Today, let’s speak about voice hearing, an often missunderstood experience. Might be because when you don’t experience it, it’s not easy to imagine what it is. One often talk about these people “who talk alone in the streets”, people we avoid (we can see you cross the street and/or make fun of us you know). Once again, we don’t speak about the true experience we live..
So what do the voice hearers live ? How is it like ? How do we handle it ? Where does it come from ? Whar does it look like ? etc etc
Reminders and usual disclaimers :
What do we call voice hearing ? It’s simply hearing voices, sounds, that are not there. It can often be extended to other feelings that go along (visions, touch and olfactory feelings). Actually, it’s really common. Studies vary, but it concerns 3 to 10% of the population. Just so you know, 10% is also the part of left-handed persons among the population. So there are as many left-handed people as voice hearers. In a way, hearing voices, is quite common. The Hearing Voices Movement (which I shall discuss later) even explains that according to some studies, if you add the occasional hearing, such as people hearing someone calling them when there is no one, or feeling their phone vibrating in their pocket, we’re up to 75% of the population. So we can say that it concerns most of the population… Voice hearing is a much more common experience than what we think in the first place. Once again, the difference is in the frequency and the intensity. The difference between you and I is that you can sometimes have hallucations (because of a fever, extreme fatigue, consumption of drugs), mines are daily and part of a very precise working system.
Looking at those figures, you might think it doesn’t match. Indeed, you might associate voice hearing and schizophrenia. But schizophrenia touches 1% of the population, so even when we take the lower estimation of 3% of voice hearers among the population, it doesn’t match. So isn’t there some kind of issues with these numbers ?
Nope. There’s an issue with the image we have of schizophrenia and voice hearing. Voice hearing doesn’t only touch schizophrenics, it doesn’t even only touch the neurodivergents, it touches everyone. Voice hearing is not even necessarily associated to mental illness. According to the Hearing Voice Movement (now HVM), we should even stop consisdering it as a “symptom” to eradicate. It’s also my stand (basicaly, I wish people would stop considering everything that makes my thoughts and my way of being as a “symptom”, it’s getting seriously annoying). To the members of the HMV, the voices are a sane reaction to an insane situation. It’s not something to eradicate, on the contrary, it’s something to explore.
Here is a nice TED talk to speak about it better (it saved my life, even though I already started this process years back… but with the support of… no one.)
So hearing voice is not necessarily a sign of illness. You can hear voices without being schizophrenic. And you can be schizophrenic without hearing voices. (life is so much richer than what cliches tell, it’s fascinating !) Each experience of schizophrenia is different. Each experience of voice hearing is different. It just happens that I am schizophrenic AND I hear voices. I insist on the “and” not to be like it’s worse than other forms of schizophrenia or voice hearing, but to insist once again on the fact that it can be “or”. Automatically, my experience will be different from someone who’s only schizophrenic or a voice hearer.
All of this to say that starting from now, we leave the bigger picture to discuss my own experience. Which worth what it worths… And if I insist this much, it’s because it’s essential that you understand this : this article can give you keys to understand, but you must not apply it from start to finish to you relatives. (it will be obvious to many people, but I know how much it’s not for others…)
Growing with voices
Unlike Eleanor Longden, I’m having a hard time guessing the first time I heard voices… I have very clear and vivid memories appearing around 16 years old. But when I try to redraw the line, I realise that some voices are way older, as if they had always been there. I belong to these people who have probably always heard voices (that I was the only one to hear) but realise it wasn’t normal only when the voices got out of control. More precisely, I realised something was wrong with the voices I heard when they started hurting me.
Looking back, they always had some sort of advice role. I saw that as some kind of instinct. “Beware behind you” “No one comes in.” “Step back” “no”, etc. Simple, quick. But when I was 15–16 years old, they got agressive. And insulting. Suddenly they weren’t part of scenery anymore, they took every space. “They all want you to die” “you take too much space” “you’re twisted” “you’ll end up alone” “anyway they all hate you, or they don’t give a damn” “shut up, shut the fuck up, no one’s insterested in what you say so shut the fuck up” “smile you piece of shit” “are you that ugly on purpose ?” “fuck you’re so stupid, it’s not possible to be such a fucking idiot !”
And these are only the ones that can be contained by words. They are such a part of my personnal scenery that some of these sentences can often be found in my writer works… For long, it was strickly forbidden for me to tell anything about this. Shrinks never ever knew anything about the voices’ discourses. For their defence, most of them never ever asked (wait, is that a defence or an attack ? isn’t weird that when you see a shrink because you hear voices, no one even think of asking what they are saying ? I really think it’s weird) There are still many others, but I don’t have the strength to write it down. If today it’s less frequent, back in the day, I was hearing this kind of things all day long. It has been my background for years. Spoiler alert : no anti-psychotics ever did anything regarding the voice hearing. It even worsens everything. The voices couldn’t care less about the meds and were making fun of me for taking them “see how badly wired you are ! you’re so unable to think straight they have to force-feed you with pills. AND IT DOES NOTHING” “POOR THING !” What the meds did do was accentuate the apathy and my unability to think, and so to mobilize defences in front ot the constant attacks I was under. It was like being naked in the middle of the battlefield : you can’t go far. I clumsily tried to say that the meds were making me sicker, because that’s what the voices were saying, their words, but no doctors nor shrinks listened to me. For them, it was the proof that the dosages had to be upped again.
Like Eleonor, I had to learn not to understand the voice on the first degree. I had to learn their language… which means learning how to pass by the said message to access the one they want to give. It wasn’t easy to accept to dismantly all the dirt they have to say about me… These moments were extremely painful (and I’m still not done, the “no one comes in”, the oldest voice, is still a mystery). In the video, Eleonor explains that each of her voices was connected to an event, probably traumatic. It’s not really how it works for me (well, not for most of the voices). I had a realisation regarding where the negative / agressive voices came from : most of the voices I hear doesn’t say what I think, but a thought that was imposed to me. I was bullied from kindergarden to the beginning of high school (so from my 3 years old to my 15 years old). A big part of the things they’re saying is anchored on the shit I was told during all these years. To that, you can add the ordinary sexism of our world, of my” friends” and my family. And just in case this wasn’t enough, we can add a bit of psychophobia. And a bit of cis-sexism, just to be sure. And you’ll get a very fertile ground for degenerated and agressive voices. It also means that the more I grow up, the more I understand how it works, the more I collect agressive voices…
This is where, among other things, schizophrenia and voice hearing tangle together for me. Since I’m unable to define a clear limite between my mind, my body and the outside world, I absorbed everything like a sponge. Just like everybody I guess. The difference is here : normally, you integrate this construction without noticing, but my mind gave it a concrete, material form. Agressive voices took the implicit discourses to give them a body and be sure I heard it… and that’s how facing all these unreachable beauty standards, I became a twisted and monstruous being, which was confirmed by the fact that according to everyone, schizophrenics are mosnters. Point made. And if I felt bad in my skin, in my body, it was only because I didn’t accept the fact that I was a monster and I kept wanting to be something else.
The voices were agressive because they ended up carrying a monstruous discourse nicely perpetuated but the world I live in and transmited by everyone around me. What they were expressing was my inability to obey all these discourses, these expectations, which became mine in the end, and my inability to find my place. TL:DR : a very deep angst. But since I didn’t know the cause, they attacked me, until I listen. Moreoever, some of these discourses were violently planted in my head at a very young age, so they also build my self-esteem and how I see me. Needless to tell it doesn’t worth much…
Coming back from this wasn’t easy. And to be honest : it’s still not fully done. It’s hard to calm these voices, because actually, they are mine and they are not mine in the same time. They are my voices, but it’s not my words they carry. I hear them less now, sure… When we reach the eye of the storm, we retry to put things back together, to find the source of these discourses. It’s not easy, and the discoveries aren’t always nice…
The instinctive voices are still here. The ones to say “danger” “step back” “don’t go there”. And their instinct is quite impressive… I learned to trust them. To leave them space. I accepted the fact that the explanation could come later. I also learned that all of them, even the meanest ones, were trying to help me, to protect me. They are me, I am them. They need me to live; They have to help me survive. But some of them go the wrong way… like some kind of toxic parent.
Daemon story
I realise it’s hard to tell you about it. Talking about my voices is an extremely intimate thing. They are my voices. They come with me day after day and for so long now. They were there when everyone abandonned me. Just like Eleonor, during this terrible time when they were activaly part of my nightame, they were both the tool of my isolation, but also the only one there for me. Ou relationship was toxic and unhealthy. They also tested me and gave me trials to pass, they still do. But nowadays, most of the time, we work well together. I need them, they need me. Talking about them to you, it’s putting me in danger, it’s putting them in danger. Writing these words, it’s puting us in danger.
It’s hard to explain the connection. So I’m gonna cheat and steal from someone else. Did you read the books His dark material by Philip Pullman ? If not : we follow Lyra, a 12 years old girl. In her world, everyone leave with their daemon, a little animal being representing a part of your soul. When you’re a child, the daemon can take every possible animal form, when you become an adult, it takes a definitive form which reflects the essence of the person. Touching someone else’s deamon is tabou. If the connection between a human and their daemon is so strong that they can’t go far from each other without it being painful, the daemon is still an independant being, able of reason, reflexion and can disagree with their human. Moreover, a human deprived of their daemon became an apathic empty shell, closer to a zombie. Lyra’s daemon is called Pantalaimon. And for me, the most violent scenes are the separation scene (I don’t say more so you can enjoy discovering those amazing books !). I cried during nights over this… In these scence, there is physical pain, distress, fear of abandonment, solitude, cold.
It’s kind of like that for me and my voices. They are me and they are not me in the same time. The connection is strong. It’s terrifying when someone could damage it. It’s physical and mental. They are my voices and they take the form which matchs my being at a T moment. Sometimes agressive, sometimes protective, sometimes both, sometimes absent… They can be overwhelming but I couldn’t function without them today.
Before starting this article, I asked you what were your questions about voice hearing. It’s now time to answer !
What do they look like ?
Many of you asked me about this, in a way or another. Is it my voice ? The one of people I know ? Are they recognizable ? Do they have their own character ? Gender ? Verbal tics ? A specific prononciation ? An Accent
Mine have none of this… they don’t see the point of a gender identity (they barely see it for others, they don’t see what they would do with that). It’s not the voices of people I know. Someone asked me if I could distinguish them from my own inner voice (the one we all have, more or less) and I must say that this distinction doesn’t make much sense for me. Sure, there is one main voice that could be mine in the middle. But it doesn’t have a status of superiority or domination. It’s an “I” that we built together. Something like the 6th we made (I’ve lost track…). But there are moment when this inner voice is thicker, and something thiner, because more fragmented. It’s like we have one common amount of matter for all the voices and we have to share the matter.
Regarding the intonations, accents, etc, I don’t have any answer. It’s going to be hard to get it for you, I’ll do my best but it’s not easy to explain. For me, voices, meaning and words can be three distinct entities. If I hear voices, I don’t always hear words. In a way, it’s like hearing people talking in the room next to yours. You have the sound, the tone, you pick up the atmosphere, but you don’t have the conversation. Sometimes, it’s all I have. The meaning and the words will come through different ways. I’ll see the words written in my head. Or some certainty will just appear inside me (just like when you dream and you know things without anyone giving you the information, you just know). But the three can be completely independants. It looks like that :
The blue circle in the middle represents myself, the body and the “main voice”. The purple crosses are the voices, or at least the sound part of the voices. They are connected to the body. They can form a solid ensemble as well as small scattered entities. Most of them are connected to me, but they can also be connected to things around me (NB : I voluntarily made a loooot of voices so you could better picture it, but remember this is not a fixed distribution. There can be thirty voices as well as just one). In red dots, you have words and meaning. As you can see, they can exist in an independant way, as well as directly in the body (they can happen directly in my flesh or usually in my blood, but sometimes I can see them), or even directly connected to the voices which carry them. Not to overwhelm the drawing, I didn’t separate words and meanings, but it’s also a possibility for me… I can hear or see the words, and basicaly have no idea what they mean. Or feel the meaning in my blood without the use of words.
Hence why my voices have no name, character or gender… They are mainly sound (and matter in a way). If they can carry ideas or word, they don’t need this kind of details to exist. Their diversity is more about number and intensity. What’s recognisable about them is the discourse they carry. You’ll hear me say “again with this song” more than “and Gérard is at it again…” Sometimes I personify them in my writing work. Because it’s easier to see them, but it’s still not what I live (and I’m not sure that is understandable outside my head)
Thinking with voices ?
I was asked how I handle the voices to write articles, work on my PhD, etc. In a way, it’s both an amazing ressource and an extremely incapacitating thing. No half way… Like a lot of neuroatypical persons, it’s hard for me to rank my perceptions. I’m sensible to everything happening around me and have a hard time filtering it. To this, my brain add new informations. It kinda looks like that :
Hearing voices when I’m thinking about an article, my PhD, enables me to follow several threads of thought in the same time. For example, to translate, it’s really useful. A voice will take care of the texte in its original language, and another will take care of the text in the translated language (and since my brain naturaly separates voice / word / sense, it’s really useful to translate). Each one is independant, enabling me to wall through the two languages without damaging the structure of both threads. Same thing for the PhD. A voice will take care of the linguistic thread, another for the theatre argument, a third for the sociology while another will keep an eye on the plays I’m analysing. All of this enables me to see the bigger picture, without mixing everything, making possible the creation of theoric bridges (which I sometimes Have a hard time to justify because I SEE it in my head and its is so obivous to me that it’s like explaining “fire burns”) between the different elements. According to our needs, the voices will multiply to cover more things, or in a more precise way, or, become fewer to make a more general assessment. All of this without me being conscious of it. I don’t think “now I need three voices to do this”. It just… sort of happens. And sometimes it doesn’t and my thinking process stops working… This enables me to think fast. Extremely fast. Which makes sense since I can have up to four threads of thinking in the same time (and when I say in the same time, it’s not I start thinking about 1, then think about 2, back to 1 and then 3. No. It’s really in the SAME FUCKING TIME).
Channelling all of this is what takes time. Sure, it’s great tu multiply the threads, but there’s a moment you need to say stop. And that’s hard. When all my comrades are scared to write, it’s the part I fear the least. The scariest phase for me, is when I have to decide in which order I’ll say the things, which links to make… it’s a real pain. My brain works using association of ideas and jumps, so it’s really hard to create an academic logical structure…
Moreover, the noises of the words get trapped in the thinking threads. The parasite thought (more or less dark). The current doubts (more or less paralysing). The multiple noises (hills, construction work, neighbor’s noise, people running, etc etc). I can’t work without music (not even sure I can live without it). It’s a true part of my thinking. Music will enable me to have a frame, and a thread to hold on to while I try to create one from scratch. It’s both the lighthouse in the nigt, the boat, and the seawall facing the world. To me, finding the right album to work to is less procrastination than creating good work conditions. The right music matches my state of mind and the task to make. Language, kind of voices, intrusments and rhythm are all elements I take into account to help me channel all the mess in my head.
So here are three main steps of work with the voices (obviously we can go in any order, life is never a straight line you know…)
1. thinking : each voices hold their thread
2. channelling : the moment to fusion everything and sort it out
3. writing : this is where magic happens. Because if the step before is torture, this one is mainly happiness (at least when it works and we don’t have to go back to step 1 and 2…) It’s the moment when all the voices gathered together to make one, effusive and ready, aiming toward one only and common goal. You can’t imagine the feeling of power when all these pieces come together to think in one voice !
My voices and the others ?
How does it go in a conversation with others ? It depends. There are seval situations… Regarding who I’m taking to, they won’t behave the same. There are people they hate, others they like a lot. It’s not hard to tell them apart: regarding the present persons, they will make more or less noises. They do the least noises with my best friends. Sometimes even no sound at all. I’m not sure how the causality connection goes… Do the voices not yell because I’m with someone I love ? Or do I love this person because the voices don’t yell when they’re here ? I’ve seen both happening. It’s not always easy to see which triggers which.
Remember : when I say I hear voices, you have to take it litteraly. I hear voices, not what they say. We talk about background noises. In this context, it’s not easy to understand if they’re agitated, sleeping, off. The context is important… if there is a lot of noise around, I will hardly have access to my own personnal background noise (which can be extremely scary, like going inside the water not knowing if you can touch the bottom, or touching it but only by the point of your feet). It’s hard for me to be in very noisy places. As I said, I have to sort out every sounds and it uses a lot of energy and it’s exhausting, but it can also cover my own voices. Therefore, I feel lonely and vulnerable, as if I lost my armor. And without my armor, the noise around can cover me entirely.
The opposite is also possible. There are people which make the voices yell. “Run away.” “Go away”. I call them the “alarm”. It’s rare. But scary. Especially since they’re rarely wrong. They’ll see someone and will yell until I run away. Once, I randomly saw a former friend in a supermakert, with her new boyfriend. The voices started yelling “danger danger, leave now”. Yet, the man seemed more than okay. Later, I learned he was violent to her…
More generaly, these voices are the hardest to understand. Because they can either want to run from someone or from a situation, or a place. The message is generaly vague “danger” “run”, but it’s not always a proper danger. Just a situation in wich I’m extremely unconfortable, unhappy, not in my place. I often hear them during party. It’s the sign I must leave, because too tired. They’re hard to understand because they never say what’s the problem, but they’re also my most precious voices, because they are in charge of our well-being and security.
Sometimes, my voices cover everything… it’s rarer, and it’s a very bad sign. It’s a moment of degenerated voices. A moment when I lose control. When I’m in pain. When I’m delirious. Sign that I’m about to have a psychotic breakdown…
Finaly, when it comes to make the difference between my voices and yours… well… I’m not sure what to answer since it seems, not ridiculous, but… it’s like asking me how I make the difference between an apple and a car. See what I mean ? I hear my voices, I feel them in my flesh, I feel the connection between us, even if it’s sometimes painful. There is something deep. A blood connection. When the other voices… the other voices will disappear. People will go to sleep and their voices won’t say anything anymore. Maybe the ultimate difference is here : my voices will always be there, others are just passing by. So… I don’t really have an answer, because I never have to think about it (bur it can indeed be the case of other voice hearers).
Once again, all of this is my own experience and it’s different for everyone. I still hope it was interesting and you learn a few things :)
Take care of yoursel !
