Personal experience is at the heart of the Hearing Voices Movement. All of the accounts in this section have been contributed by members and give you a small glimpse into the wide variety of ways people experience and understand ‘hearing voices’.
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Whilst we cannot publish every single article in full, with your help we will work to ensure there is an ever growing collection of experiences and perspectives represented here.
I first heard voices when I was eight years old. They were not unkind but then started shortly afterwards to be just that. I did not hear them again until I was 18 years old and they made me cry with the words they chose…in 1997 they came at me like an army charging one person and i did not know what was going on. I did not even realize that I was hearing voices…I just did not know what was going on but they stayed for months telling me to kill myself…to die already…they said they were going to drown me…they talked all day and all night…they would not let me get any sleep.
They went away in 1998 but would come back sporadically saying very mean and hateful things and sending me frightening pictures that were not of me but from them. I was terrified. In 2008 they came back with a vengeance and on top of seeing things, I was hearing voices and they were making me feel all kinds of body sensations including being raped …they were vicious and told me they would make me lose my job.
I went back to work and fought them but they hurled such abuse at me that it was difficult to concentrate on my job and interact with people especially when conflict arose because I was agitated already. I ended up having to quit my job because it was just too much…the voices called me every nasty name in the book and I fought back hurling their words back at them…they told me I was nothing and hurt me when I tried to exercise…to this day I am afraid to do vigorous exercise because I don’t want chronic physical pain on top of the very distressing hearing voices experience as well as my other mental health concerns…
I had a lot of rage against the voices and I fought them valiantly…they sent picture of me being dismembered so I sent pictures of them being dismembered in the same way…everything they said to me I said back….everything they did to me I did back…I kept hitting and hating back at those hateful voices…in so doing all the rage I had inside me over a lifetime of abuse and injustice was given expression and I feel more at peace.
I found a hearing voices CBT group and benefited from being in a group of voice hearers so I did not feel alone. My social workers did not know what to do for me or say to me about the voices and anything they did say sounded insensitive…I got angry with them….but they continued to listen…
Lately there have been periods where the voices are quiet so that has been good. I pray every day that they will go away so that I can work again and keep my apartment that they said they were determined to have me lose. They made me spent $15,000 in three weeks and then when I was broke they started criticizing every purchase I made.
I was rescued from the debt because I had a settlement coming to me but I have not allowed the voices to make me spend large sums of money again….I tell them to go spend it themselves…I told them I don’t need anything…I am not working so I only spend money on the basics…the very basics…food, rent, utilities, transportation and grooming which I cut down significantly….
The voices tried to ruin me and my life but I fight back and so far am still treading water but it is a literal fight. They made me have fainting spells where I passed out in public for no reason and when I started fighting…they would make me feel like I was going to black out but I would fight the darkness and not let it overtake me…so they stopped doing it as much as they did….
In some ways they ruined my life…I lost lots of people in my life because when they first came back they really frightened me … one day I was at work and a male voice said harshly “I am going to kill you and I am going to tell you why”…I was afraid to go home that night because I was facing an empty apartment and I did not know what to make of such a vicious threat…my voices are male…all of them and I hate every single one of them and want them to go away. I will never accept such hateful beings in my life and after all the suffering they caused me I will never see them as a positive part of my life…I would kill them if it were possible to kill air…that is how angry I am at the voices…I am not violent but they tried to get me to hit a child and instead I hit at them…they sent me pictures of themselves and I hit them instead of the child…I don’t believe in hitting children no matter how naughty they are….so for a long time they tried to make me believe in their principles but I had to fight and take a stand and determine what my principles were and disagree with the voices and stand up for my right to my own belief system and my own principles.
I want freedom from hearing voices…I hate them hate them hate them….they make sounds in my ear that do a number of my nervous system and prevent me from having peace in my mind and in my life…they want to tell me what to do…I don’t like people telling me what to do in real time never mind having voices do it.
I am on medication but won’t let the doctors increase the dosage…I don’t believe that is the answer… I don’t even believe that I need to be on medication but I take it to help me get some sleep and therefore a get break from the voices…
I don’t relate to people who say that their voices are a normal experience…I find it intrusive, dangerous….I have walked through so many red lights because they distracted me terribly…I cannot drive anymore….they tire me out too so I don’t have the energy to do the things that I enjoy like reading and writing and exercising and being with people.
The voices have sucked a lot if not all the joy out of my life and I hate and resent them for that. They are derogatory and manipulative and insulting and hateful and hurtful. They keep saying they will kill me someway somehow…they said they will make me commit suicide someway somehow…so far I have fought them but they say to give up and just kill myself because they are never going to go away.
I am in fight mode…not fear mode anymore and I am regaining my power because of that but I get tired fighting something so intangible…it is a neverending fight….I am not killing myself so hopefully the fight will end with the voices shutting the hell up finally when they realize they cannot break me.
Prof Romme suggested I give you this link as it has some thoughts on voice hearing:
http://www.markellerby.com/mystory.html
all best wishes,
Mark Ellerby
An introduction to my story
At age 21, life could not be better. I had just graduated from University with a first class degree, had been accepted to study for a doctorate with funding (the academic equivalent of being selected for the Olympic team) and had a research supervisor who was a member of the House of Lords. What could go wrong? Nothing, or so it seemed. Then it happened: Schizophrenia. It was not a sudden shock, more of a gradual onset, although nothing had prepared me for it. Nobody takes you aside at school and says, “Look you might get a mental illness!” There was no information available to allow a self-diagnosis. I had heard of Schizophrenia, but thought it was a split or dual personality. It was all the more frightening back then as I didn’t know how to help myself.
For the first few years, I stayed at university in Southampton; the opposite end of the country and away from home and family. I managed to keep my head above water on my course, as the symptoms were not so bad at the start. I kept hearing people talking about my actions, behaviour and thoughts. Eventually I spent more time thinking about this than my work and had to give it up and go home – just in time.
My psychiatrist described my symptoms as particularly severe so they are probably worth recounting. I kept hearing the neighbours banging on the walls trying to play on my nerves (or so I thought). My response was to run not just out of the house, but to get as far away as possible. That meant getting away from everybody. I wandered round the countryside at night trying to avoid towns and villages from which direction I could still hear the banging noise. I had paranoia and auditory hallucinations all mixed together.
This however was not the end of the matter. I had other kinds of delusions. I thought I was responsible for all kinds of problems such as wars, crime and disease. The worst such symptom was that I had memories of being the reason why everything from TV programmes to the architecture of buildings had the form and appearances they did. It was like wandering around in my own subconscious. I tried ‘ump-teen’ times to commit suicide but was sectioned and taken to hospital.
I was in there for more than a year while ‘They’ – the doctors – tried to find the right drug. The illness never was a continual thing – I had good periods and bad. I was then put on Risperidone and some of the delusional symptoms seemed to improve. I still had other problems, most notably strange thoughts and periodic head pains but I think the doctors must have thought that by then I had gone through the system and come out the other side! I was left to live independently.
That proved very difficult. The stigma of mental illness made me a virtual recluse. You cannot go down the pub and face the inevitable question; “what do you do?” and reply you are schizophrenic. On my own, the presence of the voices seemed to be magnified and there was little to help the depression this created. The answer was to live in sheltered accommodation, and as with my stay in hospital, this improved things further. What I have learned about having such an illness is that one of the best things that can be done is to simply talk to the patient.
I guess this can act as a distraction and prevent you from dwelling on your problems. Living together in sheltered housing aims to provide such a context. Some kind of activity is also necessary but this can be a double-edged sword; work can be stressful but then doing nothing can be the same so it is often necessary to balance the two. Variety, in terms of people and activity, is also necessary.
The biggest help in my case seems, at present, to be the drug Clozapine. My mental health has greatly improved since the very first time it was prescribed to me. That was two years ago! I still have some symptoms and side effects but I am now a thousand times better. I have started to research and write again, this time about mental health. To date I have had a lot of publishing success. I guess the lesson here is that every cloud has a ‘silver lining’, so keep hoping.