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Default Aug 06, 2019 at 06:30 PM
  #1
How do you guys cope with voices trying to annoy you and put you down ?
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Default Aug 07, 2019 at 02:59 AM
  #2
i have been hearing voices almost everyday sense 1971. I wish there was a great answer to your question but i will tell you some of the things that over time i have used.
when they first started i talked back to them but early on they weren't that threatening. Mostly making me do dumb things like riding my bike down to a local villiage to cut down a small scotch pine tree to bring home to have a christmas tree in my room. I did this in the middle of the night if i would have been old enough to think the whole thing thru i wouldn't have drug the tree thru the house and up the stairs without wrapping it in a sheet, my mother yelled up the stairs the next morning you better get that tree out of this house. Ha i decorated it and it was epic.
Ok back to how to handle them, the got more serious around say 1982 when they would use harsh meds at high strengths. During that time i used weird but useful coping strategies , i would go into myself and try to understand them, try to become one with them. I guess befriend them. Due to that strategy i became catatonic at times and it ended me up in the state hospital for 6 months. Today i just let them wash over me not take over me like back then. But you have to understand back in the 80s treatment of the mentally ill was far harsher than today. Straight jackets , 5 point restraints and heavy chemical restraints were used regularly and sometimes for no apparent reason. So the catatonia was used by me to survive. For 47 years I have lived with this and it is my normal, I find it sweet that my current medical team really thinks we can change this from my normal to a new normal.
After awhile with voices or other hallucinations it gets to be what you know and you don't fight it so hard, the days were its silent or clear i get nervous that something is wrong so i guess they have become part of what is me.
I'm sorry i didn't give you much to hold onto but roll with the voices remember they are just voices they can't hurt you make sure they know you make the choices and won't be controlled by them. Tell them you are the BOSS!
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you can ask me anything, if i can help you i'd be honored.

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Default Aug 07, 2019 at 06:54 AM
  #3
There's a page I found awhile back that has coping ideas for dealing with voices. I printed it out, when I get on my laptop I'll find it and post a link

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Default Aug 07, 2019 at 06:59 AM
  #4
Here, there's a bunch of downloadable/printable sheets with many ideas for coping with voices

Hearing Voices Network: Free Downloads (including coping strategies)

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Default Aug 07, 2019 at 05:51 PM
  #5
Omg thank you so much that was actually really helpful
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Default May 02, 2020 at 06:09 PM
  #6
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How do you guys cope with voices trying to annoy you and put you down ?
I speak to the voice in my head and tell it to be quiet and don't say mean things.
It works for me. Sometimes it is a mean chant and I substitute nice words which changes the chant to something pleasant.
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Default May 03, 2020 at 06:56 AM
  #7
I don't agree with the common belief that the voices can't hurt you. Every brain is unique. Almost all of them are capable of unbelievable things. Each voice hearer has a unique story to tell & probably shares very little of it, because, sadly, even within the mentally ill community there is prejudice & shunning. I suspect hearing voices is a lot more common than is reported, because of the stigma. Personally, I have had to continually adjust to my difficult experiences, getting used to them, talking with the voices, trying to understand what they want & need, to keep my sanity & have a better life, for all of us. I feel the brain is many someones. The so-called conscious mind is only part of it.
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Default May 03, 2020 at 10:16 AM
  #8
I cope by listening to music in head phones. If they're particularly bad like I'm having trouble understanding I'll tell my husband I have a headache. He knows what that means.

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Default Jun 13, 2020 at 03:11 PM
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I enjoy talking to my voices when their nice.
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Default Jun 15, 2020 at 11:23 PM
  #10
Mine frighten me. I always think they are trying to kill me.

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Default Jun 16, 2020 at 03:20 AM
  #11
I'm interested to see if other people experience the same things as me. For me there are different kinds of voices:

1. Random bits of conversations. It's as if I'm tuning into some collective unconscious and hearing people's conversations, but it keeps switching to different people so I only hear, say, two thirds of a sentence or so. They're not voices I've heard before or people I know. These were so common in the background I mostly ignore them to the point where I hardly notice it anymore. They have a spatial direction and a distance, but not in this world. They seem to occur in a plane that overlays this one - I know that makes no sense, but there is a different kind of spatial quality to them than when I hear things with my ears. I've never been afraid of these voices.

2. Voices in the real world. These are indistinguishable from people speaking to me. They are less frequent. They are frustrating, because I end up looking everywhere for a source that doesn't exist, and sometimes scary because I know what I heard, and if there is nothing there either I'm going crazy or things like ghosts/spirits/etc are real.

3. The voice of God. I don't even believe in God, but there is a voice I defy anyone to experience and not believe it is the voice of God. It seems to emanate from every point of the universe, inside me and outside, all at once and with such clarity and power there's nothing else in existence you've ever felt that was more real. Whatever it says to me is impossibly hard to remember though, like trying to recall a dream. This one is the rarest one I experience.

4. Amnesia voices. Like the God voice, there are some I hear that I just cannot remember even straight afterwards. I know it happened, and that something was said, but I can never recall what. I sometimes get freaked out because I do remember saying 'yes' (and the like) at the end and I get worried I just agreed to something I shouldn't have.

5. Sculpture voices. These are when the sounds are actually there(I think?), but masked by other sounds that my mind kind of chisels away. To give an example: I was in a mental hospital with a fountain outside. I could hear screaming all night every night. When I asked a nurse if she could hear it she said no. So I asked some other people the next day. No one could hear it, but to me it was plain as day. Next night I tried really hard to figure out what was wrong, and I think the sounds were actually there, within the fountain noise, and my mind was dismissing all the other noise and selectively attuning to just some of it like when a sculptor removes rock to reveal sculpture. I was highly stressed/manic at the time and figure my pattern recognition might have been turned right up.

None of the different voices say nasty things to me, so I don't really have a terrible experience with them, but it's still scary sometimes because I feel like there's a terrifying insanity stalking me, and hearing voices is a reminder I might not be as in control as I think.

If I clear my thoughts entirely so there is absolutely nothing going on in my head voices will sometimes start to wander in. I'm not the author of these voices, and yet I don't consider them to be 'voices' in the schizophrenic sense. I think most people actually self-identity with these voices and consider them to have been their own thoughts. For me I consider them to be arising in my mental backyard (so to speak), but not created by me. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if they are the voices of Gods, but mostly I accept they are generated by my subconscious. These I hold distinct from the 5 categories above.

I have this hypothesis though that if the thoughts were nasty to me it would all be different. If they were nasty it would cause me emotional pain. Since himans are highly motivated to avoid pain I would then withdraw myself from the source of pain in the same way we withdraw our hand from a flame.

But since the voices are arising in my own mental backyard, and I have no control over their comings and goings, the only way I can withdraw from them is to withdraw from my mental backyard. So every time I hear a nasty voice I recoil a little further from the pain, and create a little more distance between myself and the mental backyard where the voices emerge. After a while not only are the voices completely alien to me, but they are not even emerging I to any part of me that I identify with because I've pushed that part away. All of a sudden the voices are exterior in every way. I think this is why schizophrenics so often hear negative voices - it takes negative voices to cause that final schism.

I think in normal conversation the mental arena into which these voices emerge would be used as a well spring for generating words for speaking to others. When you push that spring away you risk losing some of your capacity to communicate,and it is often noted that schizophrenics speak less and often have some difficulty describing things.

I'm interested to hear about other people's experiences with voices if you would be so kind.

Last edited by SnappingRope; Jun 16, 2020 at 03:33 AM..
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Default Jun 16, 2020 at 03:45 AM
  #12
Hey, Snapping. Yeah, I have never really categorized all these different things like you did, but I relate to most of what you said. I think I have most of those, too. I have gotten a lot of command hallucinations in the past, tooo. These can be extreeeeemely dangerous, since people may choose to follow those commands.

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Default Jun 16, 2020 at 08:41 AM
  #13
Dear @SnappingRope, First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to share all that you did. I also can relate to a lot of things you describe, including how my mind can feel the physicality of the voices. You use terms like sculpting that I can relate to. I think because I have a lot of art in my genes. I hope you keep sharing so we will feel encouraged to have dialogues. We have a number of threads concerning voices throughout the PC forums, a lot of them appearing neglected.
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Default Jun 28, 2020 at 09:53 AM
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Where is the line between intrusive thoughts and voices?

I experience a constant stream of consciousness that make useless and inappropriate commentary all day long. When i was younger these thoughts suggested self harm. But this voice/thoughts sounds like my own voice. I can ignore them most if the time but when i am alone i find it more difficult to the point i start pacing and muttering ti myself under my breath.

Any suggestions????
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Default Jun 28, 2020 at 12:16 PM
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Voices actually sound like an actual human voice. You hear it. Mine are not my voice, but other people's.

What meds are you on? I have found Tirlafon most recently to be the most helpful anti-voice med for me. But there are many others out there that can work. What have you tried?

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Default Jun 28, 2020 at 12:36 PM
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Where is the line between intrusive thoughts and voices?

I experience a constant stream of consciousness that make useless and inappropriate commentary all day long. When i was younger these thoughts suggested self harm. But this voice/thoughts sounds like my own voice. I can ignore them most if the time but when i am alone i find it more difficult to the point i start pacing and muttering ti myself under my breath.

Any suggestions????

So for a while I had internal voices but they were clearly not myself or my own voice, eventually they evolved into external voices. Even with an AP I still get intrusive stuff....

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Default Jun 28, 2020 at 02:56 PM
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I was recently put on Abilify 10mg - it cut them down 75% but I wasn’t expecting that.
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Default Jun 28, 2020 at 08:43 PM
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I was recently put on Abilify 10mg - it cut them down 75% but I wasn’t expecting that.
It worked well for me for about ten years and then, stopped working, so, now, Trilafon on a low dose of 2 mg tid is working great for visual, which is my main issue, and the little auditory I do get. Might be worth checking out. Lots of folks have had good luck with it around here.

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Default Jun 29, 2020 at 01:11 AM
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I was recently put on Abilify 10mg - it cut them down 75% but I wasn’t expecting that.
That’s interesting....glad it’s working for this.....

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Default Jun 29, 2020 at 01:12 AM
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It worked well for me for about ten years and then, stopped working, so, now, Trilafon on a low dose of 2 mg tid is working great for visual, which is my main issue, and the little auditory I do get. Might be worth checking out. Lots of folks have had good luck with it around here.
I’ve been on abilify 9 years...hoping it keeps on working....

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