How do you describe "racing thoughts"

A revolution revelation!

I think when the doctor asks me this I'm going to kindly point them in the direction of this:


To me, this is EXACTLY what the inside of my head sounds like. Especially right now. At 4am. It's great.

Lol I listened to part of it, that was pretty intense.

For me, racing thoughts can be different things. Sometimes its ideas going by so quick that i'm just trying to "catch" whatever thought I can.

Othertimes its lying in bed and thinking of everything, things I need to do, where i want to go, things i want to do, why am i still alive?, random things, etc.

for instance:

How many mexicans does it take to feed a sumo wrestler??

Well, you have to ask yourself one question, is he eating food they cook, or the mexicans?

Lol. yeah. Kind of like that.

Somewhat similarly to the Beatles you linked to, I would liken it having 5 to 10 "lil me's" in my head all talking. Sometimes it seems like they are all talking at once, sometimes one right after the other. Sometimes they all talk about the same thing, sometimes their subjects couldn't be more different. Sometimes they talk at a normal pace, sometimes they talk like they just smoked enough meth to kill a horse.

Take that song, put a LOT more random words and sentences and conversations in it, and speed it up about 5x and you've got my racing thoughts.

I tend to end up thinking about a million different conversations with myself all at once. The funny part is that I will skip between them and then go back to where I was and keep going and then back to another one and keep going - almost always with a lot of backtracking, and sometimes I won't make it past the initial few thoughts and then keep repeating them (especially if it's something I WANT to be thinking about further, I simply won't). Usually I'll be singing songs in my head and having images flash around and will think about a lot of memories and be beating myself up over anything that's not making me feel good and arguing with myself and telling myself off for arguing with myself and not making any decisions but making a lot of choices that I'd like to decide were my decisions and then forgetting them and then plannning to write them down and then forgetting what i was going to try to remember and then realizing that I have no idea what other people were actually just talking about because I was off in lalaland and then I will try to say something to them and then forget what it was half way through the sentence because I'm already about ten sentences ahead in the conversation even though they haven't a clue what I'm on about etc etc.

Sorta like that, but less organized. And more argumentative. And not sequential.

Yip - my brain also has a million topics floating through it at one time. I catch the individual word, but not the context. I can get nothing done and it tends to make me very anxious

I described it once has having multiple radios on, watching tv, trying to read a book and a magazine all at the same time. But with different layers - some thoughts are on top, some are more background, and they go fast. Sometimes so fast that when I would try to have a conversation I wouldn't make sense because I was trying to talk as fast as my thoughts and the topics would change.

Then I have what I call more "crowded thinking" where there are too many thoughts in my head and I can't seem to get them out and process them. It's like thoughts get bottlenecked in my head and I can't let go of them so I keep looping back. Normally I'll talk things out or pace around my apartment and that will help. When Mom visited I couldn't and I was having some issues with turning 40 and also there was some stuff I saw on tv. Normally if the thoughts get too much, I'll pace and think (and sometimes talk outloud) about why turning 40 bothers me, what I'm going to say at my next therapy appointment, why I thought the episode of tv I watched was good or bad.

It kind of acts as a release valve.

Sometimes when I'm trying to write a post or comment online I have to get up and walk around and think through/talk through what I want to say.

I've never told a therapist that. I probably should.

I've also described it as multiple radios. That is the best description I could give to someone who's never had it happen before.

I should have added that it's usually Revolution 9 fast forwarded by about 4... and more talking.

I do the walking around thing too!! Talking to myself thinking it through!! Actually I've had this habit since I was about 18 or 19 that I HAVE to pacing when I'm talking on the phone. Like I HAVE to.

My racing thoughts-
I find it very tough to read because my mind is playing around with so many other thoughts-for example, when I read these posts, I must go back and reread several times to get the full message. Just now, while reading, the thoughts I remember were thinking about how good my dog feels up against me, wondering if the ceiling face makes a noise if a listen closely, looking at the leaves outside and calculating the breeze to see if a walk would be comfortable, etc. Of course, it takes much longer to type these thoughts!

At night, even after 1 mg of klonopin, my mind jumps all over the place for at least an hour most nights. At times, my dreams wake me up so I can go through more thoughts. In the morning, it is almost impossible for me to get out of bed for at least 15 minutes while my thoughts take over while in a relaxed state.

Along the same lines, I have a son who is dx'ed with adhd, and he is very verbal. He starts spouting off off-the-wall facts all of the time, and usually he speaks so fast it is hard to understand him. The meds help, but in the summer he is very lax about taking them.

Bluemountains

I get frustrated when my thoughts keep going in circles. Often I find myself doing all sorts of things while trying to write out something long and elaborate, because I'll be typing and then by like "lalallalalalalaaaaaaaaaa" and then off I go and muck about and them come back do a quick reread, get a few more lines out, and back off I go. It made writing essays a fun challenge...

I tend to picture my brain in a lot of ways like a room full of filing cabinets. (This is actually based off Sherlock Holmes)

Except mine is a filing system. I put things away diligently... but there's no organization to where the filing cabinets are laying, there's often stuff laying around on top of them. Some are left open, others are locked, and goodness knows where the second page of X Y or Z went to. And sometimes other parts of my brain enjoy trashing the place and I have to find it all and try to put it all back where it belongs. And when I'm looking for something in particular, other things might come flying at me due to that silly brain of mine. But trust me, it's alllll there. Sometimes I can find it quickly and other times goooood luck. I also tend to recheck the same cabinets too much as there is certainly not a map or a dewie-decimal system!

Like a racing river just flowing by. If I were trying to fish, the line would just whisk right past me.

A bunch of people shouting all at once.

A bunch of random thoughts, none of which really relate to each other, but I just go from one thing to the next without being able to slow down and focus.

A feeling that I have so much going on in my head but I can barely move because I'm afraid of what will happen if I even further "overstimulate" myself.

Like all 250 TV channels in my head are on at the same time and turned up loud.

I was 53 before I learned that most people have an "OFF" switch in their brains. I've had racing thoughts all my life and never knew there was anything different. But when I'm manic, they simply go at Mach II and ping-pong around uselessly inside my head---there's no putting together anything even remotely coherent. The harder I try to grab at one or two, the more they skitter away from me, leading to frustration and sometimes explosive anger.

One thing that helps me to calm my head is to listen to my favorite music with headphones on. Because I can't sing out loud, I mentally sing along. I am focused only on the songs. Oddly enough, this is not the case if I actually sing out loud, like in the car, my mind will wonder then.

I wanted to post yesterday on this but couldn't. But, on YouTube there is a video made by a young man with autism. The point of the video is to show how overstimulation effects him. However, when I watched it, it was dead on a great example of how racing thoughts are in my head.

In the video he uses a clip from the old "Transformers" cartoon t.v. show of the 80s. First he shows it normally, then he shows it with a ton of background noise. A friend of mine who has an autistic son showed it to me a few years ago, so I don't know if it's still there. I will look up a link later when I'm able to.