Hearing voices that are distressing: Self-help resources and strategies
Last updated 11/06/2007
Pat Deegan from the National Empowerment Centre, USA writes:
"I have been a voice hearer since childhood, but it was not until my adolescence that I was hospitalized for hearing voices that were distressing. For many years I felt isolated and stigmatized for carrying a label of mental illness and for hearing voices that continued to be distressing for me. Psychiatric drugs did not make my voices "go away" although there were times when I was so drugged I didn't care about anything, including what the voices had to say. Therapists showed little interest in my voice hearing experiences. In fact, during the seventeen years that I was labeled and treated for schizophrenia, my therapists called my voice hearing experiences "auditory hallucinations". They seemed to view my voice hearing experience as nothing but the random fluctuation of neurotransmitters in my brain. In essence they viewed my "auditory hallucinations" as evidence of some sort of "neurotransmitter meltdown".
However, now voice hearers are beginning to learn from each other how to creatively cope with and/or eliminate distressing voices. We are learning that we do not have to be victims of our distressing voices."
To read the full versions of the two articles click on the links below:
Hearing voices that are distressing: Self-help resources and strategies: Part One
Hearing voices that are distressing: Self-help resources and strategies: Part Two
Comments
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I am trying to start a hearing voices grp on my ward