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?
Note: Lemmy is not full of doctors, and may be full of people pretending to be doctors. Seeking medical aid here is probably a bad idea.
Humans in general tend to occasionally hear voices that aren’t there, but if it’s happening as often as you describe, you should definitely get it checked out.
Auditory hallunications can be anything from stress to brain tumours to early signs of schizophrenia. If it is medical, your treatment options will only be better if you catch it early. If it isn’t medical in nature (physical or mental), you should at least get some guidance of where to go next once doctors and psychiatrists have ruled out serious issues.
I don’t believe tinnitus and other such hearing damage will manifest in voices (though I have read that there is an unfortunate brain component to tinnitus that makes physical treatment rather difficult), this will usually manifest in continuous noise or simply not hearing some sounds. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that whatever you’re suffering from may be made worse by your brain trying to fill the gaps in your damaged hearing, but I wouldn’t expect it to be your primary concern.
Note that your condition may not be as serious as schizophrenia: there is a disorder called paracusias that may have you hear voices without getting any further complications. This can be a symptom of mental illness, but it can also happen without any other side effects. The only danger your condition might cause would be if the voices would start telling you to do things, like harming yourself or others, but from the sound of it, you’re very far away from that. Still, it would be wise to let a medical professional determine how bad your condition really is.
You should seek medical aid, and fast. If there is some kind of tumor or other form of brain damage affecting your speech center, your condition may be operable. If mental issues are starting to surface, you can often live a much longer, happier, healthier life with fewer symptoms if you can get medication/therapy/guidance early.
Of course it’s possible that you just have really good hearing that somehow gets amplified by white noise, but I wouldn’t assume that until serious trouble has been ruled out.
Schizophrenia is a jump, and treatment is too. Treatment only happens when it’s impacting your quality of life in some way, hearing benign auditory hallucinations, which as pointed elsewhere are common and can be induced in anyone with sufficient sensory deprivation, are not even slightly a concern.
Of course, that’s very much a worst case scenario. However, symptoms like these can be the first symptoms of mental illnesses surfacing.
There’s a difference between climbing into a sensory depravation chamber and hearing voices every time there’s a humming background noise. By the way OP describes their symptoms, I sure wouldn’t risk it.