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?
It is called Auditory Pareidoilia.
Everyone is telling you that you are schizophrenic and it is very sad because they are absolutely wrong.
It is normal and common to hear additional sounds that don’t exist in white noise.
Read about it here:
https://www.tmsoft.com/blog/why-you-may-be-hearing-phantom-sounds/amp/
https://thedebrief.org/auditory-pareidolia-the-voices-in-your-head-may-have-a-rational-explanation/
https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/apophenia-audio-pareidolia-and-musical-ear-syndrome/
It is a totally normal function of a totally normal brain. What is NOT normal is for it to drastically change in adulthood. That could suggest a change to the part of the brain responsible which should be checked out.
If you read the post carefully you’d see that OP says they have had this for several years. It is in the first sentence of the second paragraph.
Can confirm I have this with White Noise, especially when i combine it with another ambient sound, thought I was going crazy when I started sleeping with an air purifier in my room till i realized what was going on.
Yeah. Still see a doctor, because it’s new, but I’m guessing the doctor will just say “huh, keep an eye on that”.
Schizophrenia can have early warning signs, but going there right away has “it’s always cancer” energy.
If you read the first sentence of OP’s second paragraph, you’ll see that they say they have had this for several years.
Sure. I meant new in the sense of it hasn’t always been this way, it changed in adulthood. I don’t know, I’d mention it to my doc.
See a GP
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. )
_ /\ _
Ignore any advice here except “go to a doctor”
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.
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
What about when wearing (really good) noise cancelling head phones? Everything you’ve mentioned is when there is some sort of noise going on, but it’s it also happening with everything cancelled out? A few people have pointed out Auditory Pareidoilia which is your brain trying to find words/pattern/meaning in the noise it is hearing, but is it also doing that when the only sound it can hear is it’s own blood whooshing though your veins, which it should be used to? What about in a sensory deprivation tank?
There’s Hearing - which is what the all the tiny bits of your ears connected to the nerves do, then there’s Perception - which is how your brain interprets the information it receives from the nerves connected to your ears and puts it back together. Basically, your brain is working overtime to try to figure out why you are listening to the noise you are listening to. As long as it’s only happening in those situations described and, as others have said, it’s not voices telling to do anything.
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.
Wow, lots of comments.
Before having read any replies, I’d already scheduled a doctor visit. Tinnitus being my first guess. Still, it’s limited to specific circumstances, and I have near-perfect pitch, so I thought maybe my mind was simply consuming/interpreting additional data. Still, it will be investigated.
I found the Schizophrenia comments… interesting, because it does run in the family. I will make sure the physician is thorough and considers all possibilities.
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.”
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.
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…
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.
If you smoke or otherwise consume marijuana, it can cause auditory hallucinations.
I’m not sure I experience exactly what you describe - I’d describe what I hear as a radio just barely audible in the background. I only experience it when I’m about to fall asleep or supposed to be getting up.
Ten or so years ago after a really long day of school I flopped down in bed and noticed it and I made a conscious decision to listen rather than move. Ever since it happens a couple times a month now. I’ve never found it concerning and it’s maybe almost comforting, like, “oh, that thing is back.”
It’s exactly like a soft radio where you’re only catching bits and pieces of what’s being said. Sometimes I recognize unusual words I heard from that day, the voices are distinct and can be female or male. I can’t decide if I can influence what’s being said or not. I do think the harder I pay attention the more coherent things start to sound.
My feeling is that bits of what I’ve heard throughout the day, or maybe longer, are getting played back to me. But I’ve never recognized any of the voices of heard anything said that I could identify as verbatim from the day.