Why do we get words or small phrases stuck in our heads over and over and over and over?

860 views

This is different than a song being stuck in your head. It could be a single word, or the ending of a sentence, etc. Why does it happen?

In: Other

30 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

[removed]

Anonymous 0 Comments

[removed]

Anonymous 0 Comments

[removed]

Anonymous 0 Comments

This happens to me when I’m running a fever, typically if it’s keeping me up late or wakes me up through the night. Ive always assumed it was more like the brain shorting out a little as it fights something.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If it’s OCD related, it’s because a circuit’s off switch is broken. The electrical pulse keeps going round and round because the brakes have broken on the track.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your brain is criss-crossed with little fleshy wires called “neurons” that carry electricity all around to different parts of your brain that do different tasks. If your brain has to do a certain task very often, it tries to get better at it making those “neuron” wires for that task stronger and more connected.

When you decide to say something, first the words (“verbal”) part of your brain picks the right phrase, then the neurons send that information to the talking (“motor”) part of your brain. In this way, the little neuron wires between your “verbal” and “motor” parts of your brain tend to pair up and get connected really well for words that you say all the time. This can happen between other parts of your brain too.

Now, sometimes those really good strong connections go into a feedback loop, and in order to prevent your brain from getting stuck in that loop, each time it repeats your brain forces the electrical neuron wire signals to get weaker. That means, the strong connection between “verbal” and “motor” get’s weaker for a little while. This makes you feel like you are saying that word or phrase, but you can think of what it means. This is known as “semantic satiation”.

But then! ANOTHER part of your brain sometimes gets activated and sucked into the problem. It’s not really a ‘part’ of your brain, but more like a habit your brain has to want to finish tasks that it started. Your brain doesn’t want to leave a job half-done; it wants to finish. Sometimes, when “semantic satiation” is happening, your brain thinks it is an unfinished task, but it can’t finish because it can’t connect to the “verbal” part of your brain to find the meaning of the phrase. So, your brain tries to start the task over again, hoping that it can trigger those strong connection “neuron” wires by following the same pattern from the beginning. But it keeps failing and so it starts over and over again.

Now, the CRAZY thing is that this can happen completely inside your head without you ever saying it out loud.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m not an expert at psychology or the behaviors of the brain, but I was able to address this behavior in myself a few years ago. In addition to repeating items in my head, I also had rapidly increasing anxiety and frustration as each day progressed. It was inexplicable and for someone with a pretty chill attitude and life, I was distressed.

I then remembered how I managed my time in college and at my first desk jobs. I would write down the items I’d been repeating in my head, and tasks that I was working hard to remember, thus popping up throughout the day. The simple act of taking out a notebook, drawing a horizontal line, and writing the thing in my head, enabled me to clear that task from my mental checklist. I keep the notebook by my work computer, so there’s no chance of losing it or misplacing it.

I don’t know the particulars, but I think humans are wired with a limited number of “high priority items”. When you get more than that number, your anxiety increases as you actively try to remember everything. Silly words, phrases, or even songs, can take up one of those slots, involuntarily.

When I get a song stuck in my head, I go on Spotify, find the artist, song, year of publication, and associated albums and songs. I write a line on my notepad about the song and move on to other tasks. Often, this act satisfies the ear worm as my subconscious knows that I don’t have to remember anything about that song anymore.

When I have a word or phrase in my head, I write it down, when I last heard it, and why I care about it (or whether or not I care at all about it).

Again, I don’t know the reason for this, but I’ve always felt that it was because I wanted to remember the word to use it again…or share a phrase with my wife or family member, or look up the song at a later time, or some other subconscious desire. My mind repeats it to avoid having it forgotten, and trying to stop remembering never works. I write it down. My brain knows where to find it in the future, my anxiety disappears, and I move on with my day. Hell…I think I would have exploded in 2020 if I hadn’t learned to do this…

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your brain uses different parts and different amounts of energy to process words versus syllables. Processing a phrase as simply words takes more energy, so when you repeat a word or phrase over and over your brain gets tired and begins to process it as syllables, which has rhythm and musicality!

Then it’s much like when you have a song stuck in your head.

Edit: here’s an example here: http://philomel.com/asa156th/mp3/Sound_Demo_1.mp3

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have had this happen way too many times. I couldn’t say the word wool for 2 years after thinking it on repeat so long I lost all pronunciation of it.

I think it’s more of a twitch/obsession. Right now mine is “ok,” and “alright” – I think it’s soothing to the mind somehow where you get to fixate on one thing and maybe distract from another (even though it’s extremely annoying and frustrating in the long run).

Anonymous 0 Comments

Discaimer: this is not medical advice, I am not a doctor.

If you find that your thoughts repeat themselves over and rarely stop on their own, you might have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

An obsession is an repeated thought that is involuntary or unwanted. A compulsion is an action or behavior that you feel that you *must* do. Obsessions typically cause some sense of anxiety or just bad feelings in a person with OCD and performing the compulsion temporarily relieves this anxiety. Over time, performing the compulsion becomes less relieving and the person must have to complete more intense activities to achieve the same degree of relief. This can lead the person to spend debilitating amounts of time performing rituals.

When you get a phrase stuck in your head, does it feel a little uncomfortable? Does it feel a little less uncomfortable when you say the phrase out loud? Or maybe when you write the phrase down?