As a voice hearer, I was always confused and confounded with the question: Why can’t you just leave me alone?! I got things to do! But the more I fought the voices the more they fought back too, and it was just an endless cycle. I was stuck in a nightmare and it seemed like I would never wake up from it. It seemed like all my plans were dashed. I wanted to be a psychologist, I wanted to meet a nice girl and settle down, I wanted a house with the white picket fence. But how was I supposed to do all those things now? Surely I could if It wasn’t for these damned voices! I started to think I’d never have a “normal” life.
This predicament went on and on for the better part of a decade. I tried everything, I tried fighting them, they fought back, I tried screaming at them and they screamed back, I tried to stay silent, but they made me talk, and when I tried to talk they stifled my voice.
How was I ever supposed to lead a decent life with all these problems? Then I finally came to the decision to stop caring about what the voices said. It was the day that I simply decided to get on with my life that I experienced the most calm and freedom. I dared to hope again, and I started to nurse all the dreams again, the dreams I had before voice hearing. I started to believe I could be “a somebody” again..
The crucial change however was I finally came to realise that I didn’t actually need to accomplish anything to be somebody. I was just so glad to live with the small things in life again, whether I was hearing voices or not. That’s when I started to understand that the voices were simply streaming through my mind beyond my control. I use the word “stream” because my experience of voices was much like a track streaming through my headphones on my daily morning walk. The words play for a while, say what they want to say, and then they inevitably cease. Do we really need to pay so much attention to them? I think not! Once I relinquished trying to control the voices I realized that they pass within moments.
I found the voices to be temporary and short lived at best, a flickering reality not warranting much extra attention. It was then that I lost the fear of voices. I think one of the main problems about hearing voices is that we fear them. Without the fear, it doesn’t really matter what the voices are saying, they could be saying the most nasty things in the world, but honestly who cares? They’re just “streaming” in the mind for a moment in time. The truth is that we’re living with multiple tracks in our mind all day long and getting by just fine! Whether we are running to catch the train, whether we are cooking a meal, whether we’re strolling through the mall sipping on bubble tea, even when we’re watching TV, all day long we live while streaming tracks in our minds. For example these things i’ve just described were likely to create streams in your own mind as you read them.
Sometimes we recognise these tracks streaming in our minds and we call them thoughts. If you would humour me and come to see the experience of hearing voices as just another kind of thought track in our mind, you may find some level of release.. Sometimes they are mean and sometimes kind, sometimes they are fun and lively, sometimes they are curious and sometimes they are guarded. Is it possible to treat these voices like any other thought which stream in the mind?
My challenge to voice hearer’s is this: can you get on with your life all the same whether there are voices streaming in your mind or not? In my experience the wonderful potential and possibility of life opens up to us voice hearers all over again, like when we were children and dreamed of being a fireman or an astronaut. Let’s reach for the stars voice hearers, whatever the voices say, whatever the stream of voices is in our minds, I’m confident that all of us can regain that wonderful sense of purpose as we realize voice hearing really isn’t that much of a calamity. It’s really up to us how we frame our experiences.
I rediscovered my life through hearing voices, and as I write this and share my thoughts with you all, I am liberated further. It is a testament to the idea that voices truly can facilitate a wonderful transformation, and help us appreciate life at a new level, because as voice hearer’s we’ve come from the bottom, but we can come out of it with new zeal. I’m here to tell you, life is worth living, no matter how many voices may be “streaming” in our lives.
