I’m trying to figure out what’s happening to me and I’m not sure where to look.
For the last several years, whenever I listen to silence-filling noise (white, brown, pink, etc.) I tend to hear additional sounds. It’s like having your radio tuned to a MHz that’s just off a tiny bit, so you hear static but there’s just a slight edge of voices or something that you can’t quite make out but is definitely there. Sometimes, instead of voices, it’s also patterns in the noise or various pitches.
It happens in a variety of situations, like Youtube videos, audio tracks from meditation apps and noise generators, and even devices that have no audio input or antenna and are specifically for noise as you’d find in the waiting room of a massage clinic. It even happens when it’s a completely benign source like an air fan. And the sounds I hear match the volume of the source.
Do I have superpowers? A brain tumor? Am I just sensitive to imperfect wave form generation? Am I part-dog? Have I done damage to myself from listening to Metallica way too loud for too many years?
Where do I start looking into this? Does anyone have any possible explanations for what I’m experiencing that might lead me in the right direction?
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A bunch of posts are saying see a GP and/or Psychiatrist, and absolutely do that. But also make sure you have a working carbon monoxide detector in your home (you should have one anyway). This vaguely reminds me of that one Reddit post.
Carbon Monoxide poisoning will make you weak, dizzy, cause headaches, nausea, a whole slew of symptoms. It’s incredibly unlikely that the only symptom would be aural hallucinations while listening to white noise.
It’s still really good advice.
Sure, but people bring it up every time someone hallucinates or thinks they heard something that wasn’t there. Everyone should have a CO detector, absolutely. But because some guy correctly guessed it 9 years ago, based on the size of OP’s tiny 3’5" x 10’ bedroom, people think it applies to every post.
It’s indicative of lazy thinking. People remember that one tidbit from a Reddit post and then case closed.
zeroth of all, don’t ask randos on internet for medical advice. ask a doc about it if it’s distressing for you. this might be something as benign as normal reaction to sensory deprivation
Doctor. Could be tinnitus.
This is normal, I hear it too sometimes. Particularly when I’m laying with one ear covered so I’m hearing white noise while trying to fall asleep. Something about the mix of frequencies, part of them traveling through/bouncing off the walls and the pillow, and just getting older sometimes creates an illusion that a TV is on in the other room or someone is talking outside. Sometimes I’ll think my phone alarm is going off (I use internet radio for the alarm, so I never know specifically how it will sound), but then lift my head and my brain has enough info to determine it’s just noise.
Mild hallucinations are normal. It’s impossible for your brain to gather 100% accurate data, let alone process everything it is handed, so it hallucinates all the time in ways you don’t notice to fill in the gaps (ex. the large blind spot in your vision that your brain has learned to ignore). It’s only if it’s starting to cause you distress or cognitive dissonance that you should seek help. Ex. it’s one thing to hear a TV in the other room that’s not there, it’s another to conclude that your long-deceased grandfather must be watching TV and think that’s normal.
Check with a psychiatrist, who will know the right questions to ask in order to determine if there’s something to be concerned about.
But it’s also possible that your human brain is looking for patterns and creating them if it doesn’t find any.
It can also reflect stressors in your life. I sometimes “hear” the phone ringing or my husband calling me when I’m in the shower. Not surprisingly, I no longer hear a baby crying now that my kids are grown. That “white noise” has so many notes that your brain can easily find the ones it’s listening for.
Brother you must check with a psychiatrist. They can confirm whether these are just harmless pattern matching or symptoms of schizophrenia. Nobody here is qualified, and this is way too risky to leave unchecked.
If it’s changing, you might want to get a brain-scan, immediately.
No, it isn’t normal ( not for me, anyhow ), to the guy who said it is normal.
It’s not an ear thing, it is an auditory-processing thing, so it’s your brain that’s doing it.
The question is why it is doing it.
Perhaps it’s just fuzzy wiring, as most such cases likely are.
( synaesthesia is a case of weird wiring, and I’ve got that, but not in the normal way, not senses blurring into each-other, but rather my non-visual cognition being a kind of “blur” to those senses, so they mesh oddly )
But if it begins changing in either intensity or character, get a scan.
( I’m a braindamage survivor, and it takes decades to adapt to braindamage: prevention/avoidance is better than hating one’s life for decades, while being bullied by all who reject that it could still validly be a problem, and hold that one ought either force oneself into being an “acceptable” drugged psychiatric-zombie, and not “pretend” to be getting better, or one ought be able to be acceptable-pretence, just like Valid People™ are. )
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Probably just a minor processing error in your sound driver and nothing to worry about. I think I have had a similar experience with a particular white noise machine with hearing some slightly patterned sound when there wasn’t really a pattern. If it’s bothering you or increasing can’t hurt to go see a doctor (well can’t hurt too bad as long as you’re insured…) and get their input.
Brain can put its spin on perception, especially when tired or agitated, like, when anticipating something out of worry/fear (which can be somewhat subconscious).
But yeah having talk with a doctor is not a bad idea.
This is not something for Lemmy to solve. This is something for a psychiatrist to solve.
It’s a type of tinnitus. Learn about it.
https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/apophenia-audio-pareidolia-and-musical-ear-syndrome/
Thanks. Still not something for Lemmy to solve.
I disagree. I think humans are supposed to talk to each other, share experiences, and figure things out.
Yes, but we tend to suggest going to a professional when lives or health are at stake. This is why we use engineers to design bridges and not groups of well-meaning laypeople.
It’s pretty normal, brains try to meaning or something in its senses. Sometimes if you hear tapping you may start believing it’s the beat to a certain song. There is also of course that viral video that makes you hear “brainstorm” or “green needle” depending on which option you are mentally choosing.
If you expect to hear something you will hear it. There have been funny moments where I removed my earbuds, put them down, and I kept listening to the faintly playing music. I put them back in 30 seconds later and I realized they were muted the whole time
That’s a referral to a series of specialists and probably an MRI or two at minimum. Cancer is a deeply shitty way to die, go talk to your doctor ASAP.
Very unlikely any of those things happen, unlikelier that they need to.
See a doctor. Do it now. Not later. Nobody here will give you accurate medical advice. The underlying causes are diverse. You will not receive worthwhile medical advice without a proper diagnosis.
I would add that advising OP is the importance of seeing a doctor is also medical advice, subject to the same caveat about accuracy. A group of people telling them to see a doctor urgently could induce a harmful level of fear or anxiety. Anxiety is not warranted in this case, given that OP described the normal experience of auditory pareidolia to a T.
Don’t listen to this guy, go see a doctor. It’s probably nothing, but only a doctor can help you get diagnosed.
I’m not saying don’t go, just don’t work up much worry about it. (The doctor is going to explain it’s normal, too.)
dude your brain is doing a ton of things all the time youre not directly aware of. youre just accidentally being made aware of your brains background noise.
if it comes into focus (you can hear and understand sustained voices/noises) , see a doctor.
otherwise it seems like the normal background brain chatter ive dealt with my whole life.
Not to imply anything about your wellbeing, but “background brain chatter” you’ve dealt with your whole life could also be a symptom of something that’s still bottled up inside your brain. Even if you have if under control, you may want to mention it to your doctor next time you’re getting something checked out, just in case.
Stuff like this could be completely benign, but it’s worth making sure you’re not at risk of any serious complications. For instance, certain drugs have been known to expose symptoms in certain schizophrenia cases for people thst would’ve otherwise lived decades longer without any serious symptoms.
It’s probably nothing, but knowing it’s nothing is better than assuming it’s nothing.
ha, im old. ive made peace with most of my quirks. i consider myself one of the lucky ones with mildly enhanced awareness.
it kills me that all these religious wackjobs ‘trust their feelings’. dude, how can you trust a meat-chemical bag of bullshit? ours species motto is ‘to err is human’ but sure, your feelings for jesus means hes real.
Seriously, it’s never a bad idea to have a check-in with your doctor, but this is totally normal. Our brains are pattern-matching machines that try to make coherent sense of our sensory input, and do so overzealously. After all, we evolved this way because it’s better for survival to mistakenly hear a lion in the brush than to ignore the sounds of a lion that’s really there. That’s why we see a face in the moon, and Jesus on slices of toast.
It’s also the phenomenon behind those ghost-hunting shows. They put a recording device in an empty building, and our brains pick out “voices” from random static that it records.
It’s called auditory pareidolia, and here’s an article about it.
it’s never a bad idea to have a check-in with your doctor
Assuming medical visits are free and your doctor cannot make mistakes.
I knew a woman who went in for a colonoscopy, and then had a cascade of complications resulting from poor skill and bad decisions. She never left the hospital. She died in there, because the medical staff sucked at their jobs.
Well, if a neurologist orders a colonoscopy, the OP has big problems! Joking aside, sorry about your acquaintance, that stinks. In any case, “never hurts to” is a figure of speech, at least in my part of the world, which roughly implies, “you could do that, but in my estimation, it won’t help.”
Sometimes when i’m listening to music I’ll hear “Audio Jungle”
