ELI5, Schizophrenic Voices. Are they “legitimate” voices in your head, or more like an extra intrusive normal voice similar to you saying to yourself in your head, “I need to buy bread today”.
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A certain interview always comes back to me when I think on this topic. It was with a young woman who had a severe form of schizophrenia, and she would see the backs of people.
According to her, she could be standing in a store full of people and she could not differentiate from the backs alone if they were real or hallucinations. The only way to tell was to see their face – as her hallucinations had no faces. She had to see their face without speaking though, because if she spoke to one of the hallucinations they would *all* turn around and start screaming at her (with no mouth or face) bloody murder so loud it would drown out all real people talking or music or anything else.
So for her, they are quite real, and it took her most of her childhood and early teen years to get “used to” them and to stop accidentally triggering the screaming.
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I’ve read other interviews with people who had purely auditory ones. Apparently they are so realistic that they can sound like specific spots, too. Like someone is 5 feet behind you to the left and slightly higher up than you are – but there’s nobody actually there even though the voice sounded like it came from such a specific spot. Some of these people will hear someone ask a question in public, perfectly normal like where’s the bathroom, and they will respond while turning just to see that nobody actually asked. But it was too real to tell the difference.
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EDIT
I will perhaps try to find the source in the morning. I read it years and years ago though and am not up to the challenge tonight.
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::EDIT 2::
I looked a bit, but I’m not having any luck finding the source so far. I would have read about it back in 2017, and it was because I fell down a psychosis / schizophrenia / mental health rabbit hole after playing the video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.
The game devs interviewed a *lot* of people who suffer from these mental illnesses so that they could try to portray the player experience as realistically as possible.
Aaaaaaand then I fell down a rabbit hole of reading interviews, medical papers, etc. Partially cuz my direct family (skipped me, although I got other issues) suffers from schizophrenia, psychosis, bi-polar, paranoia, and so on.
So the one above was one of many, just one of the more severe examples and horrific enough that it really stuck with me since.
Back on the Hellblade topic though – the experience is insane (pun not intended). You def need good headphones though, not speakers. The voices really truly sound like they are whispering right into your ear over your shoulder or from specific directions/areas. I made the mistake (debatable) of trying the game in VR too. Shit got a bit *too* real for me though lol. Maybe because I rarely experience auditory hallucinations myself, but it was a very intense gaming experience.
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