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 my skin. These hallucinations are hard to get rid of just by taking medications. 

The brain is misunderstood. It has billions of neurons at play inside of it. One delusion that we all experience as human beings is color. Though most people don’t see it this way, 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. Spirits can be so many things, whether they be the government, doppelgangers, clones, time travelers, witches, werewolves, Bigfoot, UFOs, Sumerian text languages, aliens, entities, dark matter, ghosts, weird electrons and protons, invisible higher dimensional beings, Light Workers, Demons, Hell, Angels, god, CIA, FBI, mind control techniques and experiments, crazy dreams, our cousins from the stars, parallel universes, the tooth fairy, old Native Americans, bones, souls rising from earth, mummies, vampires, or Santa Claus. 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 care providers better understand what the psychotic process feels like. When patients can explain how they feel, care workers can provide more adequate help.

This is important because 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.

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.