Repetative Thoughts

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I would like some clarity on what the experience on repetative thoughts is like. I thought it was simply thinking the same thought over and over again, but my therapist seems to be explaining something more complex. So I am confused.

I'm not sure what your doctor is describing, but my experience is I'll get something stuck in my head -

Like a word said a specific way (often something I like the sound of, or something in another language), a punchline to a joke, a line from a song, something someone said to me - it will repeat in my head in the voice of someone else who originally said or sung it, and there is nothing I can do to control what the repeating word or phrase might be or how long it stays with me.

It seems to repeat in the space that I would otherwise not be thinking about anything in, or its a sound that replaces or prevents me from thinking about anything else. In school it would happen a lot during tests or really boring classes, and you can see in the margins of my notes where I copied a line from a song or a word like "Mozambique" or "Je n'ose pas" or whatever over and over and over because it was repeating itself in my head. It also happens a lot when I'm exercising or trying to fall asleep. It is only a problem when it seems to overtake my thoughts when I really need my brain to be thinking about something else. During these times it might sneak in between thoughts - like I'll be talking to some one and during every pause I'll hear that phrase or song fragment. It is not like this all the time, but it does happen, and I've had one soundbite stay with me for a few weeks (it was a line from the Marilyn Monroe song 'Heatwave' that I only heard once on TV) to the point of almost driving me mad.

I don't know if this is anyone else's experience - frankly I never thought this was too terribly weird - but that's what I live with most of the time.

hayleylovesyou, you are describing an effect I experience 24/7 that I call "the jukebox". There is always a song or snippet thereof playing in my head. Furthermore, it is always an exact replication of the version of the song that "imprinted" in my mind, usually but not always the second or third time I ever heard the song. I also have repetitive thoughts, usually nubber sequences, or words or phrases in various languages. By the time I recognise that the thought is there, I totally have lost any connection to what triggered the thought in the first place.

Once I leave a state of concentration on something, I become aware of the thoughts. It has the same feeling as becoming aware of background music after a noisy group of people leave a place - you know that the background noise was there before, even if you are just becoming aware of it.

The precision of the musical recall is so precise that if I hear the same song altered even in the slightest it will scream out to my mind "no, that's not right!"

My experience is a lot like Melissa's. I get a line from a song stuck in my head and can't get it out. It happens several times a day, usually.

There is also something called "thought looping" where you go in circles, having the same series of thoughts over and over, without any resolution. This is common with AS and it's something I watch and try to stop, since it is not productive. Somehow, I can stop that but not the song lyrics.

I have trouble with this too.
When I become aware that I am thinking the same thought over and over I try to stop it. The other day I was very tired of it and yelled "NO!" in my head to get the thought to stop. It did work but it may be because I got involved in other thoughts.

repetitive thinking is the bane of my existence.

Same song, same tone in your voice. Tell me this isn't a dream.

Same words, this isn't the first time, as if I'm stuck in a loop.
I'm lost in sweet illusion, turning into sensation.

To quote what is currently my favourite song, and when I think about it, I hear it in the singer's voice and to the beat of the song... I am always playing a song, or at least a portion of one in my head. I also chose to quote this song because it describes what I am experiencing when I am listening to a song in my head.

Right now I have a 9 note melody which gets about 9/10th of the way to resolution and then repeats itself. My co-workers were listening to a bunch of stuff on the computer and it started to get to me. Of all the crap that was coming out, that one melody has stuck. I experience a lot of the things others describe here, except I don't get words or phrases stuck in my head that often (I'm not a highly verbal person to begin with). I often often often get a train of thought in my head which pertains to some philosophical argument that I was making and keep repeating the last part in my head over and over. It's not productive, but I somehow expect to get something new each time I repeat it. It gets so intense to the point that I get very stressed and often fall into a depression if it happens long enough. I've never given any of this much thought, but since it's brought up I should pay more attention to it.

Yes! Where have you guys been all my life!?

I actually have the jukebox almost 24/7, I just notice it more acutely when it is an oddly looped, short snippet of a song I don't care for or hardly recognize - and what is with the foreign words/phrases? So I speak French, that makes enough sense, but I'll get German, Italian (perse perchè! io! cinque!) Middle English (neorxenawange, anyone?), Arabic, Russian - all languages I very much don't speak - looping, too.

The worst is television lines, most currently all from Tina Fey, were I'll hear it in my head over and over, it will amuse me more than annoy me, then I'll of course eventually try to work it into a conversation without context (I sometimes actually forget people would have no idea about what I've been thinking about, sadly) ... usually with disastrous results. Like I want to remind you all to "never end a sentence with a preposition, at" and then be sad when you look at me weird instead of laugh.

Once I accidentally overheard a co-worker saying something vaguely cruel about me, so I tried to pretend it wasn't about me, but when I least expected it I'd hear her voice saying what she said over and over over the next few weeks, as if to remind me it was about me and to be careful.

Name a song, almost any popular pop song from the 50s to now, an entire broadway score, brooding rock, I can play it in my head and sing it to you back verbatim, and misquotes and covers generally upset me (unless they're awesome) ... and I'll probably either correct someone, or tell them how the song isn't right ... if I'm not paying enough attention to stop myself.

And a question, and I think someone kinda mentioned this - would having conversations in your head, reliving or rehashing old conversations or arguments that went wrong, having conversations as a sort of practice in case the real thing comes along, or having fantasy conversations just for fun since they'll never happen in real life - count as repetitive thinking in the "more complex" way?

What do NTs think about/hear in their mind's eye all day? Static? Crickets? Anything?

What is the song called that you speak of??

Deja vu, but it is not the other song with that title that is plastered all over the internet, it is a very hard song to get ahold of, can only get it legitimatelty off of itunes, and even then it is hard to find, as itunes only has it for certain countries... Limewire doesn't have it, I had to torrent it because there wasn't a legit, or even semi legit way to get it in Canada. If you want it I can email it to you. Beautiful song though, I have been listening to it for weeks now.

Heyley wrote:

The last part of your post made me laugh out loud. I hope you meant that joke to be as rich as I took it.

Anyway, regarding the complex version metioned by my therapist, I sort of took it as if the thought were an object in front of my eyes that would follow my vision (abstractly speaking, of course); that I could not let it go. So, although I sometimes have a world or tune stick in my head, the real repetative thoughts were the ideas or concepts I couldn't stop thinking about. I tend to like to be solving problems of various sorts in my head all of the time. So, the "object" of the problem (that is to say, the core of the problem), which keeps rearing its head, is the repetative thought... if I took his meaning correctly.


Edit: By the way, I'm stuck on the current problem of solving what repetative thoughts are.

Any NTs wanna answer this? I would love to know what background noise is always in an NT head.

Circular thoughts cause circular thoughts cause circular thoughts cause...

When I'm my most relaxed, like while trying to meditate, my mind comes up with the weirdest things. They're not repetitive thoughts, but there's the same obsessive fixation on the thoughts. The best way to describe them is essentially a commercial. I don't watch much tv, and I watch even less commercials. But the capacity for my mind to improvise a pitch for something I have very little interest or knowledge in is pretty amazing. Last night my mind was pitching something which had a bunch of cowboys in it.

Yeah, I get what you're talking about.
It's not repetitive thoughts so much as fixation.
When you are fixated (stuck) on something, you are repetitively thinking about it, but "repetitive thoughts" is not really the issue. I mean, I can repetitively think about my lunch, and how good it will taste when I eat it, but that's not a fixation.

Obsessively analyzing the patterns of the veins on a leaf is something I will fixate upon, and it certainly does involve the repetition of thoughts. Then I'm stuck. Time and space fade away and I get utterly lost in my thoughts unless something snaps me out of it.

Is this the sort of thing you are describing?