Endless fascination with repetitions and mental tape loops.

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It seems like any phrase, any bar of music, any line of dialogue or lyric, can get stuck in my head for hours on end, especially if there are an even number of syllables or musical notes attached to it.

This does not prevent me from going through my daily life and being a productive citizen. But it does prevent me from getting a good night's sleep most evenings. I keep playing these mental tapes in my head of these repetitions, and I wind myself up, and I make myself completely wide awake.

I am guessing that I am not the only person here who has experienced something like this on a regular basis.

The question is, what is the best way to clear my head of these obsessive repetitions so I can get some solid rest?

practice meditation or mindfulness.

listen to mozart

I had such issues when I was a teen ..

Well, I did manage to meditate and clear my mind enough to get some sleep last night.

Still, my endless fascination with repetition is annoying me very much.

I have this problem, and I find meditation can help while I am awake, but I find sleep music to be the best remedy to get a good night's sleep. My mind can only have one song playing in it at a time, so when I play either sleep music or white noise, it drowns out the music that would otherwise be playing in my head.

Good thinking. I guess the problem I have is exactly what I get for playing JRPGs before bedtime. I need to find some more mellow rhythms to sleep to.

Just try reading a book in bed. The more that you wanna stay awake to finish the book the more you cant help falling asleep.

If that fails -wolf down microwaved left overs of food. Having a dried lump of solid matter sitting in your stomach like a sack of cement -is the best sedative ever.

This has been a huge problem for me since childhood. I always would have music in my head whenever my mind wasn't otherwise distracted. It gets worse if I listen to music more often. If I go for awhile without listening to music, it often fades away with time, and I have peace for awhile. I will often sing the same songs for weeks at a time because they are playing in my head.

It also happens with Chinese lessons. I'll hear phrases and words repeating in my head, and often start saying random words in Mandarin for no reason.

Nothing helps besides not listening to those types of sounds for a period of time.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-an-earworm/

Damned captcha....Grrrrr.....

I can get stuck on looping thoughts. Nothing specific.

Looping tunes and/or lyrics
Looping phrases
Looping visual instructions or patterns
Looping thought process (almost analyzing everything within a given task)

Sometimes, those loops become vocalized at odd times.

Yes to everything this wise man said.

And oh christ yes to the last line, so embarrassing.

Most definitely as they are never related to any topic at hand. It's that "what the hell?" moment for everybody else.

Always reminds me of that moment the music stops in cowboy films when a stranger enters the bar.

Ever get stuck on a word and it loops to the point it loses any validity, 'sounds' strange in your head or just a silly collection of vowels and consonants?

I get this too.

I read a book at bedtime--sometimes I have to read until I'm so tired I literally drop the book after failing to read and comprehend the same paragraph ten or twelve times, so it's almost become a new mental loop but one that puts me to sleep. Sometimes I read until I'm sleepy and it's late and I can turn off the light and go to sleep because the book has interrupted the loop enough that I'm not thinking it anymore. However if Bekafly or NTHubby come talk to me the loop restarts or there's a new loop and I can't get to sleep again. But usually books can get me out of a mental loop.

If it isn't bedtime and I don't have a book or am in a situation where I can't stop and read and I'm having trouble with a loop, especially if it's a loop from a song, the only thing that helps is to sing a long song that I know the whole thing. If I can't sing out loud because of circumstances it doesn't work as well but I go over the whole song in my head. Singing a whole song from beginning to end gets most loops out of my head. But if I only know part of a song--that part of that song just becomes a new mental loop that won't stop and keeps my mind from doing much else.

One time us kids in neighborhood talked about that. One guy said one time he said "fight! fight! fight! fight! Fiiii...fight?" He repeated it some many it times it suddenly became like meaningless syllable from a foreign language.

All the time, and half the time the word is incredibly profane. Not sure what that means.

Happens frequently, and my husband and daughter take a lot of glee in getting specific ear worms stuck in my head. I've never had it keep me up at night, but I also read to go to sleep, so my mind gets focused on one thing instead of whatever is running around my head.