How I Deal With Hearing Voices

 by Jay Paul

Recently, I learned that my diagnosis has changed—from "schizoaffective" to "schizophrenia unspecified." Whatever. It's still the same old thing.

Yes, I hear voices. I suppose all of us schizophrenics come up with techniques to deal with and overcome them. Here, I will point to one that has worked for me. As always, I caution you that what works for me may not work for you. We schizophrenics need to talk to each other about our techniques and experiment, trying out various ones until we happen upon those that work.

Anyway, my best technique is not to ignore them entirely. I recognize, acknowledge, and listen to them for a time when they come—which, lately, has been a good part of every day. After this greeting, I then tell them—quietly, of course, so that I don't look "crazy" to neurotypicals—that I am going away to attend to other matters. I then force myself to concentrate on what I need to do, whether it be meditating, doing the dishes, cooking, exercising, socializing, etc. Deep concentration on the task at hand usually works.

Do they then go away? Of course not! Would that life were so simple. Rather, they gradually fade—first, the volume goes down, and then they become a distant murmur. At that point, I feel a little free. But the harangue, I know, may reappear at any time.

Incidentally, these voices sometimes help me. Some voices are always mean, and other voices are sometimes mean and sometimes helpful. None of my voices are always helpful. I need to discern when the potentially good voices really are offering useful advice. For me, they often do this about food choices. Indeed, I probably couldn't live without them because I am terribly sensitive to food and drink, and the voices tell me what to eat to keep my digestion in order.

These are, in psychiatric parlance, command hallucinations. A word of warning—if any voice tells you to hurt someone else, it is a bad voice that needs to be ignored. Do not obey it. Psychiatrists will tell you to ignore the good advice that comes from friendly voices, too. They see all so-called hallucinations as pernicious. In my personal experience, they are wrong. But you need to humor psychiatrists, because they are often clueless people with a lot of power.

My advice—never tell your psychiatrist you ever heed any voices. Such an admission could get you locked up. Rather, if you do heed some voices, lie and say you ignore all of them. Practicality turns us into liars, but we have no choice.

(We schizophrenics deserve our secrets!

Put simply, ignore voices unless you need them to help you get through the day. But always be careful. Even my best voices sometimes lie and send me down false paths.

Where do these voices, good and bad, come from? That, I don't know. All I do know is they are annoying most of the time, and occasionally helpful. I have speculated that schizophrenics are attuned to various alternative aspects of reality that neurotypicals easily ignore. Do the voices come from nature or from some sort of parallel universe that traverses our everyday world, hiding in interstices, and emerging in the minds of schizophrenics and visionaries? Maybe. I can only wonder.

Well, gang, this is my technique for dealing with voices. If you have any that have worked for you, please leave a comment or email me—in the latter case I will offer the technique in a comment I post myself and attribute to "anonymous."

I wish you a glorious day! And, now, I am going to get my "schizophrenia unspecified" butt off to work another day in this always unfolding complexity we call "the world."