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