Hearing Voices? "Listen to this one!"

www.edginglife.com                          New Perspectives on Reality

 Know someone who hears voices?  Schizophrenic! Schizotypic Personality Disorder!!   Get them on anti-psychotic drugs fast!!  Oooooh.  Call the shrink! Hurry!
Wrong.

Current research demonstrates that the majority of people's "hearing voices" is in fact not pathological, rather "hearing voices" is a coping and protective mechanism of the psyche.  Between 70-90% of people who hear voices develop them following exposure to traumatic events.

"Hearing voices" whether they be in children or adults, are most frequently associated with PTSD and exposure to emotional scenarios that are too intense for the psyche to bare.   Examples of traumas that can elicit voices include but are not limited to:

• the death of a loved one
• divorce
• job loss
• failing an exam
• being physically, emotionally or sexually abused (children 85% of cases)
• being bullied by peers or teachers
• being unable to perform at a certain level at school
• being admitted to a hospital for long periods 

 Aside from traumas, various drugs and/or heavy drinking can onset the hearing of voices.  This type of onset often dissipates within six months.

People may also begin to hear voices if they don't feel it is safe to discuss their true thoughts and feelings with others, thus opening up an inner world of talk different from thinking.  Hearing voices is often the mind and body's way of preserving psyche.  

Approximately 4-10% of people around the world hear voices, including bout 8% of children.  Aside from this statistic, there are many people who hear voices, but go unaccounted for due to shame and embarrassment of imagined stigmatization due to disclosure and expression of their inner world.  Furthermore, everyone has a unique internal emotional state of being and a unique relationship with the mind which is not only hard to compare to other, but an individual's perspective of self in comparison to other affects identification or non-identification of internal voices.  

Only 16% of voice hearers are actually diagnosed with schizophrenia.  

According to the Hearing Voices Network,  many voice hearers are not at all suffering from mental illness.  In fact, voice hearers who develop non-psychiatric explanations of their voices may live with them quite well.  This non-patholigical perspective to hearing voices and teaching people how to manage voices and co-habitate with them is creating a shift in interventions and outcomes.

Yet many old school professionals and/or people who are not "in the know" want to jump quickly to medicating those who hear voices due to their own fears and anxieties surrounding mental illness.

For those who aren't familiar with stories from anyone who has experienced hearing voices, hearing voices may occur within the mind, ears, outside of the mind, outside the ears, in the body and/or in the environment.  They can be male, female or have no identifiable gender.  They may be adult, child, human or non human.  People may hear one voice or many.  Whatever the scenario, voices reflect important aspects of the person's inner state of emotional being.  The voices have presented for a reason and it is important to investigate that reason such that the person can optimally integrate the voices into cognitive schematics.
 
There isn't a cure for hearing voices, just as there isn't a cure for getting angry and screaming.  When hearing voices cause difficulty, coping, management, understanding, normalizing and feeling safe are goals for decreasing difficulty.  Often, when one tries to negate or minimize his/her voice hearings, ironically the voices can result in occupying more inner room and or increasing in frequency, thus contributing to more difficulty.  Similarly, if one tries to not get angry, avoid anger, minimize it or push it down, often, the result is an increased anger eruption.

While there isn't a "cure" for hearing voices,  in 60% of children, their hearing of voices will go away over the course of time due to increased socialization, enhanced perspective awareness associated with aging and increased ability for emotional regulation and affect management.

When safe social reactions are created for individuals (children and adults) who are hearing voices by family, friends and/or support groups, these individuals will increase their chances of:

1. normalizing their behavior
2. talking, connecting in dialogue and decreasing isolation
3. decreasing associated anxiety, depression and stress
4. exploring voice onset, patterns and underpinnings for origination
5. finding solutions or management strategies (if the voices are creating difficulty)
6. befriending, decreasing or directing the voices to become more helpful
7.  identify purposes the voices are serving
8. applying inner knowings to real life external problems (past or present)
9. healing trauma

Can you hear voices and be healthy and functional in life?

Research and practice originating in Europe, developed in partnership with voice hearers and conducted over the last twenty years indicates that people who hear overwhelming and distressing voices can be healthy and live perfectly functional and connected, fulfilling lives. (Professor Marius Romme, President of the International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices).

Most children and adults who develop psychological issues surrounding inner voices, develop these associated difficulties as the result of being exposed to negatively impacting social responses (tone, expression, behavior) including fear, judgment and pathologizing from family and friends.  These social responses are due to lack of public education.  They can much further hurt the voice hearer and exacerbate what could have been a neutral variance of normal human condition.

 If you don't yet know someone who has experienced internal hearings of voices, remember this non-pathological outlook with respect to traumas and/or other adjustment issues such that in the event you ever share time and space with someone who is adjusting, you can be of utmost support to him/her.  While 84% of the time, hearing voices is non-pathological, it doesn't meant hat it is easy for the person experiencing the change and attempt of trauma release.

Hey Molly - Try psychotherapeutic MDMA for your PTSD! (Coming Soon!!)

Molly and Trauma Therapy

In spring of 2017, the FDA will be moving into Phase 3 clinical trial investigations of psychotherapeutic Molly (in its pure form 3.4 no amphetamine or caffeine cuts) with respect to alleviating symptoms of trauma and PTSD.  In phase two clinical trials of psychotherapeutically administered Molly (2014), 136 participants were treated including: veterans (marines, army and air force who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and Korea), police and fire workers exposed to 9/11 and sexual abuse victims.  Phase three of the research study will include 200-400 participants over the course of 5 years. 

Thus far, in just 2-3 therapeutically guided Molly sessions, there is much promise of removing PTSD and trauma roots from affected individuals, allowing for individuals to live and engage in daily activities without being a hostage to their trauma.  In 2-3 Molly guided sessions out of 12 therapeutic sessions, 83% of patients recovered from PTSD, in comparison to one-third of patients do not benefit from Trauma therapy and experience no relief from PTSD. By removing PTSD and trauma symptomology, one can create safe and loving relationships, experience happiness, and establish functional routines in their lives. When PTSD and Ttraumas are untreated, it is not uncommon for inflicted individuals to isolate and become reclusive and socially disconnected.

As observed in PET scans, when one experiences Trauma/traumas and/or PTSD, his brain structures literally change shape.   Not only are neurotransmitter levels affected (Serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine), but communication between the amygdala and hippocampus decreases.  These organic structural and biochemical changes make it difficult for an individual to experience safety, trust, empathy and connection.  As social beings, organic inhibitor factors make it more difficult for an individual to thrive.  

Without trust and empathy, trauma inflicted individuals can often read facial signals, tones of voice, spoken language, behaviors and other environmental variables as threats, when in fact they are not.  People who have PTSD can get easily triggered and alarmed from various associative elements that those without PTSD wouldn't perceive as anything "major." For that matter, person A with PTSD will get triggered by different things from person B with PTSD.  The important thing to be educated about and to realize with respect to Trauma, is that a person who has Trauma can easily become reactive and go into overdrive when they are triggered.  These trigger responses can result in attacking or withdrawing types of behaviors.

As one can imagine, an over-functioning nervous system and magnified social responses can easily lead a person to experience depression and anxiety.  Unfortunately, medications prescribed to assuage these secondary variables are not effective in terms of treating PTSD.

Not only are medications not helpful for Trauma manifestations, but even while under the care of a skilled trauma therapist, Trauma/traumas and PTSD are difficult to address and eliminate from the psyche primarily due to intense memory recall and the somatic activation response of an individual.

When the sympathetic nervous system gets activated, an individual can literally re-live and viscerally re-experience the trauma, resulting in further re-traumatization and feelings of hopelessness.  Elevated cortisol release imprints trauma memories in the mind more vividly than when cortisol isn't elevated.  If not careful, a therapist can quickly activate the somatic and mental trauma responses of an individual, resulting in deeper mental and somatic trapping of the trauma.  A therapist can even cause the Trauma to expand within the internal trigger map of the client.  Containers, breath-work, somatic signal awareness and visual imagery of safe places are often helpful processes to keep the client's biological change associated with traumatic memories and response recall from entering spaces of healing. 

While a good trauma therapist can facilitate the creation of a safe environment to eliminate Trauma and PTSD, the use of psychotherapeutic Molly provides a literal "chemical security blanket" for the client, such that traumas can be eliminated without reactivating the fight flight response.   MDMA decreases the visceral chemical activation associated with the recall of trauma thus allowing for an opportunity of safe un-activated healing to take place.  Molly actually reduces amygdala hyperactivity due to trauma, so that when an individual is in therapy recalling a traumatic memory, his associated emotional response doesn't go into "freak out" re-traumatization mode.   (Molly does not typically alter states or dimensions, nor does it produce visual-audio effects or hallucinations. It does not create interconnectedness, out of body and/or loss of self experiences).

It is so important to eliminate PTSD and Trauma/traumas from psyches, so that individuals are free to experience daily life without sensations that they are being chased by a tiger or caught in a cross-fire. Elimination of PTSD and Trauma allows for the transition of someone to move from a defensive life role to that of an offensive role.

As SSRIs and SNRIs are not proven to be an effective treatment of PTSD, a current mode of medication to alleviate PTSD symptoms is that of medical marijuana.  Medical marijuana helps to decrease deleterious social effects, increase empathy and aid in sleep.  Marijuana however does not allow for the root of trauma to be pulled.  Instead, marijuana deals with PTSD's secondary manifestations, which would be equivalent to the defensive player deflecting and or protecting his self (goal) rather than attempting to "score." (hahaha - not funny).

By 2021, it is expected for Molly to be integrated as a primary therapeutic method for treatment of PTSD, Trauma and traumas.