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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To watching this video cuz it is very good at explaining exactly what it is like to deal with a schizophrenic episode.,
People who experience schizophrenia hear voices that are paranoid and condescending and scared.
They appear to the person suffering from them as separate entities speaking to them, not as part of their inner monologue.
The really interesting thing is how it presents differently in different cultures. In Europe and North America, the voices are almost always negative or hostile, telling the person to harm themselves or others or encouraging paranoia.
A study done in India and Ghana found that the voices heard by schizophrenia sufferers usually present as if they were deities or ancestors guiding the person with advice. Many people report getting advice from the voices that in some cases saved their lives. Mostly, the worst interaction people in these countries have with those voices is when the voices are nagging them to finish household chores.
I have bp1, and it sounds like a voice outside my head. It sometimes sounds robotic. I don’t hear it often, but it scares me when I do.
You ‘hear’ them as distinct, (at times very loud) actual voices. They can be someone you knows voice or a voice you’ve never heard before. Imagine it like a radio playing in your head, rather than your thinking voice.
Under normal circumstances, it’s like a radio playing in the background. But you can’t control the volume or turn it off, which is why it affects concentration and ability to carry out tasks. For me, it even seems to have commercials sometimes, which is really weird and annoying…
During an actual episode, it’s more interactive, like a game show, with the voices guiding toward doing different things, or asking me to make something or look something up. In the more advanced stages of the episodes, they start sort of demanding to transcribe a message, that’s meant for some person who I might or might not know, and then maybe provide a means to deliver it.
It definitely doesn’t feel like it’s like I’m the one coming up with it, bc sometimes I have to look up words I’m being asked to transcribe, or it’s about some topic that I don’t really know much about or don’t have much interest in, and I have to look up something or watch youtube videos to figure out if I’m getting it right.
Its different to all people. I hear voices and I don’t have schizophrenia, I have psychotic bipolar. They started out as outside voices, like someone in the room was talking, and as I’ve been medicated and attended support groups they have moved into my head and are now like a second voice in my head. Mine mostly tell me I’m going to die but have recently been saying that King Charles is going to kill my dog. I just learnt to ignore them, but some people find talking to them helps instead.
At the support group I go to its varying as well. Some people with schizophrenia hear them outside their head and some people hear them inside their head.
They sound like completely separate people, not yourself. Interestingly, there’s some research that indicates that the *mechanism* that causes auditory hallucinations and those intrusive voices you’re speaking of is the same thing. Basically, when you’re saying something to yourself in your head, your muscles contract as if you were speaking aloud. The same muscles contract when people with schizophrenia hear voices. The theory is that the part of your brain that knows it’s your own voice is disconnected, so to your brain, you’re hearing random voices instead of knowing it’s your own thoughts.
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Had a friend that had it. He said that as far as he could tell, there were real people that he could see and hear but he wasn’t allowed to tell us about them and they were telling him that no one liked him and that he should hurt himself.
So like Drop Dead Fred but darker.
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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