Voices: inside or outside your head? Or both?

My T--who was a specialist in cbt for psychosis told me that often voices start on the inside and go toward the outside as the disease progresses. She also told me about voice hearers--about 5% of the population hears voices but only 1% is sz/psychosis. The main difference is how people react to the voices and whether they are accompanied by delusions. If you are not impaired you are a voice hearer, if you have trouble functioning like having friends or keeping a job or telling reality from not then its sz/psychosis.

This is exactly what happened to me.

My psychiatrist mentioned hearing voices is common and not necessarily a sign of mental illness. She won't prescribe medication (at least to me) unless the voices are interfering with daily life and are accompanied by delusions.

That sounds reasonable, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with hearing voices.

i first heard voices outside of me at 9. there most likely was inside but i thought they were normal inside.

Before I got sick I had one voice inside...my inner voice....it can be turned off and isn't intrusive, but when I got sick I had a computer tech, a nutritionist and several other doctors and scientists who weren't me all talking to me....it's just different. So you can have normal inside voices but I don't think there should be more than one. At least that's my understanding of it.

im pretty sure by now they werent normal given my history of psychiatric problems.

i wasnt a typical child in every form and fashion. i rarely ate - never bathed - couldnt dress myself appropriately - rarely spoke - etc lots of stuff - from the time i was supposed to be able to do all that and into my teens and still now. i can see now there was tons of stuff about me that was ignored.

my inside voices as of now are ....you know...but they arent me...but they are voicess or are they...real people that are dead or somewhere in this world???
i think they are real.

my psychiatrist at one stage wasnt sure whether it was psychosis or DID...but both my t and pdoc now lean more toward so-called 'psychosis'....because the voices tell me things and i believe them?...one thing is bad the other thing is good....its so frustrating!! btw i hear mostly internal voices...

Technically inside voices are called pseudohallucinations, while outside your head are proper auditory hallucinations.

When I'm not doing as badly the voices are more internal, and when I was on aripiprazole/Abilify that was working, they were internal before they faded almost completely. The way I think of voices as my thoughts that my brain is getting confused about and attributing to others. So when they're internal, that's less bad/severe than when I think they're totally outside me.

If you are hearing outside voices and they put you in a brain scanner, the bit that is to do with hearing lights up when you have the voices, showing that your brain thinks that it is really hearing something without the external stimuli.

*Willow*

i saw this on wikipedia.
but i have beef with that statement.

supposedly technically it is.

BUT many many psychiatrists consider them hallucinations. so what kind of "technical" is this? because on a psychiatric level - even though theres differing of opinions - many many psychiatrists consider this a type of hallucination. but like psychiatry states - its in how it affects you and the content of what the voices say - and how they present. i dont believe there is such thing as a proper hallucination. i know what you mean by proper too - im pretty well versed in british language.

so that statement isnt particularly factual.

I see by your profile you are located in the UK, UK and america sometimes do have different terms for the same thing...

example my own treatment providers and others here in NY which is in the USA do not call the voices .....pseudohallucinations .....and .....proper auditory hallucinations....like they do in the UK

here the voices are called hallucinations, psychosis, repressed memories, delusions, co consciousness, and many other terms /words too depending upon the persons diagnosis /other accompanying symptoms and the cause of the voices...

tonight I heard both internal and external voices..when I contacted my therapist we discovered the voices were directly related to the fact that I didnt sleep last night, I was on phone duty for work, which means the voices are just a completely normal thing that happens to me when I am sleep deprived.. the technical term for this is called sleep deprivation....

my point is that technically it may be called those things in your location but it may not be technically called the same elsewhere.

I have hallucinations both "inside" and "outside", but the voices are primarily inside and the more auditory hallucinations more sound effects or unintelligible voices, whispering, or screaming.

Seems to me most people I've met with psychosis have a combination.

I've never had a professional say "internal" ones aren't real, they're just perhaps functioning through different areas of the brain. They certainly don't feel any less real when you're experiencing them. If anything, I've often found my "internal" hallucinations more confusing and more of a blockage between me and reality.

I hear voiced outside my head, they talk with each other or with me. I sometimes see them too, but they are transparent/translucent. They are really driving me mad, since I cannot concentrate on what I am doing.

thats good they didnt.

i just think theres a misconception among people who have voices. not a bad thing. becuz its confusing most times.

I'm sorry if it sounded like I was discounting internal hallucinations, because that's not what I meant. They can hurt and be just as scary etc as external voices. My pdoc treats them both the same. Sorry for offending anyone

*Willow*

You didn't offend me.

you didnt offend me either.

If I sounded like I was upset at you, I'm sorry! I was just sharing my experience, no hurt feelings here

I wasn't offended. I think I totally missed whatever it was.

this is tricky.... i think my mind is the universe... so inside maybe?

Yeah but he asked me too many questions to know if i had delusions (he told me yesterday) and he saw i had no delusions. I didn't hear voices all the time, but sometimes I did and I had a rough time when I did. These voices would tell me things and i thought they were spirits, but God has helped me like He always does and I decided not to pay attention to those evil voices no matter what they told me to do. He always asked me if I was suspicious of other people (no), if i think other people are scheming towards me, etc...and no, i don't. I think I don't have schizophrenia, really, although sometimes i have thought it would be better tan being like this, because thinking you have DID and not having anyone acknowledge it, i tell you, sucks. also all the symptoms sometimes suck.

Yeah I think you need to have a few things at once like delusions and hallucinations for psychosis---been a while since I've looked at the criteria, the DSM is not my favorite. I don't know anything about DID, but you might also just be a voice hearer, about 5% of the population hears voices and the vast majority of them are perfectly fine.

How long did you have to take risperidone before it quieted your voices? Mine are internal and very loud and obnoxious, always cruel. I tried 3 weeks of risperidone, a couple weeks of seroquel xr, and a couple months of saphris.

I'd do *anything* to get rid of them.

So this doesn't happen to normal people? I get this all the time- thought it was normal

I don't think this is considered abnormal for some people some of the time.. I have had this happen a lot at certain times in my life.. sometimes when i'm sleep deprived, when taking certain meds, that type of thing.

The majority of my voices are outside of my head.
It's basically like sitting in a restaurant and hearing bits and pieces of other people's conversations while at the same time having someone talking to you, personally.
When I become very stressed out the voices get louder and more and more of them start talking directly to me.

I'm currently on risperidone and that has helped to keep the direct voices quiet. For a while they were completely gone and nothing but soft whispers, but when I become stressed they come back.