Do you spend time counting in your head?

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I can remember as a young child counting in my head from 1 to 1000 regularly. I still do this although lack the concentration to get past a couple of hundred these days because I lose track of where I am at.

I have a clock in my bedroom that ticks loudly and at night I find myself counting the seconds and imagining that my right hand is typing in the numbers on a computer number pad at the same time. I tend not to get past around 200 seconds before I lose track of where I'm at and have to start again.

Anyone else here count

Venus

yeah, i count a lot. when i walk i sometimes count my steps. at work (i am a cashier) i tend to count items as i slide them across the scanner. i count in my head at night when i should be sleeping. i count count count count count.

My brother does, but he has ocd.

Venus, I've never been a counter, but I used to play with musical tones in my head a lot. It seems to be something I grew out of when I hit forty. Since I notice you're approaching that age, you may be experiencing the same thing.

I used to count when I was younger, now I do things with words instead. Usually I'll take a monosyllabic word and try it with different vowel sounds, then try the word backwards with all the vowels, then change the first consonant sound and cycle through the vowels again and back.

Not counting, but I usually have about a dozen racing thoughts in my head at any given time. My psychologist calls it the "50 TVs" because it's like watching 50 TV sets at once, whereas most NTs are usually just watching one. (Or none, if you ask me.)

I have the 50 TVs too. It gets annoying when you're trying to sleep and try to count sheeps and your head keeps doing other stuff in the background while you count sheeps. I read that it's a symptom of ADHD.
I like counting too, not just plain counting (I do that with steps and other things) but trying to calculate in my head. Not saying that I'm good at it!

I count all the time hence my username on this site. I count into the tens of thousands every day, usually in small batches of up to around 100 or 200 then restarting at 1 again. Usually the counting is associated with something such as geometrical shapes which appear in my head such as cubes, hypercubes or other regular geometric objects. Sometimes the counting is associated with tapping my hand or fingers on my leg or desk or elsewhere.
The most common count is:
1. Left forearm
2. upper left arm
3. chest
4. upper right arm
5. right forearm
... then repeat backwards to 10, then repeat forwards to 15 etc. I usually get into the hundreds before being consciously aware of the counting.

I don't know the cause of this. Maybe Aspergers related or OCD. Dunno. I've being doing this for at least thirty years! I'm now 51.

Can you do all this as well as getting on with your day, or does it tend to get in the way of getting things done? It sounds like it might take up a lot of time.

It doesn't generally get in the way. The counting tends to stop when my mind is fully occupied - i.e. very busy concentrating on things such as programming. However, if I watch TV or listen to music or do any sort of manual work the counting resumes. I fall asleep every night while counting, usually the arms/chest one mentioned above. The counting is totally automatic. I have absolutely no control over it. It goes on and on and on.

I asked my GP (doctor) about this endless counting when I was around 17 and he said it was just my brain occupying itself when it had nothing to do. Can't say I found his answer very convincing. This was in the days before the word 'Aspergers' even existed. I count everything: number of paces, number of steps up stairs, number of sides on geometrical objects, number of tiles on a wall, number of rows and columns of said tiles.
One of my more time consuming counts is to pop an image of a three dimensional hypercube into my mind and keep counting the sides of it and doing other things like stretching its sides or even pulling it inside out.

As a small child travelling in my parents car I used to bounce imaginary laser beams from one side of the road to the other, always at the same angle of rebound as collision, counting the number of bounces before the beam failed to bounce because it had shot up someone's driveway or side street. I've been lost in numbers and geometry all my life.

You really wouldn't like to live with my mind. Sometimes it is like a surreal torture chamber! Endless manipulation of numbers and geometric shapes. I guess this is one of the reasons I'm obsessed with programming - lots of numbers and logic.

i count things in my head, rather than just randomly counting. usually edges of shapes and objects in my hand, until they finish on a number i am satisfied with

What is a satisfying number? Do you prefer odds or evens? Or are the rules more complicated than that. I can't do complex math.

How fascinating. Have you never sought a medical opinion after you were 17?

I'm not sure I'd like shapes popping up and spinning around in my head. I tend to get a lot of intrusive thoughts, but they tend to be verbal.

I do seem to like rhythm a lot, and I notice that when I'm bored I make rhythmical noises to fill, I donno, something. I can sit there reading a book, and it's not quite stimulating enough so I'll make noise, sometimes a lot of noise, over long periods.

I used to get told off for making noises at work. Work was so boring, I needed to make a lot of noises. I think it might be a form of 'stimming'

I sometimes count steps when walking, or chops with a knife when preparing food for cooking and things. It's more about rhythm with me though. I suppose numbers are rhythm in a way, frequencies. I wonder if you like rhythm.

usually mutliples of ten. which is easy if it's a five sided shape, but if it's something like eleven it can take a while to reach a number i'm happy with. If i don't have anything i'll count the joints in my fingers and edges and shapes of my nails, which always works out nicely because i have ten of each. handy

I spent all morning counting to 1000 when I was 6. I went to school and proudly announced, 'I counted to 1000'. I'll never forget that arty kid who was a friendly acquaintance of mine (someone who never bullied me and would talk to me like an equal), he said, 'why did you waste your time doing that?'

Ba dum tisch

I'm glad you have a decimal amount of fingers, it must make things easier.