[allautumn]

I was SOO frustrated by the time I had to get up today...
ALL night I tossed and turned, and the stupid VOICES were driving me nuts. It makes me so angry, I wish I could shut them up, but it won't stop. I wish I could just jump out of bed and run screaming out of my apartment, leave all the noise behind, and sleep somewhere else, but I can't get away from it because it's in my HEAD! I'm lying there, there's a man singing and talking, but I can't understand most of what he says, it's just NONSENSE! There's music and whispering. It's like listening to three radio stations at once and they're ALL annoying. I kept looking at my clock every twenty minutes, and just couldn't get comfortable. Why, when my body is so tired, can't my mind just SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP?!?
That was the worst restless night I've had in a while, and I've been exausted for a few days now. I haven't been depressed, just really really tired. I'm just trying to keep my self up long enough to go to bed at the regular time so I don't wake up horrendously early.
Does this happen to anyone else here? I'm tired of the old man and his jibberish. How do I get him to shut up? It wasn't scary this time, just really annoyiong. The last time I had hallucinations that really scared me (I wrote about that in my first post) it was a feeling that accompanies it mostly, and sounds that I thought at first were coming from under my bed. There was a woman then that said "You don't like that, do you? Well, take the sound of SEVENTY SWANS WINGS!" and then there was this constant repetitive fluttering noise. On top of the whispering and scuttling sounds, and the horrible feeling that someone was there. I even tried to read to block it out, but I couldn't even concentrate on the words on the page, the sounds in my head overpowered me. I tried walking around the apartment. I yelled at it and told it to leave me alone, get out of my apartment. Obviously that didn't help. The last thing I did was call my friend and talk to him for an hour because I was afraid to be alone. How do I get it to stop?

[Malady156]

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I can't understand most of what he says, it's just NONSENSE! There's music and whispering. It's like listening to three radio stations at once and they're ALL annoying. I kept looking at my clock every twenty minutes, and just couldn't get comfortable. Why, when my body is so tired, can't my mind just SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP?!?

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I have the exact same thing -- just like you said, its like i can hear 2 or 3 radio stations playing all at once and none of it makes any sense, I can't even pick out individual words or sentences or songs or anything, it's just pure STATIC, like HEAD NOISE, y'know? Sometimes in the middle of the gibberish &amp; static there are distinct voices too, i will start to drift off and before i'm totally asleep they start talking really loud and say upsetting things and wake me up, or just wake me up because they are so insistent, etc.

Most of the time this is inside, not outside -- I mean it is not actual AUDIBLE but it is so loud in my head it might as well be, does that make sense? Only rarely do I have a full blown audible hallucination, usually the voices &amp; all are in my head, just very loud and distinct. Although that bit about drifting off, i can't tell the difference, whether it is audible or just inside, due to the state of consciousness i'm in -- some sort of serotonin fog i guess.

[candistyx]

You're scaring me I swear theres no way in which I don't relate to you!

[Malady156]

Don't be afraid. Recognition is meant to guide you within, and to replace what was missing from the human world in your experience. We are of the same species.

[allautumn]

Good to know I'm not the only one at least!

[Malady156]

yeah and it is still going on, it never stops ... how about you? last night ... i was so exhausted after my ordeal from thursday bleeding over into friday, i crawl into bed last night "early" (for me) (just after 2 am) and i was so exhausted all over, head to toe, mind body and spirit, from everything, and my head would not stop chewing and pacing and spewing and racing and i just said oh please please let me sleep, i'm so exhausted ... please ... and finally got to sleep but started waking up in fits and spurts from 5 am on like usual, by 8 i was so sick of tossing around hearing voices and having my body poked and prodded and agitated by Indecipherables that i just said f--- it and got up ... no rest at all ... anxiety &amp; agitation high even though no emotional content (e.g. i'm not depressed or shellshocked or su*c*dal like i was thursday)

&amp; sometimes the voices in my head say stupid things like "yes well you know you LOVE being tortured like this ... you would miss it if it were gone ... admit it ... you love to suffer ..." AUGHGHGHGHGH i hate that, shut UP!!!!! (no don't shut up, don't leave me! yes shut up already, go away! etc. on &amp; on &amp; on &amp; on...)

[Malady156]

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There was a woman then that said "You don't like that, do you? Well, take the sound of SEVENTY SWANS WINGS!" and then there was this constant repetitive fluttering noise.

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plz don't take this the wrong way but this just totally cracked me up because it is so uncannily like some of the nonsense i hear sometimes. i can't get over it. (i know it's no fun to experience but in the telling it just sounds so funny to me, because i can so relate to it -- sorry!!! laughing WITH, not "at"!!!)

[allautumn]

Yo, I wouldn't take that the wrong way. Yeah, it wasn't funny at the time, but it sounds so ridiculous that it's laughable now.
Most of the time my head is just full of background noise, music and stuff. It's more voices and stuff when I'm depressed. There's a lot going on in there that's kind of hard to explain!

[allautumn]

I've got tinitus too, so there's the static and high-pitched screeching and ringing noises as well. I found it improved slightly when I started wearing hearing protection at work. I was taking sleeping pills for a while, I know that's not good for me. I just stoped taking them this week, knowing that if I'm going to get this whole mess figured out and get some treatment, there can't be ANYTHING foreign in my blood or my brain. This weekend I practically did nothing BUT sleep, and I ate a lot too. I don't know if it's becuase I just quit smoking or what. bleh.

[FearsomeAnna]

You know, for the longest time I thought that when I was manic, my hallucinations couldn't possibly be real, because who in the world hears a radio in her head? I mean, really!

Then I found out that the radio in the head during an affective episode is really, really common. Mine was total gibberish for the most part, but I'd get really miserable when it "stuck" on a station for a bit and my dang headradio could only play really sappy love songs. I don't mind love songs, mind you, but these were like an auditorily induced diabetic coma. I was so glad when it went back to static!

[allautumn]

It took me a while to realize that it was actually a symptom. Most of the time it's not scary now, it's just annoying. The full blown hallucinations are still scary though. I just wish I could make them stop on my own
what I'm really looking for here is tips. Is there any way I can do that without medication? I can't get medicated for a while, I've just got to accept that fact. But does anyone have any coping strategies for the mean time? What do you do to help alleviate the head noise and voices?

BTW, anna, I love your signature. RIGHT ON!

[Myzen]

Hi allautumn,

For the tinnitus I used to tune an FM radio between stations and just listen to the 'shushing' sound instead of the tinnitus noises. Eventually my brain got used to ignoring the tinnitus and now I don't need to do that.

With the intrusive worries I try to think of something I like, maybe church plainsong, and imagine I'm listening to that instead of the worries.

I know this is small stuff compared to what you are going through, but I wonder if the principle is the same? If all the commotion is going on inside our heads, would it be possible to attend to something else and gradually retune ourselves away from the 'jungly' sounds that are so upsetting?

Sometimes, I imagine that I am looking after an irritating child, who keeps jumping on me and prodding me. With great effort I ignore the child and don't respond to it. Eventually the child gets bored with me and goes away or quietens down.

It's just visualisation but it has helped me.

I hope things get easier for you, Myzen

[allautumn]

Thanks for that view, I haven't been very good at coming up with solutions for this so far. The closest I got to visualizing was imagining the "demon" under my bed making the noises and yelling at it to go away. That wasn't helpful, probably because it focused on my fear too much. I'll try a more positively focused visualization next time, something like the child, that is removed from my fears of the actual situation. Thanks again. I'm still open to other suggestions, too, just in case! And I'll let you know what happens.

[sqrlb8]

My sympathies. Crap, like that's anything, but how to start? I get that too. Sometimes only at night, but then if nothing interrupts it, it seems to gather momentum and volume. For as long as my vigilance holds out, my ability to regard it all like I might so many annoying mosquitoes, i'm ok, but when it starts to crumble, the desperate feeling is all but too ready to take over.

I found two things to help me, I know nothing works for everyone, but if I could help you at all I would, so for what it's worth:

before its loud, if I turn on a radio station playing something I don't like or am not interested in (for me a jazz station works, i don't understand jazz and don't tend to focus on it, it stays background) anyway, sometimes I can fool my anxiety by letting the voices become the radio, which I tune out without anxiety. I'ts a stupid trick I suppose, and perhaps my own brain is only the size of chicken's, but sometimes this works for me. Especially in the beginning.

the other thing is olonzopine (sp?). I was trying to check myself into the the p ward at the VA once when I was craving oblivion more than I could bear, they had no room, but an hour after taking the olonzopine I could think again, and feel calm and quiet. It's the only one i've ever had that worked "NOW," instead of in six weeks or so. There are lots of anecdotal histories on line to read of similar experiences. If you keep taking it there are side effects and so on, but as an hour of need, safety plan, I find it indespensible.

Hang in.

I freakin love your icon.

[allautumn]

One thing I found helped (intermittently) with the tinitus was whistling to match the pitch of the ringing in my head, kind of tricking the auditory nerve by supplying it with an actual stimulus of the sound it was already relaying. It has worked for single tone noises, but not always. Plus my mom used to think it was wierd when I'd be in bed, in the dark, whistling one note as loudly as I could, lol. It was a lot worse when I was in high school, with people screaming and shouting and crowded hallways and the cafeteria and the bus. It was pretty bad when I was working in a kitchen too, with the exhaust fan and gas fryers, clanking pots, clattering utensils, and all the general commotion. But since I started wearing ear protection, it has become a lot quieter and episodes of intense tinitus noise are less common. Can't say the same for the other sounds, though!
I've also had the experience while sitting in a car, where you're driving past trees as the sun is coming up or going down, and the light is flashing in your eyes, that my ears would start to ring because of the flashing... I don't get how that works, but it's all tied together somehow in that jumble of nerves up there.
Unfortunately I can't sleep with a radio. I'm one of those really picky people when it comes to noise while I'm sleeping. I have tried the white noise approach, between radio stations, but I find it almost as annoying as the sound in my head, it doesn't mask it it just adds more when I don't want any. A lot of people find that white noise really works for them. Theres even cds and stuff for that.
I have considered going to the emergency room during hallucinations. Maybe if I had they would have given me some help at the time... if it ever get's bad like that again, I will go.