This is different than a song being stuck in your head. It could be a single word, or the ending of a sentence, etc. Why does it happen?
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I’m not an expert at psychology or the behaviors of the brain, but I was able to address this behavior in myself a few years ago. In addition to repeating items in my head, I also had rapidly increasing anxiety and frustration as each day progressed. It was inexplicable and for someone with a pretty chill attitude and life, I was distressed.
I then remembered how I managed my time in college and at my first desk jobs. I would write down the items I’d been repeating in my head, and tasks that I was working hard to remember, thus popping up throughout the day. The simple act of taking out a notebook, drawing a horizontal line, and writing the thing in my head, enabled me to clear that task from my mental checklist. I keep the notebook by my work computer, so there’s no chance of losing it or misplacing it.
I don’t know the particulars, but I think humans are wired with a limited number of “high priority items”. When you get more than that number, your anxiety increases as you actively try to remember everything. Silly words, phrases, or even songs, can take up one of those slots, involuntarily.
When I get a song stuck in my head, I go on Spotify, find the artist, song, year of publication, and associated albums and songs. I write a line on my notepad about the song and move on to other tasks. Often, this act satisfies the ear worm as my subconscious knows that I don’t have to remember anything about that song anymore.
When I have a word or phrase in my head, I write it down, when I last heard it, and why I care about it (or whether or not I care at all about it).
Again, I don’t know the reason for this, but I’ve always felt that it was because I wanted to remember the word to use it again…or share a phrase with my wife or family member, or look up the song at a later time, or some other subconscious desire. My mind repeats it to avoid having it forgotten, and trying to stop remembering never works. I write it down. My brain knows where to find it in the future, my anxiety disappears, and I move on with my day. Hell…I think I would have exploded in 2020 if I hadn’t learned to do this…
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