What I should do about auditory "hallucinations"

starlord@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 136 points –

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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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/

Never forget that we're doing incredibly complex audio signal processing with meat.

It's fatty jello that we electrified and tricked into believing in itself!

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.