I have heard voices for a long time, probably as long as I can remember. At age 2 or 3 I had my first imaginary friend, as I grew older I developed more characters who became part of an ever growing colourful inner world. For the longest time my voices where mostly just that, “imaginary” usually secret friends who spoke (inside my head) as opposed to auditory hallucinations that appear to come from an external source, external voices did happen but not frequently. In the past year the pendulum has swung and external voices have become part of my norm.
My imaginary friends where like extensions of my own personality, they were useful and kind to me (most of the time) and often I would become one of my imaginary friends when I had a stressful situation to deal with. They could just pop out, take control of whatever was happening and deal with life for me. Perhaps this started out as play pretend (I can’t remember) but as they developed and I interacted with them, they became more and more real. I now have this vibrant world in my head that I can indulge in for hours. There is always dialogue and voices as each of these friends converse with each other and me. I am much a part of this imaginary world as they are, and they are as much a part of the real world as I am. I know longer know where I end and they begin, or if there is a distinction between them and me anymore. They are part of me and I am real, therefore they are also real.
I have seen therapists about this “problem”, although it no longer is a problem for me. One therapist after talking to me for some time believed that I fit the criteria for multiple personality another thought Schizo was a more suitable label and I’ve had another doctor tell me that I just have very strong ego states and a creative imagination. I left therapy after a while because I realised that I didn’t want to “get rid” of my friends. I developed ways of coping with some of the problems they could bring, mainly memory lapses when one took over and I fell back and more importantly I learned to embrace them and stop seeing myself as a freak. I limited the time I spent indulging in conversations with them, and the ones that had destructive or negative tendencies started to relax more as I worked through their issues as if they where my own, and at the end of the day their issues are my issues.
In my teens I heard my first “outside voices” auditory hallucinations that do appear to come from an external source. I also had my first high/mania, and acted recklessly. The outside voices where always fleeting, lasting only a few days, or weeks and so it was easy to forget about them and get on with my life once they left. My mood has never been stable, always up or down and I was diagnosed with Bipolar and put on Lithium. It was hoped that this would calm things down. Unfortunately my last bout of Mania was bad, I lost my grip on reality and the voices came back. When Manic they were little angels who were talking to me and telling me that Rick was the Buddha. I started to believe this was true and I started to believe that if I hurt myself he could heal me. Not fun for Rick but thankfully I didn’t do anything too drastic because I had a lot of support from a home treatment team and from friends, family and Rick. The cocktail of meds eventually settled things down and my mood started to drop. The voices didn’t go away this time but because I had switched from mania to depression I thought that when my mood was eventually stable they would go away again.
This has not been the case, in-fact they started to get worse. Nowadays I have a real appreciation for people who have to cope with this day in day out because it’s not fun. The external voices are nothing like the voices that come from my internal world in-fact most of the time my outside voices are not friendly. There is a man and a woman and they talk back and forth about me, sometimes stating my thoughts out loud which feels intrusive and embarrassing due to the fact that my perception picks up the voices from somewhere external and therefore it feels like everyone else can hear them too. Sometimes they talk about my appearance or comment on what I am doing. They have many thoughts and ideas but mostly they tell me that other people are trying to hurt me. They have come up with all sorts of extra ordinary beliefs, that there are cameras watching me, someone is trying to poison me, people are out to cause me a lot of harm... It feels as though my ears are picking up sound from somewhere to the left side of the room as if a radio or speaker has been left on. They follow me everywhere and the result is I can’t work or do my job without feeling paranoid that bad things are happening in my workplace. I can’t relax at all and if someone even hints at being annoyed at me the voices jump on that and push it to the extreme. I’ve finally had to take some more leave from work to give myself a chance to overcome this.
My psychiatrist no longer thinks that I have Bipolar, the manias, depressions along with my vivid inner world (inside voices), socialising problems, outside voices and delusions that are not mood congruent have made her diagnose me as Schizoaffective.
http://www.mind.org.uk/help/diagnoses_and_conditions/schizoaffective_disorder
That label scared me a lot, more than any I’ve been given before. There is something about being told that I’m Schizo that makes me feel like my mind is fundamentally flawed. Yet at the same time it is a relief to finally have a psychiatrist who I trust, who I am willing and able to work with long term and who claims to have a clue about what is going on. I’ve switched psychiatrists so many times I can count 6 in total and this is not because I am fussy, the psychiatrists I got through the NHS in the past just never stuck about in the same place very long and so the consequence is I’ve been given many different labels and meds.
My current doctor and CPN are amazing, they have really taken the time to get to know me and my history and are hopefully going to stick around long enough to get me stable. I started a new anti-psychotic (Risperidol), to take along with the lithium and Amytriptaline and so far it seems to be having some effect. I feel calmer, and the voices are less frequent, I am hopeful that I will be able to cope better.
Currently I seriously have to re-evaluate my life. Can I continue working? In my current state, not really. What that would mean for us financially if I don’t get better will be catastrophic and so I am really keeping hope that this will be controllable and these outside voices will go away. At the moment I’m learning to distract myself by blocking my left ear, blasting my ears with music and keeping busy so I’m not focusing on the voices negative remarks. I popped into a hearing voices group last week to get some advice about dealing with them until the meds work. At the moment I want to stay confident that they will work and this isn’t something that will be permanent. Distraction techniques are working to an extent, when I’m at home it is possible to block them out but it is impossible to do anything meaningful or keep concentration. Reading, meditation, and studying are all nearly impossible and my relationships with other people are suffering more than usual. This past year I’ve felt completely isolated from everyone, it feels like I am on a different planet and if I talk about what’s going on in my mind people look horrified. It seems that it is not socially acceptable to talk about hearing voices. I know statistics say that many people are voice hearers but where are they? I am guessing they are either keeping very quiet, or are on the outskirts of society and I haven’t come across them yet.
So just in case anyone is reading this blog who experiences voices I thought I would end with some useful links,
Hearing voices in your head is so common that it is normal, psychologists believe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5346930.stm
Hearing Voices Movement is a philosophical trend in how people who hear voices are viewed
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