The Voices

Susan heard voices all the time.

Many people who suffer with Schizophrenia, have been diagnosed, or are somewhat aware of their disorder, become aware that they hear voices. Many learn a lot about their voices and learn to identify them, giving them different names and personalities. They have voices that they like and voices that they don't like. The hear both male and female, and voices that change noticeably between the two sexes. Encouraging and kind voices are just as likely as the mean and demeaning ones. Some hear God Himself, while others hear Satan.

Some voices are given names, or they simply made their names or titles known to the person who is hearing them. I remember reading about a lady who had a "friend voice" named Tiffany. While sitting in her room one evening, she heard Tiffany for the first time. Tiffany simply introduced herself and began to ask questions about her, which made her feel loved and important. Feeling that she now had a friend, she embraced Tiffany and looked forward to hearing from her. They would have conversations and girl talk. They would tell jokes and gossip about the other voices that she heard. She talked about Tiffany on several occasions, as if she were a real person.

On the other hand, I remember reading from another lady, whose voices were vicious and threatening. They would threaten to hurt her or her family if she were to fall asleep. She would contemplate if she herself should kill her family off first so that she could make sure that they went in a more humane way than what the voices had planned for them. Fortunately, she never acted on these thoughts. While to her they were real, she knew logically that they were not. That they were something that her Schizophrenia had created.

I could go forever about the different voices I have heard/read about.

My experience with voices was obviously the ones that my mom heard. My mom was in total denial of her illness, so to her the voices were in fact real, 100% real, and no one could ever convince her otherwise. Over the years I noticed the different voices that Susan heard. While she never identified them, I would listen to her conversations with them and from that, I was able to figure out what kinds of voices she was hearing.

She had a voice(s) that she watched T.V. with. I liked that voice the best. She would joke with it/them and laugh with it/them. She would talk about the show and the different characters and actors with the voice(s). The T.V. voice(s) seemed to be the only friendly one(s) that she had. She was happy talking to the T.V. voice(s). It was nice to see Susan happy every once in a while, while talking T.V and actors with her "friend(s)".

Then there was the "neighbor" voices. Voices that she believed to be, well, the neighbors. These seemed to be the most common. They would talk about her, insult her and make fun at her expense. I always found it very interesting that the insults and mean things that the "neighbors" would say were usually very childish and immature. Things like "Witch warts", "Green Face", "Old Lady", "Four", "Dog" and so on were the most common insults it seemed. This has brought me to believe that possibly, these voices were children.

There were the voices that she heard out in public, they were comparable to the neighbor voices. They were insulting in an immature manner. The grocery store was a mega center for these voices. Trips to the grocery store, when I was a young child, often times led to Security and Police Officers arriving at the scene.

There were the voices that she argued with. When I say argue, I mean, full on screaming-at-the-top-of-her-lungs. I think these voices insulted her the most, and from what I could tell, they were very hateful and especially nasty. She would scream incoherent things at them, and while I understood the individual words she said to them, the sentences made no sense. This made it hard to determine what kinds of things they may have been saying to her.

It is hard to say what REAL people she heard voices from, however, I know that those existed as well. She use to hear my, at the time, 2 year old daughter say very disturbing things of a sexual nature. This led her to believe that my daughter was being molested. Most of the time, she was very offish towards me and always seemed to have an eye on me. I am not sure if it because of what the voices had said about me, or if it was stuff she heard "me" saying. Much of that is unclear.

Convincing Susan that there were no voices was literally an impossible task. Think about it... if you were having a conversation with someone and I did everything that I could to convince you that they weren't really there, would you believe me? I think not. How does one convince another that voices that they really are hearing aren't real? It is a very strange concept to grasp, and many, unless they have personal experience with it, never will.

Hearing voices is the most common type of hallucinations among Schizophrenics. While seeing, smelling, feeling, and tasting things do occur, they are not reported as often.

Schizophrenia is described as a "thought disorder". This has made me wonder... Could people who suffer with Schizophrenia be "hearing" their own thoughts? Think about it. We all have that little voice in our head. Voices that help us relive events and memories. That voice of your Grandfather talking to you when you were a child, for example. The voice of the singer who sings our favorite songs. We all hear them, however, we do not physically hear them as if they were an outside voice.

Is it possible that because of a thought disorder, the inflicted brain may mix up signals and manifest a thought as an outside voice? Strange to think about, however, this is my perception of the voices.

What do you believe could cause this strange phenomenon? When you hear your voices, do they come from inside of your head , or outside as if a person was talking to you? I am happy to report that all my voices of my memories and such are all inside my head and I have complete control over them. I think it is safe to assume that you are the same. If not, you may want to start looking into what it is you are hearing!