Why we have written this guide
This guide has been written as an introduction to this different way of thinking about “hearing voices”. Hearing voices can be a very disturbing experience, both for the person who hears voices and family and friends. To date, very little has been written about this experience and its meaning, usually it is regarded as a symptom of a mental illness and is not talked about because it is a socially stigmatising experience.
In this guide we ask:
The information in this guide is based on research and practical work carried out in the Netherlands and the UK over the last seventeen years, which for the first time comes directly from the real experts, the voice hearers themselves.
Who is this guide for?
This guide is for voice hearers, family and friends, as well as being of interest to professionals working with voice hearers. We hope that when you read the guide you will be interested in finding out more. If you would like to, you can join INTERVOICE and keep in touch with developments as well as supporting our work.
1. Introduction
How work on the hearing voices experience has developed
How did it start?
The first UK Hearing Voices Group was formed in 1988. It began as a small planning group originating in Manchester, inspired by the pioneering work of Professor Marius Romme, a psychiatrist from Maastricht in the Netherlands, and the Dutch self help group Foundation Resonance which was established through this work. Members of the UK group have visited Maastricht many times and attended conferences organised by the Foundation and in return have hosted visits by the Dutch workers. In 1989 the Manchester group organised a speaking tour in the North of England for Marius Romme, Sandra Escher (science journalist) and Anse Streefland (a non-patient voice hearer and Chair of Resonance). The meetings were very well attended by voice hearers, their relatives, and interested professionals. This has become a regular annual visit.
Knowledge of the work has been spread by the publication of articles in specialist magazines and journals, local newspapers and the national media and is now the subject of the book Accepting voices published by Mind publications in 1993. This contact has continued to develop over the last nine years and in August 1995 the first international conference on the subject was held in the Netherlands.
What is the traditional belief about Hearing Voices?
Firstly, hearing voices has been regarded by clinical psychiatry as an auditory hallucination and as a symptom of conditions such as schizophrenic disorders, bipolar disorder (manic depression) and psychosis. The usual treatment – major tranquilliser – is administered in order to reduce the delusions and hallucinations. However, not everyone responds to this type of treatment.
Secondly, there are many people in the UK who hear voices, some of whom cope with their voices well without psychiatric intervention. This fact has been neglected. This guide asks if there is another way of thinking about voices?
Hearing Voices – A New Approach
Marius Romme (Professor of Social Psychiatry at the University of Limburg, Maastricht) in association with the UK Hearing Voices Network carried out research over nine years in the Netherlands and the UK and in his words:
“What this research shows is that we must accept that the voices exist. We must also accept that we cannot change the voices. They are not curable, just as you cannot cure left-handedness – human variations are not open to cure – only to coping. Therefore to assist people to cope we should not give them therapy that does not work. We should let people decide for themselves what helps or not. It takes time for people to accept that hearing voices is something that belongs to them.”
2. What it is?
What does it feel like to hear voices?
It’s hard to explain
It is difficult to explain what it is like to hear “voices”, particularly if you have never heard voices yourself. The word vocation, for instance means to “follow a calling”, in other words to hear a voice and act on it. This is not what most people mean when they say they have a vocation, but that is the root meaning of the word. Indeed, many historically important people claimed to have heard a voice that acted as their inspiration (see Some facts about voice hearing: 1).
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 do not do what the voice wants them to. Hearing voices is often regarded as dangerous because “voices” tell people to commit murders and to harm themselves, and there are sensational examples of this. It would seem that to hear voices makes you either a saint or a mad man – but is this always the case?
Some facts about voice hearing: 1
Some famous people who claimed they heard voices:
Socrates, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, Swedenborg, Carl Jung, Anthony Hopkins, Zoe Wannamaker, and Ghandi.
In a nutshell
There are many prejudices and difficulties to overcome if one attempts to explain. 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. 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. You may think you have never experienced this, but are you sure? (see Some facts about voice hearing: 2)
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. That is not the only explanation of what it is like. 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 is 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.
Thoughts without words. Visions, smells, tastes and dreams…
There are many different ways to hear voices. Voices can be experienced inside 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 did not 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.
Some facts about voice hearing: 2
Voice hearing is not an uncommon experience.
Many people hear voices and have never been a psychiatric patient, this is already a well known but neglected fact.
It has been known for some time that a high percentage of the general population experience brief and occasional voices, particularly at times of bereavement, divorce and separation. It is also the case for people in extreme circumstances, for instance, 80 per cent of those who have endured torture have hallucinated during their ordeal (Amnesty International) and the phenomenon is also seen amongst long-distance yachtsmen (Bennett, 1972). In cases like these, there is no evidence of the presence of mental illness – indeed, often quite the contrary.
More recent epidemiological research in Baltimore, in a population of 15,000 people, found that 10 – 15 per cent of those interviewed reported that they had heard voices over a long period of time, only a third of those interviewed reported experiencing negative effects (Y. Tien).
Further research in 1991 revealed that many cases of hearing voices did not meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis (Eaton). Significantly, Romme’s latest research of both non-patient and patient voice hearers showed that both groups hear negative and positive voices at about the same level. The difference is mainly in how the two groups react to the voices, with the non-patients not experiencing fear of the voices and experiencing far less upset from them than the patients.
For many years from 2004/2005, I have always suffered with the problem of Hearing Voices, I have complex mental health problems anyway, and it’s true to the extent, I have often in my past, felt, had I heard, something, or hearing my name called, when in fact there is no one there literally. Though whilst very ill in hospital, I was literally talking out loud (though I didn’t know it, I was completely out of it) imagining that something was going on about me, being planned in review mode, and in actual fact it had been triggered off from 2001, and 2003, when I had specific problems mounting up, and hearing voices is one part.
Today, whilst still on the same medication, after 4 years of it, I am still experiencing when reasonably mental health well, hearing voices, now, I wouldn’t call it a “gift” because it isn’t and I do find them rather disturbing and the article is right to say, that it’s like; a conversation on a bus, or people calling someone on their mobiles (which I find annoying by the way). Now how do I zap out of the mode, and I have bi-polar problems wihtin, this is something else, I also have a loss of knack of concentration at times; I work out 2 or 3 times a week, and I do volunteering tasks, in open plan officy enviroments, combined with my walkman on, and based at home, I’ll go out on shopping errands, to help me get fresh air, and not feel irritable, and do my knitting or cross stitching depending the mode I’m in, and listening to carefully selected music.
The other thing is which a lot of people might have trouble with via Hearing Voicies, I try to remain positive at all times.
lack of sensory input, hypnpcompic and hypnogyric can also lead to the voice hearing.