[VoicesAndColours]

Hello.

I was just wondering about different experiences of people reacting to voices, in public and private. It's something that affects me a huge amount and I guess I just wanted to see how other people cope?

For me it all depends on the time and the severity of the voices / thoughts. Sometimes I will shout back at them whether I'm in public or not if they are screaming at me. Although other times I try and keep quiet and deal with it myself inside because I fear judgement or being taken away to hospital (again).

[Shadowvixen777]

i have had some problems with that in the past.. but I've learned to kind of suffer in silence for now.. unless they get REALLY bad.

[FireBird]

I start yelling at them if they get too bad. Sometimes I just talk to them. Lately they have been bad. I have also been seeing things and responding to that. It isn't fun at all. Right now they have been telling me to hurt myself, cut myself, bang my head until I get unconscious and have brain damage, and just random yelling calling me names and the government threatening me and my family. I also have this as I named him, "the random phrase guy." He just says things out of the blue that makes no sense. Sometimes I hear a female voice telling me that she is controlling my behavior. I look at where the voices are coming from. Now, I honestly don't know if people are just messing with my mind with the voices. My annoying brother is known to do that. I still love him though. In public I don't react as strongly to the voices because I don't want people to take me away to the mental hospital. I have been so tired lately. I just need to take a lot of anti anxiety pills and they help. I don't need anti psychotic meds because I believe the problem is anxiety rather than psychosis.

[VoicesAndColours]

I think I understand where you're both coming from and it's very similar to my experience. Sometimes I get sick of having to be silent all the time, if I broke a leg people would be worried if I wasn't shouting ¬¬

I tend to find mine are a lot worse at night. That's when they shout at me, or tell me that I should hurt other people. I find it really hard to deal with them then. During the day, they are still there but quite quiet, especially if I can keep myself busy!

[ickydog2006]

I don't think I ever yelled at them in public. Usually I tried to keep it on the downlow but occasionally they'd get to me and I'd start crying and beg them to shutup. Usually I'd just talk back to them quietly and not realize I was doing it out loud (I'd try to do it in my head mostly. My dad didn't know I heard voices and thought I was talking to myself all the time and made a joke once that I should just hold a cell phone to my ear all the time so it looked like I was talking to someone else. This was before bluetooth's were so popular, although if my meds didn't stop the voices I think I would definitely wear one in public always. The hallucinations I'd try not to focus on or stare at. Thankfully people thought I was just spacing out mostly, but sometimes the hallucinations would cause me to not be able to focus on conversations and people would get offended thinking I was ignoring them.

[Gr3tta]

I try really hard not to talk back to them in public. I really like the idea of wearing a bluetooth everywhere. Sometimes too I can try to excuse myself to the bathroom or somewhere no one sees for a few minutes to tell them to be quiet. I've worked really hard to train myself to put a little delay on responding to anything that looks strange, or very out of the ordinary. That gives me a moment to see if anyone else is responding. If they don't then I have to consider that I'm the only one that sees it.
Where it gets really complicated is if I also think that I do see others respond. It just takes a lot of work reading the situation.

[VoicesAndColours]

I posted about 8 hours ago and it hasn't shown up yet, I assume it is still awaiting moderation, but I thought I would post to reply to the last comment from Gr3tta.

I find it very interesting what you say, and I actually think that could be useful. I guess it turns me from looking mentally ill (I hate saying that!) to just looking like I'm having an argument with somebody.

I never really know how to react when I see something that isn't there, for example sometimes I see a ghost of my old friend that died, I know it's not a hallucination but I can see, touch and talk to her. I happily chat away not realising that other people can't see her.

Has anybody ever been challenged by somebody for talking / reacting to voices? I remember a couple of times I've been in the local A&E (ER for Americans!) and have been told I'm "crazy" or "****ing mental" for shouting at what was making me scared. Although to be honest, I didn't care what people thought when I was in that state.

[jgurl]

although i dont hear any voices talking to me directly, it's mostly a variety of voices, how can i put this it's like a sitcome in my head, or a romantic drama movie, the voices are mostly male and females, sometimes my fami
y members will catch me laughing to myself for no reason, because of the jokes that the voices will tell sometimes, and my family will think i am nuts, but i make excuses. because of staring family members i've learned to control it, but when im alone they just come out.

[Gr3tta]

It has happened to me that I've slipped up and become embroiled in a conversation or argument with voices that others don't hear, and other people saw it. Basically, if it's just a matter of strangers making remarks or staring, I tend to blow it off. Why should I care if some random person thinks I'm nuts? I think they're a jerk, and it doesn't bother them, does it?
If I've totally lost reality, then I won't know what's going on at all. But that would be a extreme case. I have a few excuses I'll use to cover, depending on the situation. For instance, if I were at a bar or a party or somewhere it wouldn't be unusual for people to be inebriated, I might say, sorry, apparently I've had too many. I'll just call myself a ride home. At a variety of public places I might claim that I was conducting a social experiment for my psychology class, apologize profusely for the disturbance, and then make a speedy exit. If only one or two people have observed me, I might turn the tables and try to make them feel nuts instead by claiming that I most certainly was not just talking to myself. What are you talking about? Are you feeling okay? Do you need some water?
That's what I do.

[Tsunamisurfer]

Originally Posted by Gr3tta

It has happened to me that I've slipped up and become embroiled in a conversation or argument with voices that others don't hear, and other people saw it. Basically, if it's just a matter of strangers making remarks or staring, I tend to blow it off...

The Bluetooth headset idea is a good one. I just need to learn to resist the urge to spin around and suddenly stare behind me when shouting at someone out of the blue on my "Bluetooth".

[VoicesAndColours]

Some very interesting ideas. I suppose I have different stages of hallucinating. There's the stage I'm in at the moment when I can function properly and I'm "articulate" as my psych likes to put it. I don't hear voices at all, other than maybe the odd random thing such as hearing my name being called out.

The second one is where I can hear voices and see things (such as the ghost of my dead friend) I know they aren't real, I know nobody else can see them and I can ignore them (or interact - as I like talking to my dead friend). Although usually the voices are quiet and manageable. Depending on how bad this is it won't usually affect me going out unless I can feel it getting worse.

The third stage is where I've completely lost touch with reality, I see demons or angels, I hear lots of diffeerent voices all talking really loud. That's when they tell me to cut myself, or cut other people to make things better, This is when I fully believe everything I see, I just sort of act however I want and get really really frightened... if that makes sense to anybody?

I would be interested to know if anybody else sees demons or angels... what do they look like for you? My demons are like ghost like, black floating creatures (similar to Dementors from harry potter) that follow me around.

[Gr3tta]

That makes sense to me. If I'm totally lost nothing else really matters. I don't remember that I'm supposed to be acting "normal" because there are more important things going on.
I have a visitor called The Dark Prince, but he's not evil, not to me anyway because he is on my side. I also have the Skitters - they are shadowy, sort of lizard - like creatures. They are definitely bad. There's other very bad ones, but I wouldn't define them as demons. I don't have anything I would define as an angel, but I kind of think of Rats Lady and Glowworm as being angelic figures.
Are your demons bad, and your angels good? Or are they both scary?