Nonpsychotic Hallucination

[Ohgodspiders]

I came here because I have a general interest in Psychology (currently planning on getting my doctorate in the field)

However, before I can set my life in line, I have to deal with a serious problem

I suffer from Nonpsychotic Hallucinations, AKA Pseudohallucinations. Each day I have to deal with songs, of any genre, any volume, any level of repeatedness, blaring inside my head that make it absolutely impossible to concentrate. It forces the world around me to be completely tuned out because the music engulfs my thoughts

I need serious help: I only see my current psychologist once every month or so, maybe twice if I'm lucky. Thus far there hasn't been too much progress, it's still horribly handicaping my thoughts.

I need to know what's causing this and I need to know that if anyone else knows what's going on, what I can do to deal with it.

[Stressed_Out]

Hey

I love your user name. Is it like when you get a song stuck in your head? You say they have different volume? That sucks man. From reading, it seems to be related to obsessive compulsive disorder. I have no proof but I hear cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the better solutions for this.

[SWM]

Hey! ohgodspiders greets  

that is a cool name.

i dont know what solutions there are for the problem you are having but it does not sound like OCD to me.
i would like to understand your expereinces if you are willing to discuss them with me. i have experienced something similar to what you describe but mine where psychotic hallucinations, i would hear music being played in my head and what sounded like radio broadcasts. at times due to my paranoia i believed they where put into my head by some other entity or organisation for a variety of reasons. i dont believe that now, but i have never come to a reaonable explanation for the expereinces.  
 
i now think that they may have been re-eperiencing of content from my memory, but this is just me guessing.

do you have anything similar experiences or ideas about them?

in order to understand how they affect you, are there times or places when your hallucinations are more of a problem or times/places when you have no problem with them.

to understand your understanding of yourself. what beliefs do you hold about the location and source of consciousness? do you believe that you are confined to your body for this lifetime and when the body dies you consciousness dies with it?

edit:

ps are you male/ female, and age range.

might sound odd but these are significant factor in terms of psychological development

[Ohgodspiders]

Hey! ohgodspiders greets  

that is a cool name.

i dont know what solutions there are for the problem you are having but it does not sound like OCD to me.
i would like to understand your expereinces if you are willing to discuss them with me. i have experienced something similar to what you describe but mine where psychotic hallucinations, i would hear music being played in my head and what sounded like radio broadcasts. at times due to my paranoia i believed they where put into my head by some other entity or organisation for a variety of reasons. i dont believe that now, but i have never come to a reaonable explanation for the expereinces.  
 
i now think that they may have been re-eperiencing of content from my memory, but this is just me guessing.

do you have anything similar experiences or ideas about them?

in order to understand how they affect you, are there times or places when your hallucinations are more of a problem or times/places when you have no problem with them.

to understand your understanding of yourself. what beliefs do you hold about the location and source of consciousness? do you believe that you are confined to your body for this lifetime and when the body dies you consciousness dies with it?

edit:

ps are you male/ female, and age range.

might sound odd but these are significant factor in terms of psychological development

I am a male, currently age 18. I'm also autistic, but not what most people would think of when they think of autism. I'm on the very low-severity section of the spectrum. Psychologist states that there's only a few things that barely tie me to Asperger's Syndrome.

It's strange: I almost believed that my psychologist is correct (he still might be, I've only barely touched the psychology iceberg.), but the music doesn't just happen when I'm stressed out. It's most prominent at school, and I am extremely stressed out there, because of a lot of ridicule and hate that I experienced in my middle school and early high school years. It also happens at home, when I'm enjoying myself, and it happens (at around the same level of severity as when I'm at school) when I'm trying to fall asleep. I typically have to have a fan for the "white noise" effect in the background but it's gotten so overwhelming that the fan doesn't do anything to make me relax when I fall asleep anymore.

I have an  high IQ (roughly 125 on average) but it's not worth anything since I can very rarely process things both manually or just allowing my brain to do minute things by itself.

[voodoo scientist]

Every time this happens, immediately begin writing down everything about the music. Is it a track you have heard before, or an original piece? What kind of music is being played - and is there a pattern?

These are things you need to know, and have reference material on, if you want to figure this out. Your cognition is obviously compromised (you can tell because you're hallucinating - end of story) either because of cognitive constructs or a neurological problem, which means you can't trust yourself to correctly recall from long term memory. It's entirely possible your memory is working perfectly fine, just you can't know that yet, which means your LTM cannot be trusted. Take notes, detailed notes.

For the next month, you should write down everything you can about every single hallucination you have - in fact, it would be best if you kept an actual and detailed diary, even if you think that's really gay, while going about your daily life and completely ceasing any attempts to 'fix' it for that month. In addition to the characteristics of the music, you need to know what happened throughout the day, what you did, how you were feeling right before it happened, how you were feeling right after it happened, and so forth. Everything is relevant, so don't be afraid to add new types of information to track as time goes by.

Above all, remember you're not only interested in mapping out your hallucination, but also why the hallucination happens. With this information, I'd start researching which brain center benefits from believing you are having music blasted into your ears when you're obviously not. Consult with your psychologist, show him your diary, and explain you're doing your own research because you can't afford, money or time-wise, to visit more than once or twice a month, as well as for your own peace of mind. A good psychologist will be supportive and try to limit the scope of your search to what's relevant.

With an objective methodology, at least half-decent foundation in psychology and neuroscience (I recommend you read the publications Approaches to Psychology for psychology starters, my favorite base textbook right now, and the aptly named Neuroscience for a basis in neuroscience), a good psychologist psychologist and dedication, you can change just anything.

[Ohgodspiders]

Every time this happens, immediately begin writing down everything about the music. Is it a track you have heard before, or an original piece? What kind of music is being played - and is there a pattern?

These are things you need to know, and have reference material on, if you want to figure this out. Your cognition is obviously compromised (you can tell because you're hallucinating - end of story) either because of cognitive constructs or a neurological problem, which means you can't trust yourself to correctly recall from long term memory. It's entirely possible your memory is working perfectly fine, just you can't know that yet, which means your LTM cannot be trusted. Take notes, detailed notes.

For the next month, you should write down everything you can about every single hallucination you have - in fact, it would be best if you kept an actual and detailed diary, even if you think that's really gay, while going about your daily life and completely ceasing any attempts to 'fix' it for that month. In addition to the characteristics of the music, you need to know what happened throughout the day, what you did, how you were feeling right before it happened, how you were feeling right after it happened, and so forth. Everything is relevant, so don't be afraid to add new types of information to track as time goes by.

Above all, remember you're not only interested in mapping out your hallucination, but also why the hallucination happens. With this information, I'd start researching which brain center benefits from believing you are having music blasted into your ears when you're obviously not. Consult with your psychologist, show him your diary, and explain you're doing your own research because you can't afford, money or time-wise, to visit more than once or twice a month, as well as for your own peace of mind. A good psychologist will be supportive and try to limit the scope of your search to what's relevant.

With an objective methodology, at least half-decent foundation in psychology and neuroscience (I recommend you read the publications Approaches to Psychology for psychology starters, my favorite base textbook right now, and the aptly named Neuroscience for a basis in neuroscience), a good psychologist psychologist and dedication, you can change just anything.

I'll try the journaling method but it's important to note that these "hallucinations" are all too similar to thoughts for me. Anything that would normally be going on in my head like thinking to myself, going over what happened in the day and everything, doesn't happen, simply because this music is blocking it out. It's essentially a never ending ear worm. I have absolutely no idea what triggers it either: it can't be just stress because it happens when I'm enjoying myself (it's happening right now as I'm typing this). All the music is stuff that I've heard before or just heard recently. Another thing to note is that it feels like there's two parts of my brain, sort of like a separate entity for each part thats... "singing" this music. There's the part that is constantly playing in the background, it feels like it's in the very back of my head, I can almost feel it physically. I cannot stop this part at all. There's a second part, however, that's my active thinking, the part of me that I can use to think out situations in my head. This part I can VERY VERY temporarily stop the music with to get really fast and easy things out of the way, but the part that's in the back of my head somehow forces this active thinking part of my thoughts to "sing" along with it. Neither of these two typically cause me any physical pain: it's usually only emotional. They do amplify the pain of migraines however.

My psychologist currently thinks that it has to deal with stress, but what confuses me is if it's dealing with stress, why am I feeling it when I'm not stressed? His theory is that the music was used as a defense mechanism for dealing with stress back in a time where I had no otherr method of doing so, and now that I'm more capable of dealing with my problems more actively it's sort of become a broken record player (pun semi-intended). What's even more annoying is that the method he uses is EMDR (although it usually doesn't work, when we move from that to Bi-lateral brain stimulation it only works a very tiny bit better), and because my brain is constantly working up a storm because of the music, it won't let troubling thoughts that normally would come up with the EMDR therapy, well, come up.

[voodoo scientist]

Stop worrying about theories and stress and ooogaa booogaaa. Ultimately, it's bullshit. When you have all the information, the solution will be self-evident, if not to you then to your psychologist. He's a tool or machine for you to use, and what he does is analyze information. When you feed him half-credible information from your brain and try to get ahead of him or get defensive, you are not using your tool right. Give him a comprehensive set of information, see what he has to say, for better or worse. And read those books.

To clarify, it's important to the journal that your hallucinations are "all too similar to thoughts for you," whereas I don't really care at all because the information is useless to me.