[costello]

Ron Unger's latest blog post.

In the system of mental health “care” which is dominant today, “hearing voices” is conceptualized as an illness, and so the goal is seen to be minimizing such experiences. Even talking about the voices is usually discouraged. Mental health practitioners show no interest in the voices other than to find out whether they are still present: if they are, drug dosages are increased or changed in the hopes of dampening or eliminating them. If the person continues to hear voices despite often massive drugging, then distraction methods are usually the only coping idea that is suggested. Anything is done to avoid actually listening to, or being curious about, the voices.

It certainly is true that listening too much to voices can cause extreme problems. Voices can order people to harm themselves or others, or say things which could crush, or conversely cause a grandiose inflation of, self esteem. If the person obeys the voices or believes them, or even if the person just gets pre-occupied by them or caught up in them enough to be distressed by them, damage can result.

But sometimes the opposite of one mistake is just another kind of mistake: it is becoming obvious that the avoidance of voices is just as much a mistake as is listening too much to them.

One problem that occurs when people chronically avoid the voice hearing experience is that they never learn how to handle it. An even more serious problem is that the methods people use to avoid the voice hearing experience actually weaken the person, so that they become less able to handle the voice when they encounter it anyway despite their best efforts at avoidance.

Consider the effect of chronic use of antipsychotic medications. These drugs do sometimes cause voices to disappear, or at least become less prominent. But they do so by weakening a person’s ability to care about things: they are essentially indifference drugs. They weaken a person’s ability to have strong opinions, a strong personal voice. They induce a kind of passivity, and it has long been noted that a person under their influence has fewer spontaneous interests, but is still capable of responding to the ideas or suggestions of others.

The problem with the above is that if a person is ever going to face the voices and work things out, the person needs personal strength, or the very thing being dampened by the drugs, in order to do so. If a voice orders a person to kill themselves, it is very important that the person have strong ideas about the importance of continuing to live, so that the person can reject the suggestion. A person made passive by a drug is actually less capable of resisting suggestions made by voices that persist despite the drug. Unfortunately, this passivity is currently usually seen as just an aspect of the person’s “mental illness” and as proof the person cannot handle hearing voices, and the need for even more medication to try and suppress the voice.

(This is not to say that cautious use of medication can never be helpful, for example when a person does not yet have skills needed to face voices and when “listening too much’ would lead to disaster. But such use should be sparing, and as temporary as possible, if the person is to get a chance to really learn to face the voices and the issues behind them.)

Distraction, when it is overused, has the same problem. Consider a person who always distracts herself from her worries, rather than face them. Such a person never learns that there are ways to face the worries effectively, and the worries themselves tend to get worse due to being neglected. The same problem occurs when distraction is overused when coping with voices. As one voice hearer I know put it, “voices are personifications of issues you don’t want to deal with.” Failing to deal with the issues makes the issue seem more pressing which in turn actually strengthens the voice, while the person never learns to feel strong enough to face the voice or to work through the issues the voice talks about.

While always avoiding the voices keeps the voice hearer stuck in being incompetent to deal with voices, the mental health system suffers the same effect when it’s only strategy is encouraging drugging and avoidance. Mental health professionals fail to learn anything that helps them understand voices: instead they are taught simply to categorize them as illness, and to suggest drugs and distraction. Since they never study the experience or what can be done about it, they feel incompetent to suggest anything else, and then their allegiance to the illness model grows even stronger since it is the illness model that says “there is nothing more to know here, the voices are just a result of something “wrong” in this person’s brain…..”

Fortunately, new models of how to cope with voices are emerging, mostly due to the efforts of the Hearing Voices movement, which is an alliance of voice hearers and people who have been really willing to listen to their experiences.

In the new models, changing the relationship with voices, rather than eliminating them, is the aim. The fact that many people hear voices without problem, or even find that their life is enriched by hearing voices, is highlighted. People learn to deliberately listen to voices some of the time, and to mostly refuse to listen to them at other times, so that the voices are neither avoided nor experienced as overwhelming.

One of the trickier issues is to learn to discover the issues the voices are about, and to reconnect with parts of the person’s psyche and experience that the voice represents. The problem is that voices are often best understood an integrated by not taking them literally. That is, a voice that says “kill your mother” may eventually best be understood as meaning something like “you need to find a way to reduce your mother’s dominance in your life.”

While none of this is easy, more and more people are taking this journey, and many are writing about it quite eloquently. One example is Rachel Waddingham. Rachel hid from her voices, using drugs and distraction, for 9 years before hearing the stories of others in the Hearing Voices Network convinced her to try another approach that led to her recovery. As she puts it,

Through a combination of luck, the kindness of others and my own, not inconsequential, stubborn streak, I have finally ditched the psychiatric labels and see myself as a survivor. I manage a London-wide mental health project, am an independent trainer, speak at conferences, take part in committees and live a life that I truly love. I no longer take neuroleptic medication, and choose to live with alongside my experiences.

Rachel has her own blog, and she has also shared her experiences recently on a new website run by the Hearing Voices Network of the UK. Rachel writes very clearly about how to be curious about and communicate with even voices that seem stubbornly uninterested in communication and dialogue. For example she writes that:

When I finally felt ready to open up the lines of communication with The Three, The Three weren’t so eager to reciprocate. I remember talking internally with them, asking them who they were, why they were with me and what they were trying to tell me. I tried to be as respectful and open as the Voice Dialogue method suggested, but still The Three carried on talking as if I wasn’t there.
Initially this lack of response discouraged me. I felt a bit like a failure – even my own voices didn’t think I was important enough to talk to. Still, I persevered and tried to reassure myself that it takes time to change a relationship that has been running in the same way for over a decade.
The Three still haven’t talked directly to me, but I am now much more skilled in the art of the one sided conversation. For the first six months or so, I tried to ask them direct questions with no luck. Recognising I needed to change tack, I instead responded to what they were saying. I reasoned that some people, especially those who have a point to press, are more engaged when you talk with them about things they are interested in than your own agenda.
When The Three talked of there being gas on the tube and that I was being poisoned, I simply stated (as calmly as possible) ‘Thank you for reminding me I don’t feel safe. There have been lots of times in the past where I haven’t been safe, but I’m ok here at the moment. The other people on here don’t smell gas, and they are not afraid. There’s nothing here to be scared of’. This wasn’t a magic trick, and The Three didn’t suddenly skip off into the sunset. They carried on talking over me. I felt safer, though, and – in time – The Three started to respond to this approach and became quieter and less insistent.

Rachel’s full post is very much worth reading, I suggest you check it out.

With more articles like hers, and with the leadership of the Hearing Voices Network, and of groups like the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS) of which she and I are both members, I’m hoping that we can shift to a mental health system that supports a balanced approach to voices rather than the current mode of drugging and running away from them.

http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org...ning-too-much/

[fishsandwich]

How interesting! A few things come to mind:

1. Re: Passivity and drugs. That was certainly my experience of them. It wasn't that I was no longer hearing voices, it was that I just didn't care about the voices, or indeed anything else. I often worry that this passivity has remained with me somewhat -- even after three years off the drugs -- as I am extremely docile and lazy now. I used to be highly ambitious and have all sorts of goals and dreams.

2. Re: Doctors' attitude to hearing voices. It's interesting to hear somebody else confirm this. I remember a conversation once where I protested against having my medication put up by telling the doctor that the only things my voices had asked me to do for the past month was eat two Mars Bars and two carrots every day at half past four. They would badger me if I didn't. It was annoying, yes. Bad for the blood sugar, yes (though it's not as if the drugs aren't equally diabetes-inducing ). But an illness? Hardly.

3. I had the pleasure of meeting Rachael Waddingham on several occasions and I don't have anything to say about her except that she is AMAZING woman and I strongly recommend people to read her blog.

[costello]

Originally Posted by fishsandwich

Re: Passivity and drugs. That was certainly my experience of them. It wasn't that I was no longer hearing voices, it was that I just didn't care about the voices, or indeed anything else.

I've noticed this too - just from reading thousands of messages on forums over the last seven years. People say it over and over - the voices didn't go away but I don't care anymore.

I keep wondering if the best thing my son could do right now might be to take his dosage down a notch. It seems a bit counterintuitive because he's not doing all that well currently. But there's no initiative there at all.

[fishsandwich]

I think the only possible good use for meds is to find the right balance (short-term) between dulling the experiences somewhat, but also leaving enough of them there that you start to learn to cope. Basically what the article says.

[costello]

Originally Posted by fishsandwich

I think the only possible good use for meds is to find the right balance (short-term) between dulling the experiences somewhat, but also leaving enough of them there that you start to learn to cope. Basically what the article says.

There are people who find that medication helps them long-term. My hope is that my son will be off meds eventually, or on a very low dose, or taking them as needed. But I can't deny that some people find them useful.

One problem I see with the long-term use for a lot of people is that the drug becomes less effective over time. My adopted son has five bio siblings from his mom, two of whom are dx'd with sz. His brother Dustin is my fb friend (btw, he is so lonely and isolated it breaks my heart). He told me he has sz, that it's a biological disease, a chemical imbalance in the brain, yadda yadda yadda. I told him that wasn't proven, there were other theories, etc. "Well," he says, "the meds took care of my problem. I'll just take the meds." Two months later he says the meds aren't working anymore.

Anyway... the last time we lowered my son's dose to 5 mg (Nov. 2011), he immediately started having a lot of what I call 'magical thinking' - which is okay. But then he started having rages, totally unpredictable to me what would set them off. He'd be in my face screaming so the spit was hitting me.

The last one before I absolutely insisted he put the dose back up, he threw the kitchen furniture around. Right now he's at 6.125 mg which is a compromise I asked the pdoc to do for me - b/t 5 and 7.5. The pdoc told him to put it up to 7.5 last Monday, but he hasn't, and I haven't the heart to insist on it.

So, I'm scared of 5 mg. But I see him struggling with depression, total lack of initiative/interest, and taking no pleasure in anything. All could be med side effects. A lower dose makes sense. And when he was on the lower dose he said he felt "great" - even though I was miserable.

[fishsandwich]

He probably felt great because he could feel enough to do things again -- it's just, that thing was screaming at you, which is obviously not OK. Some other "thing to do" has to be found. I wonder if you can just spell that out to him.

[fishsandwich]

Incidentally, I'm always impressed you try to help your son so much.
All my mother ever wanted was for me to be drugged to the hilt, and I was never violent. I think she wanted that because it was easiest - it was what the doctors wanted - and she was frightened.

[costello]

Originally Posted by fishsandwich

He probably felt great because he could feel enough to do things again -- it's just, that thing was screaming at you, which is obviously not OK. Some other "thing to do" has to be found. I wonder if you can just spell that out to him.

Yeah, I'm not sure how much control he had. Some, obviously, because he didn't hit me or anything. And mostly we could talk it out and reach some insights - which is really the point, isn't it? But it was exhausting, and I was walking on eggshells all the time. I was scared to come home from work, because I never knew who I was going to meet - Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.

[fishsandwich]

It's a real shame he can't live in a supportive MH care environment. One where he's not treated like just a patient, but where they have staff (who work shifts! and get rests!) to help.

[costello]

Originally Posted by fishsandwich

Incidentally, I'm always impressed you try to help your son so much. All my mother ever wanted was for me to be drugged to the hilt, and I was never violent. I think she wanted that because it was easiest - it was what the doctors wanted - and she was frightened.

I don't know your mom, obviously, but speaking about parents of mentally ill children in general: People don't know what to do. And parents have lots of conflicting emotions. Fear for their child's future. Grief. Guilt. Anger. It's very difficult, very painful. It requires the courage to look at oneself and ask very hard questions and try to be as honest as possible. There's almost a reflexive need to protect oneself from blame and self-blame.

"Mental illness" doesn't just happen within the person with the dx. It happens between people - in relationships. Maybe for some people it's more within the person and for others it's more between people. I can't pretend to quantify it. But the interpersonal part is there, and it's the only part I can really hope to change, so I have to play it for all it's worth.

You know, when I adopted my younger son, the lessons I learned were such a gift. Maybe I've said this here before, but I'll say it again. We saw so many therapists, and I always approached it as family therapy because he invariably manipulated the situation. So I'd go into the sessions too. And within the first few sessions, they were always talking to me. And I'd be thinking, "WTF? I'm not the one with the problem here." But, of the two of us, I was the only one willing to change. So I learned that if I change, he'll change too.

It was a gift, because if you take a parent with a screwed up kid and say to him or her, "You're going to have to change," the parent is going to hear "You're a bad parent" - which may or may not be true. That's maybe what that parent's thinking anyway - which is why parents love the medical model. No blame for moms and dads! But if you have a kid you didn't even meet until he was almost 13 years old, the blame bit goes away, and with it the guilt and shame and the reflexive need to protect yourself and the message can get through more easily.

I eventually ended up finding Beyond Consequences - which is a program with beaucoup problems, don't get me wrong - but it also has some good stuff I could use. I liked that it was love-based.

Anyway I used what I learned with my adopted son on my bio son - kind of the reverse of what you'd expect, eh? The issues are somewhat different, but it gave me a place to start.

[fishsandwich]

Originally Posted by costello

"Mental illness" doesn't just happen within the person with the dx. It happens between people - in relationships. Maybe for some people it's more within the person and for others it's more between people. I can't pretend to quantify it. But the interpersonal part is there, and it's the only part I can really hope to change, so I have to play it for all it's worth.

See, there was hardly an interpersonal aspect when I was first diagnosed; I had already lived on my own for three years. I left home when I was 16 (started uni) because my parents were so terrible. My father was highly abusive and my mother is pretty much an overgrown child (and she'll admit that - in different words - after years of therapy). I actually didn't see or speak to either of them for the three years between when I left and when I was diagnosed. Some idiot in the hospital decided to ring my mum -- her number was saved in my mobile phone -- and while I'm glad we're speaking again, her involvement in my "treatment" was wholly unwelcome.

Originally Posted by costello

It was a gift, because if you take a parent with a screwed up kid and say to him or her, "You're going to have to change," the parent is going to hear "You're a bad parent" - which may or may not be true. That's maybe what that parent's thinking anyway - which is why parents love the medical model. No blame for moms and dads!

Bizarrely, my father HATED the medical model. The last time I saw him, he had stormed right in to a hospital ward on which I was being held and refused to leave until I was released. He succeeded.
I can't help but think now, though, that he rejected it because he could easily have been subject to it. Also may have been a generational thing: he lived through the ****ing War, so how could I possibly have "problems"??

Originally Posted by costello

I eventually ended up finding Beyond Consequences - which is a program with beaucoup problems, don't get me wrong - but it also has some good stuff I could use. I liked that it was love-based.

Interesting. I'll dig around in it for a while before bed.

[RunningEagleRuns]

interesting.. good read =p

[costello]

Originally Posted by fishsandwich

See, there was hardly an interpersonal aspect when I was first diagnosed; I had already lived on my own for three years. I left home when I was 16 (started uni) because my parents were so terrible. My father was highly abusive and my mother is pretty much an overgrown child (and she'll admit that - in different words - after years of therapy). I actually didn't see or speak to either of them for the three years between when I left and when I was diagnosed. Some idiot in the hospital decided to ring my mum -- her number was saved in my mobile phone -- and while I'm glad we're speaking again, her involvement in my "treatment" was wholly unwelcome.

You'll never escape your parents, fish. You carry them with you.

Actually I think of interpersonal aspects of mental illness as going way beyond parents. I would extend it out to the family, community, society, country - theoretically, the whole world. All kinds of social and economic and cultural things can impact on mental health and increase or decrease the amount of mental illness.

Bizarrely, my father HATED the medical model.

I guess we all have our quirks. Lots of parents blame themselves or feel blamed. They're happy to think of it as a biological illness. I guess another alternative is to deny there's a problem at all.

Interesting. I'll dig around in it for a while before bed.

I'll warn you - there's lots to hate there. Beyond Consequences was kind of a response to some of the attachment therapies that are out there for adoptive children with RAD. It's also more than a little a way for its promoters to make a lot of money with social work degrees.

I like the notion of helping a dysregulated person by regulating yourself.

[fishsandwich]

Originally Posted by costello

You'll never escape your parents, fish. You carry them with you.

I may well do, but that doesn't mean I want them deciding the level of dangerous and untested drugs I'm forced to take.

Originally Posted by costello

Actually I think of interpersonal aspects of mental illness as going way beyond parents. I would extend it out to the family, community, society, country - theoretically, the whole world. All kinds of social and economic and cultural things can impact on mental health and increase or decrease the amount of mental illness.

That could very well be true, though I think the negative impact (for me) of being treated was far, far greater than anything I was going through.

Hopefully the court will agree with me and give me money.

Originally Posted by costello

I'll warn you - there's lots to hate there. Beyond Consequences was kind of a response to some of the attachment therapies that are out there for adoptive children with RAD. It's also more than a little a way for its promoters to make a lot of money with social work degrees.

I like the notion of helping a dysregulated person by regulating yourself.

Yeah, once I dug around in it, it looked alarming. There are some interesting ideas though, like you say. I don't know much about children - never mind adopting them - so I'm not sure how else to evaluate it.

[costello]

Originally Posted by fishsandwich

Yeah, once I dug around in it, it looked alarming. There are some interesting ideas though, like you say. I don't know much about children - never mind adopting them - so I'm not sure how else to evaluate it.

My experience with adopting a child with a serious trauma history was ... educational.

You pretty much have to throw out all the parenting advice you ever heard, and then you don't know what the hell to do. So, you turn to the "experts." Most of the experts are going to tell you to do all that normal parenting stuff that doesn't work. Like giving "consequences" (i.e., punishments - which is where Beyond Consequences gets its name). Or setting up a reward system. Neither of these work with kids dx'd with RAD, but most therapists don't seem to get this. They just think you're doing it wrong. I had one traditional therapist who was very familiar with the types of behaviors you see in foster and adopted children. She admitted that reward systems don't work with RAD kids.

Here's the kind of thing a RAD kid will do - just an example. You tell him if he gets all homework handed in all week, he'll get to rent a video game Friday evening. He hands his homework in all week, but Friday afternoon he punches a classmate and is suspended from school for a week. But he still insists on having the reward, because after all he "earned" it. No parent's going to give the reward under those circumstances. And any normal kid would understand why. When a kid does that kind of thing over and over again, you realize it's not a coincidence. My son told me outright that he intended to game the system.

Funny story: I put braces on my son's teeth. The orthodontist had one of those reward systems. He'd give the kid a wooden token for, say, showing up on time or having his teeth brushed and clean. You could exchange the tokens for a variety of items which were displayed in a glass case at the entrance. Most kids earned 2 to 4 tokens per visit. My son earned 5 tokens total in 18 months of going there. The smallest item you could get there cost 6 tokens. So he never got a reward. I still have the 5 wooden tokens in my desk. It's almost emblematic of trying to use a reward system to change the behavior of an attachment disordered child.

Mainstream psychiatry and psychology really have nothing to offer here. I had therapists advise me not to adopt him, to return him to the state. After the adoption I had many, many people - including professionals of all stripes (special educators, police, etc.) - tell me it was hopeless, he'll never change. The wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactiv...hment_disorder; treatment section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactiv...rder#Treatment (my bolding)

Assessing the child's safety is an essential first step that determines whether future intervention can take place in the family unit or whether the child should be removed to a safe situation. [Note that I was the "safe situation" he was removed to!] Interventions may include psychosocial support services for the family unit (including financial or domestic aid, housing and social work support), psychotherapeutic interventions (including treating parents for mental illness, family therapy, individual therapy), education (including training in basic parenting skills and child development), and monitoring of the child's safety within the family environment.

In 2005 the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry laid down guidelines (devised by N.W. Boris and C.H. Zeanah) based on its published parameters for the diagnosis and treatment of RAD.


Recommendations in the guidelines include the following:

1. "The most important intervention for young children diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder and who lack an attachment to a discriminated caregiver is for the clinician to advocate for providing the child with an emotionally available attachment figure."
2. "Although the diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder is based on symptoms displayed by the child, assessing the caregiver's attitudes toward and perceptions about the child is important for treatment selection."
3. "Children with reactive attachment disorder are presumed to have grossly disturbed internal models for relating to others. After ensuring that the child is in a safe and stable placement, effective attachment treatment must focus on creating positive interactions with caregivers."
4. "Children who meet criteria for reactive attachment disorder and who display aggressive and oppositional behavior require adjunctive (additional) treatments."

Mainstream prevention programs and treatment approaches for attachment difficulties or disorders for infants and younger children are based on attachment theory and concentrate on increasing the responsiveness and sensitivity of the caregiver, or if that is not possible, placing the child with a different caregiver. These approaches are mostly in the process of being evaluated. The programs invariably include a detailed assessment of the attachment status or caregiving responses of the adult caregiver as attachment is a two-way process involving attachment behavior and caregiver response. Some of these treatment or prevention programs are specifically aimed at foster carers rather than parents, as the attachment behaviors of infants or children with attachment difficulties often do not elicit appropriate caregiver responses. [My note: I love the bland language. "Children with attachment difficulties often do not elicit appropriate caregiver responses." No, they certainly do not. You want to beat the kid to within an inch of his life!] Approaches include "Watch, wait and wonder," manipulation of sensitive responsiveness, modified "Interaction Guidance", "Clinician-Assisted Videofeedback Exposure Sessions (CAVES)", "Preschool Parent Psychotherapy", "Circle of Security", "Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up" (ABC), the New Orleans Intervention, and parent–child psychotherapy. Other treatment methods include Developmental, Individual-difference, and Relationship-based therapy (DIR, also referred to as Floor Time) by Stanley Greenspan, although DIR is primarily directed to treatment of pervasive developmental disorders.

The relevance of these approaches to intervention with fostered and adopted children with RAD or older children with significant histories of maltreatment is unclear.

Notice the emphasis on infants and young children. For older children, they've got almost nothing - "adjunctive treatment" for kids with oppositional and aggressive behaviors (which my son did) means they herd them into a residential treatment facility with a bunch of other kids no one knows how to handle.

Medications aren't really helpful. They do prescribe them. My son was supposed to be taking depakote, but mostly he threw them away. Once when I cleaned out his room, I found about two months worth of depakote hidden all around it. That's why the pdoc kept saying his blood tests weren't at a therapeutic dose.

So, with no help from the mainstream, people turn to the alternatives - and some of those are awful. At the very kindest they involve exerting absolute control over the child. So, yeah, when I stumbled on Beyond Consequences I was so delighted. It said I could love my son. No one adopts a child hoping they'll spend their lives in a constant power struggle. People adopt hoping to have a child to love. It's really hard when the kid rejects that love.

Anyway, probably way more than you wanted to know. Thanks for letting me talk it out. It really brings home to me why I take the stance I do with my older son. His psychotic illness exploded into my world while I was struggling with the younger son's problems and really influenced how I see things.

Some of my philosophies:

1. "Mental illness" happens between people.
2. You can help the person in distress by learning to calm and regulate yourself.
3. Try to see things from the distressed person's point of view. No matter how utterly bizarre it seems, you can understand it if you start with the assumption that it makes sense to him - and really work at it.
4. Even the biggest catastrophes can be weathered.
5. Time is a great healer, and time is on our side.

1) Thanks for the article costello I find the passivity-thing is definitely how the meds affect me. The voices are mostly gone, but instead there's this not-knowing if I heard something (a hallucination) or if I thought it instead. This used to freak me out as I felt like I couldn't trust my own brain anymore, but after a bit longer on the meds it just doesn't bother me anymore, and neither do the other things that worry me, like my brain rotting away. It's like I'm just resigned to it - "so what if my brain is rotting away, there's nothing I can do about it anyway..." It's greatly reduced my anxiety and I'm less paranoid about leaving the house, but it's hard to feel motivated about anything else. Is it worth it? At the moment I think so, but thanks to this article reminding me of the passivity caused by antipsychotics I will keep monitoring it.

2) Re RAD I have 2 adoptive younger siblings and it is definitely a challenge, especially the older one who was nearly 8 before we got him. He's almost 16 now and nothing has changed. The medical professionals don't have any answers and my parents are exhausted dealing with him. I wonder if we even did the best thing by adopting them, because my parents are so stressed out about them (the youngest one has ADHD too). I will check out that website that you mentioned costello to see if it has any insight for my parents. The only thing is I fear it may be too late for the 15-year-old now, which is incredibly sad

Anyway, thank you costello for the links

*Willow*

[newtus]

i heard most foster children have mental/emotional problems than not.

[ickydog2006]

I spent most of my life talking with my 'voice' and it seems like it only made it worse. Of course I didn't even know it wasn't normal until meds 'coincidentally' took it away. My anti-anxiety med made me tired and Wellbutrin was added to help up my mood and energy level and ended up making the hallucinations go away. I can see how voices shouldn't automatically be considered negative, but I can't think of anything positive coming from mine. And so what if I have the strength to not acknowledge the voice. I feel like I'm barely hanging on without it there, why should I live my life trying to survive it plus everything else?

[fishsandwich]

I don't think the article is saying you should HAVE to live with your voices constantly, it's saying that you should learn to because even the best drugging will not guarantee a 100% remission.

[ickydog2006]

Thanks fish. I think that wording actually helps. It makes sense that people should learn to survive with them since meds arn't a guarantee. And I know this article wasn't meant to say that 'all voices are just misunderstood and are valuable, it just kinda felt that way to me. I can see how some voices could be interpreted as useful to learning more about oneself. I think I felt like this article was acting as if you could just learn from the voices and once your inner issues are resolved they'll just go away (I know it pretty much said the opposite, and that they'll still be there, just more tolerable). I guess learning to survive with my voice was benneficial, in that I know if meds arn't a long term solution, I can still survive and not harm or kill anyone. I feel like I already want to do a lot of the bad things the voice was talking about, it just made it all the harder to resist with it constantly there.

[fishsandwich]

I used a similar technique to one of those the article mentions -- just learning to passively accept when I'm hearing a voice. I often hear benign voices -- they say things like "Go buy milk!", "Wear shoes with laces you can tie!", "Cross the road now!", "The sky is green today!", etc. -- and I don't think they have any particular meaning. Nor do I care if they do have meaning, whatever it is must be pretty banal
I just learn to sit with them and not just passively do or believe whatever they say. I can even dismiss/tolerate even the occasional aggressive voice with this kind of attitude, but I can see how you wouldn't want to do that if your voices were mean to you constantly.