion to say whatever is repeating in my mind out loud is very severe. So I have to consider things like, "If I say it, will my best friend think I'm bizarre?" Yes, I actually think it through! :roll: lol Luckily, she's got her own quirks and is a linguist (THANK GOD) so I can get away with it if it's a language thing. :D

I actually like this about myself. I guess because it's an extremely simplistic form of appreciation and even though I can rarely express myself using words, words on their own can make me joyous.



jk1
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23 Feb 2013, 10:27 am

I think my OCD makes me do it. It can be very stressful to the point where my scalp and forehead start tingling. There are days when I start it right when I wake up till I go to bed. The whole day gets wasted in that way. I just can't stop it. I don't know if this is the same as what the OP (from long ago) and the others are describing.



7balloons
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25 Feb 2013, 9:20 pm

I do this with sentences and names of songs.



mmonroe
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27 Feb 2013, 12:42 am

I've done this my entire life. I repeat patterns of numbers, words, phrases, and/or tunes over and over in my head. When it's numbers and phrases I will accompany them with tunes. Sometimes I end up humming the tunes or singing the patterns out loud. And sometimes I actually take these patterns and write entire songs around them, but that happens at night/early morning when I'm trying to go to sleep.

It is definitely mental stimming for me, because it happens more when I'm experiencing sensory overload and it helps to calm me down.



mikassyna
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27 Feb 2013, 12:30 pm

As a kid I had a problem of repeating things in my head too. Also, I would often repeat the last word of any sentence that I would say, very quietly, over and over, just like an echo, under my breath. I made sure nobody would notice it, but I would do it. I don't remember what age or for how long it lasted.
I would also have screaming arguments in my brain that were plain terrible. I was yelling at such anger at myself for being/acting stupid/moron/(expletives). I couldn't shut it off and caused me great distress. I was very self-hating.



Wycca
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27 Feb 2013, 12:53 pm

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that does this. When I was little I used to spell out sentences in my head usually multiple times before I realized what I was doing. It was usually after stressful conversations so I really think it was a kind of mental stimming for me.

Now a days it's usually just repeating phrases or parts of a song until I realize I'm doing it and make myself stop. Though I have had whole songs stuck in my head for days at a time before. One time I had 'It sure is Monday' on repeat in my mind and when I started humming it on friday a couple of my co-workers started giving me odd looks. :oops: