Voices in the head are 'normal'

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Voices in the head 'are normal'
Hearing voices in your head is so common that it is normal, psychologists believe.
Dutch findings suggest one in 25 people regularly hears voices.

Contrary to traditional belief, hearing voices is not necessarily a symptom of mental illness, UK researchers at Manchester University say.

Indeed, many who hear voices do not seek help and say the voices have a positive impact on their lives, comforting or inspiring them.

Human diversity

Researcher Aylish Campbell said: "We know that many members of the general population hear voices but have never felt the need to access mental health services.

"Some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don't seek psychiatric help than those who do."

Some who hear voices describe it as being like the experience of hearing someone call your name only to find that there is no one there.

People also hear voices as if they are thoughts entering the mind from somewhere outside themselves. They will have no idea what the voice might say. It may even engage in conversation.

The Manchester team want to investigate why some people view their voices positively while others become distressed and seek medical help.

Ms Campbell said: "It doesn't seem to be hearing voices in itself that causes the problem.

"What seems to be more important is how people go on to interpret the voices."

She said external factors, such as a person's life experiences and beliefs, might influence this.

Context

"If a person is struggling to overcome a trauma or views themselves as worthless or vulnerable, or other people as aggressive, they may be more likely to interpret their voices as harmful, hostile or powerful.

"Conversely, a person who has had more positive life experiences and formed more healthy beliefs about themselves and other people might develop a more positive view of their voices."

Past studies have found that people who hear voices have often had a traumatic childhood.

Ms Campbell said stigmatisation could also play a role.

"If a person starts hearing voices and also holds the beliefs of some of society that this means they are mentally ill, it is going to cause them more distress. It also stops them talking about it to others."

Professor Marius Romme, president of Intervoice, a "hearing voices" charity, said: "Because of the fears and misunderstandings in society and within psychiatry about hearing voices, they are generally regarded as a symptom of an illness, something that is negative to be got rid of, and consequently the content and meaning of the voice experience is rarely discussed.

"Our work and research has shown more than 70% of people who hear voices can point to a traumatic life event that triggered their voices; that talking about voices and what they mean is a very effective way to reduce anxiety and isolation; and that even when the voices are overwhelming and seemingly destructive they often have an important message for the hearer."

Paul Corry of the mental health charity Rethink said: "Rethink welcomes this investigation, which we hope will help support our campaign to bring mental health issues into the mainstream."

People interested in participating in the University of Manchester research should call 0161 306 0405 or email [email protected].

Participants should be aged 16 or over, have been hearing voices for at least six months and live in the northwest of England.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/5346930.stm

Published: 2006/09/18 00:39:17 GMT

― say psychologists (Dick Butkus), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:38 (nineteen years ago)

So now that it's okay, who here will admit it. Come on, 1 in 25 of us is hearing 'em!

― Butt Dickass (Dick Butkus), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:39 (nineteen years ago)

Get back to me when they have a study that shows having voices in your head commanding you to kill is normal.

― 100% CHAMPS with a Yes! Attitude. (Austin, Still), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:44 (nineteen years ago)

SHUT THAT DAMN DOG UP

― any cop (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:46 (nineteen years ago)

I was in the cinema once and I thought I heard voices in my head but it was just some people whispering in the row behind me.

(A bit like the time I was in Kenya and I thought I had malaria but it was actually a hangover)

― chap who would dare to start Raaatpackin (chap), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:47 (nineteen years ago)

In college, in the last weeks of completing my thesis when I was going days on end without sleeping, I heard a bunch of children screaming outside my window. I woke up my housemates, who heard nothing while I still heard them screaming. Freaked me (and them) right the fuck out.

― Maria :D (Maria D.), Thursday, 21 September 2006 00:54 (nineteen years ago)

I hear *stuff* all the time but not voices: noises more like. Bleeps and buzzes. But thats called tinnitus.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 21 September 2006 01:08 (nineteen years ago)

nice to finally put a name to it...tinnitus...has a nice ring to it

― fuzzz (fuzz), Thursday, 21 September 2006 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

i only hear voices when i've woken up from 3 hours sleep and i'm in the shower. but they aren't really voices, exactly--more like competing thoughts wrestling w/each other for airtime.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 21 September 2006 02:47 (nineteen years ago)

i only hear voices during sleep paralysis, unless they count talking to yourself.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Thursday, 21 September 2006 02:58 (nineteen years ago)

Lots of times when I'm reading, I hear this voice speaking aloud exactly what I'm reading. It's very distracting. I try to get him to shut up, but if I focus on stopping the voice, I can't seem to focus on reading. I find myself just staring at the page where I left off. Yet, if I just sit back and decide to let him read to me while I just listen, he clams up.

― Butt Dickass (Dick Butkus), Thursday, 21 September 2006 03:10 (nineteen years ago)

Ask religious people about their conversion experience and you'll tap in to a lot of benign voice stories.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Thursday, 21 September 2006 03:18 (nineteen years ago)

jesus doesn't count

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 21 September 2006 03:23 (nineteen years ago)

I hear my own thoughts as though they were being spoken all the time. But that's not the same thing as "hearing voices" right?

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, 21 September 2006 04:17 (nineteen years ago)

word up, i suffer from this annoying affliction too. i also have problems noticing these static light fields on the margins of the text and in between the lines, which are always fighting for my conscious awareness but then disappear as soon as i focus in on them.

also SLEEP PARALYSIS: interesting stuff. happened to me last week during a thunderstorm in the morning for maybe 30 seconds. i was listening to the rain, until it sounded like it might've been leaking in through the wall (??? -- brain must have been entering back into some dream state but still partially conscious, must be the window of opportunity for sleep paralysis to set in), i panicked and wanted to get up to check it and see, but my body wouldn't work. i started freaking out and struggling to move or make some sound, to no avail. so i just gave up and understood i was sleep paralyzed and i'd come out of it soon enough, and it was like as soon as i made that correlation, my brain unfreezed and i was able to get up and take a look at the wall and confirm i was basically hallucinating. it's like a chinese finger trap OF TEH MIND

― ath (ath), Thursday, 21 September 2006 04:41 (nineteen years ago)

oh right and i was gonna say (even though it's off topic kinda and i apologize for that inconvenience): i always have trouble relaxing and turning off all the different "tracks" of thoughts, repeating ideas, images of whatever in my head when i'm trying to sleep. a year or so ago i tried visualizing a radio that was the source of all the clutter, and i would visualize actually moving my hand to the radio and turning it off, and i was surprised to find all the noise really would suddenly stop, and then i could just focus on the silence and drift off. but every subsequent attempt to do this got more and more difficult, and it seemed like once i was aware of it all the noises and thoughts would just gradually ease back in after progressively shorter and shorter intervals of silence.

― ath (ath), Thursday, 21 September 2006 04:45 (nineteen years ago)

i always have trouble relaxing and turning off all the different "tracks" of thoughts, repeating ideas, images of whatever in my head when i'm trying to sleep.

i have this problem x10, it's become a major hassle.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 21 September 2006 04:51 (nineteen years ago)

i need to try that radio visualization

― a name means a lot just by itself (lfam), Thursday, 21 September 2006 04:58 (nineteen years ago)

other things that work: daily exercise, $5 worth of taco bell food items including but not limited to tacos and burritos, BUSTING ONE NUT, ambien (allegedly -- if you care to go that route)

― ath (ath), Thursday, 21 September 2006 05:06 (nineteen years ago)

and i would visualize actually moving my hand to the radio and turning it off, and i was surprised to find all the noise really would suddenly stop

Yeah I've tried this before, also the "pull a record off the turntable" trick which is when I get a song ear-wormed into my brain I'll make like I've gone ZZZZZRTTTTTTTTT and then listen to the nothing. It never lasts long though. I can't shut my head up.

Its not voices though. Not really. I mean, I know it is my mind, my thoughts/memory/etc.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 21 September 2006 05:25 (nineteen years ago)

i hear someone shouting my name when I'm drifting off sometimes. thats it though.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Thursday, 21 September 2006 07:39 (nineteen years ago)

At about 3pm? At your desk at work? That's be your boss.

― ledge (ledge), Thursday, 21 September 2006 07:55 (nineteen years ago)

That's -> That'd

I get the thoughts in head when trying to sleep. Instead of turning them off I try to focus on thinking about something else. I imagine I'm lying on the deck of an ocean going yacht, watching the sunset, hearing the waves lap against the hull. Aaaaahhhh... it's like lame ambient music for my head. It works, not always but often.

― ledge (ledge), Thursday, 21 September 2006 07:58 (nineteen years ago)

okay, so hearing conversations or people talking to you as you fall asleep is not uncommon, right? it's some form of lucid dreaming? because it's happened to me all my life and it's nice to see it's so common.

― the art ensemble of chicago house (vahid), Thursday, 21 September 2006 08:05 (nineteen years ago)

I get people shouting my name all the time. But it's normally attributable to something else - i.e. someone really did shout, but something else, or a car horn beeped, and my egotistical mind just transformed it into hearing my name. It drives me crazy, because it's normally shouted in quite a panicky way, so I'm all startled and nervous. Argh.

I also suffer from the thoughts/music getting stuck in the head thing. I tend to try to force my mind to tell me a linear narrative-type story, pushing my way through the noise and clutter, and normally I don't manage it but the effort makes me fall asleep.

― emil.y (emil.y), Thursday, 21 September 2006 11:42 (nineteen years ago)

Participants should be aged 16 or over, have been hearing voices for at least six months and live in the northwest of England.

the inhabitants of Kersal perhaps

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Thursday, 21 September 2006 11:44 (nineteen years ago)

okay, so hearing conversations or people talking to you as you fall asleep is not uncommon, right?

I get that sometimes. Not as much if I fall asleep with music on.

― Marmot (marmotwolof), Friday, 22 September 2006 00:05 (nineteen years ago)

Election Night, 2000, I watched the coverage with three televisons turned on in my living room, all set to the three networks (I didn't have cable.) Obviously, it went on much longer than expect so by the time I went to bed at four-thirty in the morning, all I could hear inside my head was Tom Brokaw going Wuh-er Whu-r Wuh Wuh Wuh-er.

I've had to do stuff like turn on my closet light so I could tell when I was asleep and when I was awake due to that stuff.

Then there was the guy I used to work with at the talk station. We had this show in the mid nineties called "Ask the Fat Man". This [fat] man paid for time on the station between midnight and two a.m. He would do the show by phone from his home in Tennessee or whatever and talk about his colonic medicine and diet pills. (One time, I got to call Mick Fleetwood and Duane Eddy up as guests on the same show. Bizarre.)

Anyway, this guy I worked with ate a bunch of Tums tablets coated in LSD one night and went in to the show. He later told me how weird it was that these voices in his head would talk to him and ask him questions that he would likewise respond to. Of course, it was the fatman in his headphones, but he got himself so removed from the situation that he about came back around and made for a wonderful guest on the show even though he was just board-op'ing it.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 22 September 2006 01:22 (nineteen years ago)

PP your post reminded me of something weird similar. After Sept 11 happened I went to bed a night or 2 later filled with dread and misery, and I couldnt sleep because all I could hear in my brain was this voice reciting "osama bin laden, osama osama" over and over like it was some sort of horrible curse. OK I was also stoned, but still.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 22 September 2006 01:25 (nineteen years ago)

I've heard benign voices once or twice but I was so young I now can't tell if it really happened or if it was a dream. i was stoned for a whole year in my late teens, and i may have heard voices then but i'll never know.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Friday, 22 September 2006 02:20 (nineteen years ago)

Once my wife woke up with a voice in her head saying "BUY APPLE STOCK." It was at $13 at the time. Now she hears what she calls Ghost Radio.

― The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (Rock Hardy), Friday, 22 September 2006 02:24 (nineteen years ago)

How is this all that different from hearing 'the holy ghost'?

Here's from Chester Brown's "My Mother Was Schizophrenic":

http://www.twohandedman.com/Interviews/Chester/Images/SchizExper3_05.gif

http://www.twohandedman.com/Interviews/Chester/Images/SchizExper5_04.gif

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 22 September 2006 03:57 (nineteen years ago)

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 22 September 2006 04:02 (nineteen years ago)

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