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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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.
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
Stimulant use?
Sometimes the white noise videos on YouTube actually have people in then and noises in the background. Some are actual airplane engines.
Also I don’t doubt many are looped, so hearing a repeating pattern would make plenty sense…
See a GP
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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.
As said by others; see a physician, then a psychiatrist (in that order).
Auditory pseudo-hallucinations may be completely benign, especially if you’ve partaken in psychedelic substances recent or long since past, but they may also be an early warning sign of (like you said) potential pressure on the brain or abnormality in brain functioning.
And even that might be fine.
Either way, why gamble? Go see a doctor.
Hey there. I experience the same thing. The voices, the music, in the white noises around me.
I’m not schizophrenic (or at least I hope not). It is a weird phenomenon that some of us experience that seems to be our brains trying to match important patterns, like speech, out of noise.
Heck, Devin Townsend even wrote a song about it “Voices in the Fan.”
If it’s really bothering you or scaring you then, yeah, you could seek help, but if you’re not experiencing auditory hallucinations outside of this context then my completely unqualified opinion is you’re probably fine.
It’s this:
https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/apophenia-audio-pareidolia-and-musical-ear-syndrome/
People in this thread think they are psychiatrists.
Thanks for finding this.
Hevy Devy +1
Probably just your brain being creative and trying to make up stuff to entertain itself. I wouldn’t worry about auditory hallucinations unless they happen to you in times of silence. Like if it was dead silent and you hear Captain Hook talking but he’s not there, that’s a problem.
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.
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.
You should go see a psychiatrist if you can. This definitely sounds like early schizophrenia and a lot of people ignore the early signs before it’s too late. With medications a normal life is possible so don’t worry. But let a psychiatrist make the actual diagnosis
This was my first thought, too.
This is not schizophrenia. It is a common occurrence and a type of tinnitus.
https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/apophenia-audio-pareidolia-and-musical-ear-syndrome/
Yeah this is why a real psychiatrist should diagnose it to make sure, better to see a doc and not lemmy
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.”
As many said before here, if you’re concerned go see a professional. But overall this sounds like your brain is just very keen on doing its pattern matching thing.
I think the most important aspect is whether you’re “suffering” from this or whether you just notice it from time to time and can shrug it off. If it’s the later, I’d keep an eye (or ear?) on it, but not worry about it too much.
