Repetative Thoughts?

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Is having thoughts, such as words, phrases, or sounds repeat in your head continuously because either you like them, or can't help but have them repeat a symptom of Asperger's? For example, I might like a sentence I think of, and thus will keep repeating the sentence or part of the sentence over and over in my head for a few minutes. Other times, I will see an image in my head, and it will continuously do something, let's say someone hammering, and the person will keep hammering exactly the same way, and I have little or no control over this thought.


Is this part of Asperger's, or does it sound more like OCD? Or is it both?





-Nova

I think it's more like both. There was a thread about this a week or so ago I think

Really? I never saw the thread...but I haven't been all that active either


-Nova

I don't know, but I do it sometimes also.

I do it too. Sometimes if I read a sentence that makes me think I will reread it and remember it and I'll keep thinking about it in my mind. Or if I think about a possible conversation in the future and I like it, I'll think about it again and again.

I do it all the time a word or the end of a word will repeat over and over in my head. It can get really annoying some times to have the same word repeat itself for a good 5 to 10 minutes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsMGjCXG0c0[/youtube]

This song perfectly defines how I feel when I have things repeated in my head

I do from time to time, when I'm thinking of what I've been up to that day.

These thoughts/images are very common amongst us Aspies. However, in cases of OCD, the sufferer experiences thoughts/images that are against their will and which they find to be very disturbing. For example, a person afflicted with OCD might see a hammer and immediately gets thoughts about someone hammering and killing someone else. OCD thoughts are typically not as benign as the ones you described. There is a link between repetitive thoughts in Asperger's and repetitive thoughts in OCD. The difference is that OCD thoughts are typically not pleasurable, which is why OCD is classified as ego-dystonic, meaning that it is against the sufferers self-concept.

I experience both forms of thoughts. I might here a word or phrase and repeat it in my mind, regardless of the meaning of the word, but only if it sounds nice. This is a form of palilalia. The same goes for images. To my understanding, everyone, regardless of their neurological wiring, has experienced this, but, of course, for NTs it is not as frequent, so they generally do not become conscious of themselves doing it. I also have a formal diagnosis of OCD, and have suffered from severe intrusive thoughts during my late teens. Having intrusive thoughts caused me to consciously think of good thoughts or images to replace the horrible ones, but, as in most OCD cases, I found that it was close to impossible to get rid of the bad thoughts. That's where psychotherapy and medication came into play, and which has proved to be very helpful to me.

I repeat words in my head alot, like a really weird sentence like 'just like yeah' and nothing else, it goes on for ages like a song stuck in my head, quite weird

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yea a lot of the time my thoughts are repetitive, today was the usual "ello", "where we going", "damn dogs", and "my shoe" lol, put all those phrases in a sentence and u have a conversation lol i jus made fun of myself haha its funny though because i can spend literally the whole day saying one phrase over and over and over, thatll literally be my speech haha. anyways its prob a huge part of autism, and i dont doubt ocd has a play in it as well because it is obsessive.

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