It is difficult to explain what it is like to hear “voices”, particularly if you have never heard voices yourself. However, the experience of hearing voices is not as alien an experience as it is generally thought to be.
Firstly, it may be the same as hearing a voice in the normal way through your ears, the difference being that the “voice” has no physical cause – but like normal voices, there is variety and every experience has its differences.
You may think you have never experienced this, but are you sure?
You may have had the experience of hearing someone call your name only to find that there is no one there. Indeed, research shows that especially for people recently bereaved, it is not an uncommon experience to hear the voice of the recently deceased person.
As well as hearing voices through the ears, people also hear voices as if they are thoughts entering the mind from somewhere outside themselves. This is not the same as a suddenly inspired idea, which people usually recognise as coming from themselves, rather the thoughts are not their own and would seem to come from outside their own consciousness, like telepathy.
A good example of this is the experience of recalling a rhyme or tune, which you find yourself repeating unconsciously under your breath and which keeps going through your head again and again. You can even find yourself humming it. You never took a decision to start thinking of it and it’s difficult to stop thinking about it. The difference between the tune and “voice thought” which appears as words in your mind is that it may go on to speak coherently to you and even engage you in conversation. You, yourself are not responsible for it and you have no idea what this “voice” is going to say next.
There are many different ways to hear voices. Voices can be experienced in the head, from outside the head or even in the body. It may be one voice or many voices. The voice may talk to you or about you.
There are other ways to hear voices
Some of them make the phrase “hearing voices” a poor description and perhaps one day we will have to come up with a better one – because it is never the same for everyone. Some people for instance, experience non verbal thoughts, images and visions, tastes, smells and touch. All with no physical cause and all sensations they didn’t call into being themselves.
Voices can be like dreams, we all dream and experience words, images and even sensations. When we are bored we can drift off and have a short dream. When we dream all sorts of strange things can happen to us, but we still believe they’re really happening to us. Hearing voices can be like that – a waking dream – but something that is experienced as real.
For voice hearers, the voices might be present all day and have the effect of preventing them from doing things in their daily life. Voices might also punish the voice hearer if they don’t do what the voice wants them to do. For example; leaving a party on their say so; not being able to talk about the voices; becoming silent and as a result isolated from other people.
There can be a pleasant side to hearing voices
Sometimes the apparent wisdom is real and the voices or some of them can seem intelligent. Voice hearers report that they have been told things they didn’t know or couldn’t work out for themselves and the voices have been of real assistance. For some people this experience is considered a gift, something that is like a valuable insight or even extra sensory perception (ESP.) and the voices can be trusted. Voices can be intelligent, witty, funny and incisive.
Voices can in themselves be a coping mechanism
What the voices say corresponds with the effect that the social and emotional world is having on the voice hearer. The voices will often comment on how the voice hearer is experiencing the world and in this way the voices can be a defence mechanism against overwhelming or forbidden feelings. Voices are often related to life history, such as recent or childhood trauma and the voices speak of powerlessness and injustice. This is complex and personal experience and the voices can respond either as positive guides or as chiding critics.
Can you gain control of the voices?
What do you do about voices, which are not on your side, which denigrate you and insult you, or interrupt your thoughts, or pander detrimental advice and tell you to do stupid things? The first thing to realise is that although the voice may be intruding on your consciousness, that doesn’t mean that you should blindly do what it says. Would you rush off and commit murder if someone told you to? – absolutely not.
People who hear voices have the same right to self-determination as anyone else and you can tell the voices exactly that. If some of the voices are pleasant and friendly, then clearly you chat to them, and not to the ones who are not. You can tell the unpleasant voices that you find them neither pleasant nor useful, and that you have no reason to tolerate them unless they are both.
What about malevolent voices that can cause acute mental pain and can order you to do things (like staying in and avoiding people)?
One solution is to remove as much stress from your life as possible. Not only does stress increase the voices but also it makes them say more unpleasant things. Secondly, don’t ignore the voices as they tend to get more aggressive, however at the same time don’t let them get away with running your life without your permission.
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it’s the second time this has happen to me; the first time after i gave thank for having the streets to walk on and after a pet i loved died. the first time the voice said, if you kiss that spot again i will kiss atop your kiss and the second time a voice woke me up, just a hey, within my head
on page two under paragraph “There can be a pleasant side to hearing voices” it reads that the voices can be helpful in an intelligant way. This is true, because at a grocery store I worked at I wasn’t at work when the new scanner machines were installed in 1990, and the spirit, like in Colossians 2:5 in the Gideon Bible it reads that Paul was with them in the spirit that day because he was in jail in physical form, so my opinion is that the spirit comes aboard you like the Holy Spirit and we hear them talking with their voice in side head, like at the grocery store, how to change the regerster tape and using their spirit to guide you in the task until you learn the task at hand. Maybe a boss is trying to teach you new things about ups’s and you are not to sure about it, ask or look at the shelfs, how the other ups’s are lined up on the shelfwhere the item begins, is it at the beginning if the sticker, let theboss lead with their spirit and voice afterwards until you have it down, and in college even if you have a hard time getting the right word down on an essay a voice could give you an example of the word. I’ve gone through all three of these mentioned. Third heading on page two. “Can you gain control of the voices?” I feel you can especially if you are at church, or at work, or at school, you tend to ignore the voices more than when you are at home. At home I laugh at what some of the voices tell me of the past and because of other people around it is a little embarassing, that I make up a story of why I’m laughing, “Oh there was something funny on tv”. When I’m walking down the street and I say something outloud to self, I just say I’m singing a song incase I have an audiance. When I first heard the voices in 1987,1988, 1989, and 1990 my audiance which was my sister in November 1990 she said you are going to lose your three children if you don’t stop listening to those voices which she had ask a few minutes before how come your laughing and I said “the voices are reminding me of something funny”. Because of her saying I was going to lose children I called her a name and she domestic violenced my head and nose with her fist where it brought blood to the floor. ‘So I believe trauma continued the voices in my head so I wouldn’t go to sleep because when I do feel my head it is very sore to the touch and this happened in 1990 and the spirit covered me up so I could work at Walmart in December 1990-1991.You have to be very careful with the spirits aboard because they can give you their thoughts as in First Timothy 4:1 the suducing spirits give you devil inspired ideas like some adults youths and children going into gang stuff, I’ve experianced this as a adult and a youth smoking, skipping school and even when I wasn’t into reading the bible after I accepted the Lord (9) to grow in Christ in 8th grade the spirit can witness for you and make enemys with your closes friends that your friends spirits then have you skipping school and smoking the next day or week.
Yep they tell me stuff i couldnt possibly know, its just like having a conversation with someone else, but there quite er bossy