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Originally Posted by Kiya
I am not even sure I can articulate this.... How can I work with the constant noise in my head? It's funny that I am even typing this because I've had this dx since 2006 i think. But lately, the internals are all talking to themselves or about me or to me while I'm trying to teach! And I just want to yell WILL YOU ALL SHUT UP!!?!?!?! Unreal. We've been through "I'm the one up front when I teach." Yeah yeah... they say... you shouldn't have taken this job in the first place. You PROMISED your treatment team you wouldn't work this semester." Ok, but that doesn't change the point that right now I'M TEACHING.... "So? I told you you shouldn't have."  THenI get distracted because of all the noise and miss whatever the kid just read or wrote or said....  I get that I wasn't supposed to teach... and now am teaching not one, but two kids... I get that no one else in the system is able to work and ometimes feel like they HAVE to work my job because I am unable - and we're working on figuring out why sometimes I'm unable; if that is true, or if something happened that had one of them come forward (like today was a hard day and I am in a day treatment program and left early due to panic), or what ever is keeping me out of the driver seat.... But The whole time i kept thinking "please don't let me lose it now.... not now.... just a little longer... hold it together a little longer....  |
when this happened to me I would remind myself that nothing has really changed. getting the diagnosis didnt make the head noise louder or more. getting the diagnosis just put a name on what already has been happening. then I would sit down and say ok the noise in my head has been there all my life and I did my job just fine before I was diagnosed so whats different now...just my perception. So then I stopped worrying about the voices and focused on my job just like I did before I was diagnosed and had a job to do.
for me what was out of the ordinary and a challenge was going to work and not hearing the voices after integration. I knew how to handle working with voices because I had been that way since before I was 5 yrs old but it was new and strange to me to not have the voices going in my head any more, at times during work the silence was so annoying I would talk just to hear myself talk. talk/think aloud just to fill that void where the life long voices used to be.
my suggestion is when the voices get loud remind yourself you have been this way most of your life, nothing has changed, getting the diagnosis just names whats already been happening. then think about how you managed to work, and get things done all your life even though the voices have been there this whole time. the only thing thats changed is you now know they are there so you are in tune/co conscious with them.
Another thing that helped me was before I was diagnosed one of the ways I handled hearing voices was carrying around a shiny stone, a soft sweater that reminded me of a soft stuffed animal and a couple snacks. all my life when the noise got loud I would put on the sweater, eat a bit of a snack and hold the shiny stone. this always calmed the voices down before I was diagnosed so it worked after I was diagnosed. I later discovered in therapy as a child I used to collect rocks, have a sweater like that and like the snack items. these memories had been held within three of my alters. with out even knowing they were there I had been acting on what calmed me and the voices down as a child and adult before diagnosis. After diagnosis I just carried on doing what came naturally on how to handle those voices by doing the same thing.
maybe you can think about how you have successfully handled the voices before and do those things now. if they worked before they will work after diagnosis.