Learning to live with voices and finding community in sharing them

Hearing voices can be a hard and unbelievable thing to go through. At least it was for me. It still is. 

I’ve been hearing voices since I was 23 years old. It started right after my mom died. And I’m still hearing voices 10 years later. I know that sounds like a long time. But in reality, time goes by fast. 

Hearing voices can be bearable. Although it is a real experience, many times others just cannot hear the voices I hear, no matter how real it is to me. Sometimes I can get tactile hallucinations, like bugs crawling on the skin as well. But hallucinations are hard to get rid of just by taking medications. 

The brain is misunderstood, and it has billions of neurons at play inside of it. One thing that we all experience as human beings, that is not seen as delusions or hallucinations, is color. But in reality, colors are mere illusions that we all see in our mind. They aren’t actually real, and we all share that common delusion. 

Also real for me is that Berkeley is a very interesting place with spirits running all around it. Just as mental health is part of physical health, spiritual health is part of the experience of mental health as well. Spirits can be so many things, whether they be the government, doppelgangers, clones, doubles, time travelers, witches, werewolves, Bigfoot, UFOs, Anunnaki, Sumerian text languages, aliens, entities, dark matter, dark energies, ghosts, paranormal activities, weird electrons and protons, invisible higher dimensional beings, 12th dimensional beings that can see everything in the 11th dimension, Light Workers, Demons, Hell, Angels, god, CIA, FBI, mind control techniques and experiments, lab work, science, crazy dreams, our cousins from the stars, parallel universes, the tooth fairy, old Native Americans, bones, souls rising from earth and other planets, mummies, vampires, Santa Claus, or control mechanisms. Some methods help people, like cognitive therapy, art therapy, and CBD.

In mental health care, the person’s subjective description of their experiences can show what’s going on with them. This can help others better understand what the psychotic process feels like. Patients explain how they feel this. And it can become very real. 

Abstract thought is very hard for people during the psychotic process, and engaging with people can be difficult. A lot of people with schizophrenia don’t have long relationships with others, as they are often in their own world. And it can be a whole world filled with different people too. They can see these created environments playing out as delusions or false memories. Loss of identity can be part of this, too, so sometimes it can become really hard to deal with for those suffering.

In A Beautiful Mind, the main character is in deep psychosis. He sees codes, newspaper puzzles, and news media, relating it all to his personal experience, like anyone experiencing psychosis might if they looked at the articles in front of them. This can be embarrassing for some who do this by habit. He experienced difficulty with his relationships and his own identity. But the movie also showed that there can be joy shared during these times, even laughter. In fact, studies show, laughter is good for us during mental health times, and crisis times especially. 

The mental health community has so many different experiences, and we are stronger together and less alone when we learn about others and invite them to learn about us. I believe during this pandemic, more people have approached the topic of mental health, even making it into a popular discussion. I am glad that it is being brought up, whether the people are impacted by it in some way or even just curious. When people learn about the mental health topic, they can lessen the stigma surrounding it, and they can start to understand the real experiences of us within the mental health community. And just as we will share our reality with you, we hope you share your realities with us too.