Hearing Voices
 

A thread about hearing voices caught my attention. Now that I've signed up and I'm in here, I can't find. So I started this one. I would like to hear from people who hear voices. Perhaps you would like to tell ma a little about your experiences. I have read quite a bit on the subject and I was very relieved to learn that it is not necessarily a sign of madness. Want to discuss your experiences? Or just tell me what you think of the topic? ;)

well, onus is on the thread starter to also share their experiences to spur the discussion.

You might want to check out the Paranoia forum....

people do hallucinate without being crazy... it's the persistent ones that tell you to burn stuff that you have to worry about

Or maybe Health and Fitness...let's see what direction it takes.

In the meantime...yes, I would like to see the original poster provide some of his own insight. This being a subject which I should imagine to be extremely personal and soul baring, I believe that the OP should be the first to step up to the podium. How 'bout it, vurnely?

I hear voices all the time, mostly they say:
"you shouldn't poke badgers with spoons"
no clue what it means... maybe I am crazy?

Crack- Don't listen to them! Poking badgers with spoons is makes for hours of fun on the run! Errr...

So no, I've never heard voices myself, but things of this nature insterest me a bit, but from the crazy and non-crazy perspective. It seems to me that the non-crazy version is actually a little stranger. Is it paranormal? From beyond the grave? Or just a muse inside your head? Where does the line gets drawn between sane and insane?

I go by the definition that as long as you know the voices are of your own making, you're sane. When you start thinking it's actually God/Elvis/aliens talking to you, you are insane.

What if you think you are god?

Well then hopefully you're right. Otherwise you're in for a very unfortunate suprise. :p

Well...that explains a lot, huh? :D

It's a simple test, really. If you think that you're God, then you'll have the answers to several questions that have plaguing mankind for centuries. If, however, you find yourself lacking in the knowledge department...then you ain't Him...Her...whatever.

That's assuming that God has those answers. He/she/whatever could be just as confused as we are, just with more power.

Haha, or we may be an expiriment set in motion to find those answers.

Don't you mean a question?:thumbsup:

Probably, seeing as the answer is 42.

I don't think that hearing voices make you crazy. At least that's what they tell me. ;)
Anyway, a lot of things can mess with your brain and cause temporary insanity so to speak. Stress and lack of sleep are two that can make people, including me, have hallucinations both auditory and visual. However, when people start acting on the voices or believe they are real, then they may be on the verge of insanity. When I have these hallucinations they are more just sounds not so much directions or conversations. It can range from a baby crying to people talking around me.

I agree that people who are schizophrenic often believe they are invaded by aliens, demons, or other entities. This is caused by the paranoia which often accompanies this illness. An interesting thing I learned the other day is that depression and schizophrenia are closely related. So that could even be a cause for hallucinating also.

I find the brain very interesting and have research multiple personalities and schizophrenia, along with depression and anxiety. I hope the OP is expanded to allow for more discussion on the topic.

I thought Multiple Personality Disorder was a myth?

Haha, or the question indeed.

I had actually thought about that whole situation (a higher entity acting in that nature) waaaaaaay before I read that book.

But back to the OPs post (see what happens with no direction from the OP??)

I've had auditory hallucinations before, but never clearly defined words. I don't think that makes me insane, lol. I will admit though, that a few of the times I expirienced that were brought on by the use of illicit drugs....

Nope, not a myth, although many people claim it to try to get out of trouble which is why it's lost credibility. It's rare, but it does exist although hard to prove without a lot of clinical psychiatric visits. From what I've read, and I'm cynical so I don't believe all the information, a person typically has a very stressful moment. Post-traumatic stress cause the person to feel like they can't take it anymore (aka suicidal) so another personality is developed to handle the situation and the main personality is 'put to sleep'. It's a survival technique of sorts.
Multiple personalities are set up inside the person like a monologue play. There is a stage and a light and only one personality can be on at a time and the others are 'sleeping'. A very good book for people interested in this is The Minds of Billy Milligan (easily found on Google). The man had 24 personalities in him and committed many crimes in Ohio. It goes into the background and research of multiple personalities, but isn't too technical because it's a crime biography novel. They are in the process of making a movie which is due out in a couple of years. :)

auditory hallucinations, spatial location, and persecutory delusions
 

Could this be a very important thing; if you type in the words "people talking" and "auditory hallucinations" in google, you will find that many voice hearers believe that other people/neighbours etc are talking about/persecuting them (and this often leads to violence) - before they find out that they are hearing voices. We know that voices can be heard both inside and outside of the head; could it be that the truth is more nuanced, and that the voices can also be heard to emanate from people's lips, passing cars, from MULTIPLE locations outside of the head (in external space).

I have been reading some material about delusions of reference in schizophrenia, i.e., the idea that some people have that the t.v. or the radio is talking about them and would like to propose that just as people hear auditory hallucinations internally and externally, for some reason, they may hear auditory hallucinations coming from a t.v or a radio. I suspect that certain areas of the brain that register the spatial location from where a sound emanates is activated when people hear voices from a radio or a t.v. I wonder whether people who think that other people are talking about them also hear voices emanating from the spatial location of the other person/persons.

I would like to quote a passage from one of the articles of Ralph Hoffman (Acta Psychiatr Scand, 2006) "Seeing Voices": fused visual/auditory verbal hallucinations reported by three persons with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder" - "A male patient reported AVHs consisting of male and female voices occuring at a rate of 7-10 times per hour. He also reported visualizing lip and mouth movements superimposed on otherwise veridical perceptions of faces of actual persons that were fused with (i.e., matched the verbal content of and occurred in synchrony with) simultaneous AVHs. These fused visual/auditory hallucinations occurred most frequently when the patient was in the presence of his family or other familiar persons, and tended to reinforce the patient's conviction that others in his immediate environment were the source of the 'voices' he heard."

There is an article from Scientific American that shows how barn owls locate sounds in space (Listening with two ears, Scientific american, 2006) There also seems to be some research on the internet on how the human brain locates the spatial location from where sounds emanate. I wonder whether schizophrenia researchers would be able to use scientific techniques to see which regions of the brain are activated when people think that they are hearing voices from the radio or the t.v.

Never have experienced hearing voices, just the dialouge that I have with myself in my head, which I think everyone has.

I have suffered with depression and anxiety. I used to have panic attacks as a child, but I didn't know what was happening to me. I'd just tell my mum I had "that feeling" again (sick to my stomach, that fight or flight feeling, etc). It became quite debilitating by the time I reached juniour high, and that's when I saw someone and figured out what was going on. The depression came after the anxiety because of the interference in my life. I've basically got it all under control now, but I do go through phases and figure that I will for the rest of my life. Basically I'm chemically imbalanced at times. Anxiety is one of the scariest things. For me, it comes when something new in my life starts, change is hard. But anyways, that is my experience with the mental health topic :)

I've heard voices at times when I was extremely tired. For me, It's like an inner voice is saying things without my permission. The most random things will come up during that time too - Things that are furthest from my regular thinking. Other times It's like I'm listening to two people talk through a wall. I know they're talking, I recognize the voices but what they're saying just isnt clear. I can hear them laugh, and cough.. and I just set there and try to focus on what the voices are saying. I usually snap out of it before i actually hear anything specific though.. probably because I focused on hearing them too much and woke my brain up :)

Not to discount your experiences, cybermike, but being quite tired can make the dreaming/waking border very blurry - I experience it fairly often, especially when waking up. I'll have a discussion with my partner before realising neither of us is speaking (and she's often asleep).