How do you think of your voices?

I've always been curious what other people who hear voices think of them . . . I worked in mental health care for a while, but other than one fellow who told me his voices were angels who wanted to have sex with him, I never got any good answers. (And I think calling his answer 'good' may be a bit of a stretch!)

I have a hard time explaining to the non-psychotics in my life what hearing voices is like. I want to tell people I know what it's like so they're less afraid of me, but I never know what to say.

At this point, my voices are pretty friendly - or at least, annoying but not frightening. I tell people they're my own personal Greek chorus, which very few people understand but that is probably more from a lack of technical knowledge of Greek drama than anything else.

The "voices" that I hear are not consistent. They have ranged from accusing men screaming into my ear like a sergeant major, to radio DJs giving me cryptic messages, to women gossiping about my every action, orchestras playing beautiful music that no-one else can hear, feint indistinct muttering, loud repetitive pop songs drowning out the voices of real people around me, and a sense of agonised screaming embedded deep in my head. The most persuasive have been silent voices, where I am aware of beings trying to lead me to do something, but their words are not audible - I just know what they are saying.

So what do I think of them? I don't know. I'm confused by it all, I guess. I can't tell other people about it. It only alienates the few people who have dared to ask me, and who knows what those who don't want to know will do if I try to explain it.
It is painful, and makes me very lonely. It is a world that separates me from other people.

I hear and see all kinds of things. Lately the voices have been very weird. I would just hear a phrase out of the blue a few times a day. I hear it with my ears. Sometimes it seems like right behind me while I am sitting at my computer. The random phrase person is most of the time male. Although I do hear a female one occasionally. For example the female yelled at me one day while I was in a store saying, "I am controlling you." Weird since the government person is mostly male. A couple of times the male one has a better vocabulary than I do. That was only a few times though. It was words I have heard of and kind of know the definition but for me I don't really use them in my everyday vocabulary.

Sometimes... stop saying "sometimes!!!!!!" I hear whispering that I can't make out the words to.

Of course there is the usual calling my name by family members. My annoying brother (yes he is annoying he actually pokes our bird who is overly cute and of course pokes me as well) usually yells, "schizo come here" or "little one come here" he never calls me by my name. By the way I am NOT little. I am massively overweight and his older sister. My mom calls my real name all the time and I run over there and ask what she wants and she has the usual reply, "I never said anything."

Then i hear yelling occasionally like a fight. Usually by my family once again. I run over there and ask what the fighting is about and they said " there was nothing going on!" Now I honestly don't know if everyone is just messing with my mind.

And like Tsunamisurfer, I also have inaudible voices but I don't like calling them voices I just say its thought insertion. Weird though even with these I can tell the gender of it.

As for seeing things I see people mainly except yesterday night I had a weird hallucination while I was going to the bathroom. It acted like we are in a computer world in a computer game because the graphics were glitching just like you see in a computer game. I also see flashing lights but I know that can happen in a seizure but I have been tested for seizures though.

In a way I am lucky that my hallucinations are not as bad as a lot of people on here. My voices are not bad at all. I just hear and see things a few times a day. They are not continuous hallucinations at all. Most of the time it is silent in my head. Sometimes so silent that I don't even have my own thoughts! Blank mind.

I don't have that many hallucinations anymore... Just misinterpreting things that are actually there. Lately it's just my thinking & behaviour that have been flawed.

For a few months last year, I experienced primarily hallucinations with some very mild delusions & anxety. My auditory hallucinations are hard to describe... Most were really difficult to hear; they sounded far away & muffled, but they were around most of the time.
My only very obvious ones were usually VERY brief, such as Beetlejuice screaming "boo!" or someone repeating my name. I've only ever had one negative obvious voice... He kept whispering "psst, hey... kill yourself" over & over again until I fell asleep. He was going on for a good half an hour. Very calm voice, though, so it was weird.

Other than that, my only other auditory hallucinations were just noises. Explosions, someone jingling keys, footsteps, tapping, closing doors, etc. I have been getting increasing amounts of thought insertion in the past few months... Maybe my voices have been replaced by more strange thoughts?

But to answer your question; I don't feel one way or the other about them. Their presence is obviously abnormal. I can only equate it to someone who is spiritually involved. You FEEL that there is someone there watching & it proves its existence to you... It doesn't always make sense. And it's often really unnerving. But you just learn to accept its' presence. And eventually, at least in some people, you can come to learn what it was that they were trying to convey: past traumas, poor esteem issues, etc.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you think about them. They're just there. Just like the universe is.

i dont like my voices.. they are a pain in he butt

Thanks for all the answers! I've never had this chance to hear about other people's before.

My voices have been really inconsistent, too. I think that when they first started, they were like a really faint radio. I don't know when the voices started so I'm not entirely sure. Then one day, I went to the doc's with an unrelated problem and got a bit snippy with him to turn off a radio that was bothering me - that wasn't really there.
That's when I started getting drugged against my will, "for the voices". Bizarrely, they were only loud and aggressive when I was willingly drugging myself; if I fought the doctors or the drugs then they were nice to me.
Now I'm off the drugs, I hear all kinds of voices. Some are annoying; some sing show tunes (also annoying!). Some narrate everything I do. Sometimes they talk to me, remind me about things I've forgotten to do. Last night, they were begging me to buy cow's milk (which I don't drink) and I had to talk them down :

Sorry, I should say that English isn't my first language and sometimes I make bizarre language constructions! I wanted to know how people conceptualise their voices. How you'd explain the experiences to other people if you had to (and they were sympathetic).

I've heard voices for over 2 years now. I very rarely talk about them because most people can't understand. My family (mostly) tries, but it just seems to be outside of their realm of understanding. The only time I properly explained about all of the voices was to my therapist a few weeks ago, but I can't see him anymore. He was the only person to actually understand what I was trying to say. My SIL thinks it's like the cartoons where you have a 'good' angel and a 'bad' devil on each shoulder talking to you, which she thinks is HILARIOUS, which couldn't be any further from the truth.

Anyway, before I went on Aripiprazole/Abilify I heard a man and a woman talking, both in my head and with my ears. Generally they say nasty things to me, like telling me to kill/hurt myself. Other times they'll comment on what I'm doing, saying it's no good or that no-one cares what I think when I'm talking. They also tell me what other people are thinking, which is always negative and about me. At first I found them really frightening, but I quickly got used to them. They make me sad at times, but ultimately they're just saying what I already think anyway so it's not so bad. They can make it hard to concentrate sometimes though.

There's also the malevolent whispers which really freak me out. I don't hear them often, usually only when I'm really stressed, and it sounds like hundreds of people whispering. I can't make out what they're all saying, but I know it's nasty and about me. They really scare me so I'm glad that I don't hear them often.

Anyway since the aripiprazole/abilify has started to work, I don't hear them outside my head anymore. It's gotten to the point where I'm not sure if I hear them or not, which is also kind of scary. I'm constantly questioning myself, like did I hear that or think that?? I know that the voices are really my thoughts so I guess the meds are working but maybe I need a bit more to KNOW that I thought it rather than heard it, because this confusion scares me. I don't like second guessing myself - I'd rather know I heard a voice or know it was a thought than be constantly questioning myself.

Anyway this was an interesting thread. I enjoy hearing other's experiences as it makes me feel less strange. I'm wondering why you feel the need to self-disclose in work though fishsandwich? I think that you can demonstrate through words and body language that you understand, without having to say that you hear voices too. My T showed me that he understood, and I have no need to hear if he knows from personal experience or just professional experience. I want to work in mental health but I don't think that I'd be able to self-disclose. It might help some people e.g. they can see you as a role model "If fishsandwich got through it, so can I" etc, or it could backfire and they could think that there's something wrong with them for them to struggle so much. I have low self-esteem and if I saw someone successful who I knew heard voices, I'd think "well they hear voices and are still successful so why am I such a mess?!" and beat myself up about it. But maybe that's just me?

*Willow*

I want to be able to explain it to my friends and family! I've always failed at that. I don't care about disclosing it at work - I work in other professions now and it's completely irrelevant.

He sounds like a fantastic therapist!

When I was working in mental health, I found that it certainly helped some people to know about my diagnosis. It wasn't particularly useful to others, though. I ended up telling people "as needed", but I always made sure to tell them what a hell it was (and remains), too.

What kind of mental health care do you want to do?

Ah sorry, I thought you meant in work. I have no idea with regards to family & friends. It's the family joke here, so I just keep it to myself.

He was. Unfortunately he's left for a new job, so I'm to see an ordinary (i.e. non-therapy trained) CPN now. Hmmm we'll see how that goes!

Ideally I'd now like to become a clinical psychologist, but I've already had to give up my dream of being a psychiatrist, so I'm aware that I may never get there. I just want a job where I'm trained in lots of different therapies and can help patients, but we'll see how it goes.

How did you manage working in mental health and suffering from mental health problems at the same time? I found it really hard working inpatient when I did my psych rotation in medschool, because I'm absolutely terrified at the thought of ending up in the psych ward. Outpatient was fine, but with inpatient it was hard not to avoid the ward and patients. Obviously something I have to get over though!

*Willow*

Oh, so did you go to med school then? How come you can't be a psychiatrist?

Uhm, well, I never wanted to work in mental health care. I was told I'd never be able to reach my real goals because I'm a nutter, and I believed them for a while. Instead, I got a social work qualification through volunteering at a charity and studying in the evenings.
I hated every minute of it, but eh. I don't think it had anything to do with me being crazy, just with me not wanting to be a MH worker!
Why are you so avoidant of the patients? Is it triggering?

I went to medschool but decided to leave just before my final exams, both because of my health and because I didn't want to be a doctor anymore. I was tired of being treated like crap!

I'm quite empathic with patients and easily identify with them, but I just couldn't cope with that at the time. I couldn't identify with the psych inpatients and remain cool like everything was fine with me. I kept thinking that I would end up locked up with them if anyone found out, and I am sooooooo scared of the psych hospital, so yes it was all just too triggering. I'm thinking that if I get better it will be less distressing, as I don't have to fear getting admitted. If that doesn't happen or I can't get over this fear, then that'll be another dream down the pan I guess

Anyway, I'm sorry for distracting the thread by going off topic

*Willow*

Ah, well, life goes on eh? I know a few people who have left medicine after they qualified because it was just too stressful!

Well, there are lots of ways you can work in mental health care without being in an inpatient setting. I still can't go anywhere near psychiatric hospitals myself -- I actually entirely avoid the largest train station in my city because of its proximity to one of the hospitals I was kept in.

I was thinking last night, too, that the world needs more books about schizophrenia that aren't just manuals of information about psych drugs for the layperson. There are precious few that address non-drug coping strategies. Maybe education/outreach is something you could look into if you really can't ever be in a clinical setting.

I'm not fussed if nobody else is!

I'm going into cognitive neuroscience so I can study how the brain affects the mind from a research setting... Frankly, I'm not compassionate enough to want to help someone personally. But being able to help psychology/psychiatry by improving its knowledge personally appeals to me.

And fish, you're totally & absolutely correct. We do need more books out there for people experiencing schizophrenia or just psychosis as a whole... Even in bipolar books, they rarely acknowledge the psychotic experiences that occur in severe mania. I really hope to write about my personal coping strategies one day & even a book or so on my research findings... But for the layperson. I think it's silly that the most valuable information lies on the other side of the straightjacket. Prevention is key &, by the time mental health care is sought, it's already too late.

I was terrible at being a social worker because I'm the same way! I got really frustrated by people who would do nothing whatsoever to help themselves, which is not a very good way to be.

I'm seeing more and more life stories written about schizophrenia, which is interesting if not particularly useful. I doubt they get much readership!

Yes, I would have LOVED to have had this book when I was first told I was psychotic. I never wanted (or complied with) psychiatry, but facing it on my own was like stumbling around in the wilderness.

your a social worker?..

I was. I'm a soon-to-be lawyer now. Two weeks to go, scary eh . . .

mhm.
im immensely afraid of mental health professionals.
of any kind.

I know she's pretty traumatized by mental health professionals, too... I'm pretty sure that's another big reason why she opted against being one. :P

Me too. They told me I had to become one of them because I was too nuts to do anything else!

You don't have to worry now, though. Now I'm a very boring corporate type.

I always had only one voice and it was a constant commentary on my life twisting things into negative ideas. I thought everyone had one, kind of like the devil on your shoulder, until I was medicated and it went away, I didn't realize that for most people it wasn't a voice. An example would be, I'd be walking down the street and the voice would stuff and say things like, "there's a bird. WHy do birds fly? I want to fly. That girl has pretty hair. I wonder what it would look like twirled around her neck. The mark would be a pretty purplish blue surrounded by a chalky pasty color. I don't think I would want her eyes in her head. He has really pretty eyes. Maybe I could replace hers. That drain hole is really loud. How many cuts do you think it would take to fit a body down that drain hole? Where does it end up? Maybe the ocean. I like the ocean. Why is it so bright outside today? I hate the sun. I don't know why you spend time outside at all. It's hot and sticky and yucky. Mmmm. Blood is hot and sticky, and dripping down her neck. Isn't it pretty. It tastes good. Can't you feel it, and smell it, it's heaven." Throw hallucinations in and it made it very hard to concentrate and was really annoying and slightly disturbing and upsetting and hard to ignore and I wouldn't realize that a lot of the times I'd be answering it and responding to it out loud

One fish to another. My voices was terrifying to me. Others would look at me with their
heads cocked slightly. Or just scratch their heads with confusion. Now that I'm taking meds, I'm not so terrified. I still have some voices. Like a kind of commentary of my life experiences. It's usually just irritating for the most part.I hope you find what you are looking for.

Sardean

Wahoo, fish buddies!

I'm sorry your voices are so terrifying.

My voices were pleasant to start with, but gradually turned on me telling no good and want me to hurt myself or kill myself. Another voice warns me against people that that are out to get me and will hurt I gave them a chance. I still hear my voices very frequently they are just resisting the meds.

this is like mine
they were nice one of them.
to start. even said they would have sex with me.
then they started to sabotage me. got mean. etc.
they tell me who to not listen to
and what not to say so i dont get hurt by people trying to harrass me.