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When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

theguardian.com

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Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#41

Post by namenumber »

namenumber wrote: post #39

Interesting article. Moreso for me as this is perhaps the one topic around here i have some first hand experience with. That feeling is really really odd though. There's a moment when you go "wait, that's an apparently fully functioning consciousness that is capable of responding to my every thought, my brain/reality can DO THAT?". For me it took a long time to play off the many different possible solutions to that p…

I guess it goes parallell to another question i have. How is it possible for a brain without anything but pretty basic musical training to conjure up a fully functioning, never before heard, tunable symphony. This was a place i occasionally ended up in the midst of all of the nightly mental hoolahoops i had to go through. (It would collapse on itself eventually, but still, the array of instruments and sounds was way more than i could ever make in my normal waking time).

It is basically the same question as "how does the brain conjure dream", i guess. But experienced from the awake state. And it just stays with you in a slightly different way when you experience it whilst awake.

I guess i'll never know.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#43

Post by mirimir »

We all have at least one of these voices in our heads. Like the author, some of us give them names, and fancy conversations among them. But for the most part, they simply occur to us as "I".

"I" likes to think that it's running the show, but really it's at best a commentator. All too often, that "I" fucks up and sabotages. As HenryTheHorse notes, in Buddhism it's called the "monkey mind". It's a machine that evolved for survival and reproduction.

Anyway, it's useful to distinguish "It" -- the "monkey mind" survival machine -- from ones identity. And that's a practice to engage in. Understanding is the booby prize ;)

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#44

Post by DanBC »

mirimir wrote: post #43

We all have at least one of these voices in our heads. Like the author, some of us give them names, and fancy conversations among them. But for the most part, they simply occur to us as "I". "I" likes to think that it's running the show, but really it's at best a commentator. All too often, that "I" fucks up and sabotages. As HenryTheHorse notes, in Buddhism it's called the "monkey mind". It's a machine that evolved…

No, hearing voices is a very different experience to the regular internal monologue that everyone has.

People hearing voices perceive those heard voices in the same way they'd perceive an actual person talking to them.

People experience different voices, but it's reasonably common to experience the voice as male and standing behind you. But the voice could be whispering (like white noise), or robotic, and it could appear to come from people actually in the room or from objects.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#46

Post by grubles »

ashark wrote: post #7
dx211 wrote: post #5

I have this thing where I wake up at 5:00 AM and my internal monologue sounds like someone twisting the tuning knob back and forth on a radio. Anyone know a name for that?

Kind of a horrifying cacophony? Mind is racing but unfocused, and you can't force it to focus? Makes it difficult to go back to sleep? Yeah, I get that every so often. Every couple months, maybe. No idea what it might be called.

Sugar crash. Blood sugar levels drop to the point that your body wakes you up and you have racing (and sometimes negative) thoughts which, from my experience, is your body saying it needs to eat some carbs.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#47

Post by archagon »

namenumber wrote: post #41
namenumber wrote: post #39

Interesting article. Moreso for me as this is perhaps the one topic around here i have some first hand experience with. That feeling is really really odd though. There's a moment when you go "wait, that's an apparently fully functioning consciousness that is capable of responding to my every thought, my brain/reality can DO THAT?". For me it took a long time to play off the many different possible solutions to that p…

I guess it goes parallell to another question i have. How is it possible for a brain without anything but pretty basic musical training to conjure up a fully functioning, never before heard, tunable symphony. This was a place i occasionally ended up in the midst of all of the nightly mental hoolahoops i had to go through. (It would collapse on itself eventually, but still, the array of instruments and sounds was way…

I've always been jealous of people who could do stuff like talk to "other" people or listen to symphonies in their head. But I just realized: I do all that stuff too, but only when I'm dreaming. The incredible environments, landscapes, and people that come to me in my dreams seem to exist outside my head entirely, because there's simply no way for me to conjure them when I'm awake. It's as if my brain doles out my consciousness only as a tiny, fractional part of its full capabilities. In other words, I am maybe not as much its master as I thought. I wonder if there's a way to unlock that ability in my everyday life.

Sidenote: I can sometimes sort of do it when I'm awake, but only when I'm really, really tired.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#48

Post by mettamage »

sageikosa wrote: post #25
cygnus_a wrote: post #3

I often have intense fantasies about conversations with personal mentors, historical figures and/or deities (what would Buddha say? How about Einstein? etc). Obviously I can't reproduce their thoughts, but knowing a little about them, I can try to think like them Surely they're not as visceral or reflexive as the author's voices. But I have always found value in empathizing with fantasized mentors, which has given me…

I sometimes talk to myself or to hypothetical instances of other people I know. I try to do this quietly at times since I know it might not be perceived favorably by others. Mainly I do this to verbally externalize thoughts and force them back into my auditory memory (deliberately), hopefully reinforcing or bolstering a position I want to take or a course of action I need to take later. I hope I never lose track that…

I do the same thing. I'm actually inspired by trying to talk to hypothetical instances of other people. I never did that. I normally talk to myself and to a lesser extent to my past self (when I was younger it would be my future self, but I'm currently in 'the future').

If there's a real person around I just talk to the real person, and on non-shy days this could easily be a stranger. It could make me annoying, but I also like to listen if it's about the same topic.

To me this all seems perfectly normal. My reasoning is that by activating more brain areas (i.e. Broca & Wernicke) and preferably also the pre-motor and motor cortices by moving (so walk while talking to yourself), the brain can make more connections to the content you're thinking about. That's just my hunch though.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#50

Post by archagon »

contingencies wrote: post #42

For a few years, every time my mind was momentarily still it would repeat the word "death". It never bothered me, and I always interpreted it philosophically (eg. as a meditational aid) and put it down to reading too much Buddhist literature.

Sounds a bit like OCD. If I keep my mind still, something terrible always fills the void and I have to give my consciousness something to focus on. When I was younger, I referred to this as "hearing voices"; it was a huge relief when I eventually found out about OCD and its symptoms. It's exhausting!
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