Do you spend time counting in your head?

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I'm glad my genius pun was not wasted

Me too

three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

I didn't think I counted but when someone mentioned counting by tens I immediately started doing it without intending to. I've taken to doing calculations in my head because I figured out that I have some weird way of doing it in my head that works where imagining doing it on paper was too much to visualize all at once. I was delighted to find a way to do it without trying to picture it. I am always getting words stuck in my head, usually an unusual word I hear or read, and I repeat the sound of it in my head and picture it spelled. I like to visualize the spelling in my head as if I'm looking back and forth across the word.

can always count on you to spot a lame joke

when I am bored I count

Me too!! ! As a mostly self diagnosed aspie with only minor sensory issues I have a secret fear that maybe I'm faking it. But there is lots of stuff from my childhood like this.

Yes I do it almost constantly but I have OCD. I see patterns in everything and things feel "right" when they add up to mulitples of 5.

Yet another of those topics where I go, "Oh. That's common in ASD's? I thought everybody did that."

I count steps, tiles, seats in an auditorium/restaurant, aisles in a store, how many blue (or red/white/green/whatever) cars I see on my way to work - pretty much anything.

I count steps when I'm walking somewhere outside. I count pieces of laundry that I fold. I will only wash 20 items at a time. I fold them in 10's.

Jeans or towels, I only wash 10 at a time. Five washcloths count as one towel.

When I was young I would whisper as quickly as I could the multiples of eight up to 48 or 64. It was fun to see the numbers racing past in my head. I weaned myself off of the habit when my siblings pointed out to me that I was talking to myself.

Now I count syllables as I speak. I picture 4 groups of 4 dots in a square shape and try to hit each one with a syllable. Sometimes this means adding unnecessary words I don't do this all the time, of course.

I also count the lines in letters and numbers. I have to be careful when driving, as I get caught up staring at license plates and signs.

When I'm at places, I count the tiles on the floor, or the ceiling tiles, I don't do it as much as I used to before though. Then I would hope it would end up as an even or some "interesting" number. Used to bother so much before my diagnosis because I couldn't figure out why I was doing it.

I used to but now I lose track very easily. My mental activity now-a-days is more verbal. I analyze what is going on or what is about to happen in my head. I run the possibilities through my head like a lot of times until I have a satisfying and most credible possibility. On a slow day when not much is happening I repeatedly count things around me or imagine things that are not real and count them.

I hear what you're saying about ending on multiples of 5. I find 10s the best. Do you have any particular numbers that feel more wrong to end on? I hate the number 23 and can't end anywhere near that, if I can't get to at least 30 (and be totally clear of ending on a 23) I have to start again from the beginning. Sounds mad doesn't it. But that's me.

Venus

I have wrong numbers too. I hate ending on nines and sixes. like 9,19,29--- and 6,16,26---. I repeat and somehow try to count different till I get to a full count (like multiples of 10) .

I hope it's OK to necro this thread. Thought it was more useful than starting an identical thread.

I have counted in my head since early teens. I had an anxiety diagnosis a few years back, which got me onto a CBT course. I talked with the people there about this and promptly got an OCD test. I answered pretty much as non-OCD for every other question, and the psychiatrist seemed confused. She said it was a very OCD kind of thing to do, but I don't do it for OCD reasons. It's not an un-wanted thought. I don't feel like I have to do it or it will be bad. It's just...there. After I discovered that counting compulsion is an actual thing, and not a symptom of something being terribly messed up in my head, I stopped being bothered by it, so I declined the offer of CBT.

Oddly enough, I was googling counting compulsions, and that was what lead me to consider that I might have aspergers (I can't find the link, and I haven't been here long enough to post links anyway, perhaps someone else with link-posting and google-fu can find it). It was an article by an aspie which talked about the difference between aspie and OCD counting. So, having been pointed in (what feels like) the right direction by this article, I was surprised to find that counting isn't something commonly associated with aspergers/autism.

Lately I'm wondering if it's a form of stimming. Like TallyMan (quote below), I often have tactile patters that go with the counting. I may subtly touch my fingertips to things in patterns, or touch different parts of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I probably do it with or without the tactile element equally often. I don't normally do the classic kinds of stimming I've heard of.

I'm really fascinated by the process though. It seems run on the same system as earworm (getting a song stuck in your head). I can't have both a song and counting at the same time. Sometimes one will segue into the other. Is it a conscious thought stream? I can control it, but it'll run in the background without control most of the time. I read a while back that there is no such thing as true "multi-tasking", your brain instead switches very quickly from task to task and is still devoted to only one thing at a time. This makes me wonder if I'm constantly switching between counting/earworm and my inner monologue/whatever I'm thinking about otherwise, or whether they are completely separate systems.

I don't really expect to get any answers, although if anyone has any that'll be amazing. Mostly just expressing my thoughts on how weird and interesting this is to me.

Edit:
Now I'm thinking about a couple of things I've read/seen that made me think of others who might do this.

From Chapter 4 of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams

"...The other odd thing about him was a series of gestures he made and repeated regularly throughout every evening. They consisted of tapping each of the fingers of his left hand in order, and then one of the fingers of his right hand. He would then occasionally tap some other part of his body, a knuckle, an elbow or a knee. Whenever he was forced to stop this by the requirements of eating he would start blinking each of his eyes instead, and occasionally nodding. No one, of course, had ever dared to ask him why he did this, though all were consumed with curiosity...."

I guess Adams observed somebody with a habit similar to mine!

And then there's Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd. Where there's a fire and he shouts "FOUR! I MEAN FIVE! I MEAN FIRE!" I know, it's a joke about how he got golf confused with fire. But it reminded me of myself, occasionally announcing whatever number I'm up to instead of saying what I meant to say. And that scene where they got involved with gangsters, Roy is trying to drag Moss away from piles of money and Moss is saying "Nooo! I haven't finished counting it!"

Made me wonder if a writer had a counting compulsion themselves, or knew someone who did, and whether it was similar to what I do. Ah that was a great tv series.