Asklemmy

43397 readers

1001 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

136

What I should do about auditory "hallucinations" (lemm.ee)

submitted 7 months ago by starlord@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 10 points 7 months ago

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.