Hearing Voices

Many people hear voices which others cannot hear. Some of these people end up with a psychiatric diagnosis, in mental health services. Others learn to cope on their own with their voices and stay out of mental health care. Others come from cultures where hearing voices is seen as normal, as a spiritual experience, and don't have any problems with their voices.

Often people who hear voices and end up in psychiatric care get a diagnosis of schizophrenia or psychosis. These labels are used by psychiatrists to classify the symptoms of their patients. It can be very distressing to receive such a diagnosis, especially as schizophrenia is often seen as a "chronic, incurable disease".

Some people are given neuroleptic (anti-psychotic) medication. For some, this medication helps to calm frightening experiences, or reduce the anxiety related to hearing voices, however for others the medication makes little or no difference. These medicines can also have serious and distressing side effects which affect the quality of life of those taking them. Even when medication helps sometimes the side effects are so severe that people prefer to experience distressing voices or hallucinations than to deal with the lack of concentration, excess sleep, weight gain and other more serious side effects which can result.

In my own experience, hearing voices was initially a terrifying and distressing ordeal. I just wanted them to go away. I fought and fought in the hope that they would stop as suddenly as they started. I was put on stelazine (trifluoroperazine) and over a few years this was gradually increased and increased. While I was on stelazine I lost my ability to concentrate, I couldn't read more than a few sentences at a time, and even then I didn't really understand what I was reading. And this was particularly bad because I love books and before stelazine could happily read all day. I also put on 5 stone in the time I was on stelazine.

Then one weekend I started to hear particularly upsetting voices and experience visual hallucinations. I was admitted to hospital where I was taken off stelazine and put onto olanzapine (zyprexa). Within a week I was able to read again for hours a day (which made me finally feel like I could achieve something), and the voices and hallucinations calmed down. This is, however, just my experience. These things differ for everybody.

Something else has changed for me, which I believe has happened in spite of medication rather than because of it. I started talking to other people who hear voices, and reading books about voice hearers. Before this, my view of "recovery" meant complete normality. No voices, no hallucinations, no "strange" thoughts. However now I am beginning to believe that recovery actually means accepting these experiences, and learning to live a full life with them. So I made a conscious decision to change my attitude towards the voices. I decided to interact with them, to accept them, and to try and understand why they are there, and what their purpose is.

There was an almost immediate transformation. For the first time since my voices started, I actually heard voices which weren't nasty. They weren't threatening. They weren't frightening. They were just talking amongst themselves and I sat back and listened. I kept calm and so did they. I began to truly believe that one of the things which made my voices nasty in the beginning was my attitude towards them. As my attitude is changing, so are the voices.

I am still in the early stages of this journey and I know I have a lot more to learn. But I am beginning to see it as a positive, enriching journey which needn't be an ordeal.

I now own two email mailing lists for people who hear voices, which if you are interested in, you can join. The first list is only for people who hear voices, which you can find out more or subscribe by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voice-hearers/ The second is for people who hear voices, AND for carers, friends, family members or professionals who work with people who hear voices. The address for this list is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voicesupporters/

The other members of these groups, and another mental health mailing list I am on, and I have put together a list of strategies for dealing with voices. If you are hearing troubling voices I hope that they can help you to cope.

Strategies for Dealing with Distressing Voices

1. Distraction - put the radio on, or even better, a walkman with headphones.
   
   
2. Talk back to the voices. Challenge them. Ask them to go away.
   
   
3. Selective Listening - Give your voices an hour or so a day when you will listen to them. Bargain with them and say that if they are quiet now (at work for instance, or in the pub) then you will listen to what they have to say at an agreed time.
   
   
4. Talk to other people (who you can trust and who won't overreact) about your voices. Discuss what they say, how they say it, who the voices may represent. THe more you understand your experience of voice hearing the easier it will become to cope with it.
   
   
5. Read about voices. Some good books are: "Recovery An Alien Concept" by Ron Coleman, "Accepting Voices" by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher, and "Hearing Voices a Common Human Experience" by John Watkins
   
   
6. Learn some relaxation techniques. If you become anxious because of your voices, use these techniques to get rid of the anxiety.
   
   
7. Write a letter to your voices. Maybe explain to them how you feel about them, how you would like them to behave, or anything that comes into your mind.
   
   
8. If you are out in public and you want to talk back to your voices without the stigma of supposedly talking to yourself, get a mobile phone, pretend to dial, and talk into that instead. If you don't have a mobile phone, ask around your friends to see if any of them have one which they don't use any more (remember the phone doesn't have to work).
   
   
9. Some people find that yawning or opening their mouths can help to block the sound of the voices.
   
   
10. Earplugs in one or both ears (experiment!) can help to block out disturbing voices.
    
    
11. Focus on one word and one word only. Repeat it, either in your mind or out loud, again and again. This turns the focus away from the voices and onto something else.
    
    
12. Take one day, one hour or one minute at a time during the difficult patches.
    
    

by Philippa Willitts

Picture of my lego clone!

Name :
Philippa Willitts (Pippa)

Email :
purple_pippa@yahoo.com