Voices in my head never go away. They just fade in and out, which is to say that some days they are less active than others. I have been hearing voices in my head in some shape or fashion for over twenty years, and so I have devised some coping strategies that allow me to function in the outer world and attend to my day to day. In this post I would like to share some of the coping strategies for living with voices in my head that I have used to varying degrees of success through the years and continue to employ in the present.
1. Acceptance. I have concluded after over 20 years of hearing voices that the voices are here to stay. The voices are not going anywhere. Hearing voices in my head is a part of my reality. As the Borg from Star Trek might say, “resistance is futile.” I have learned to accept this. All that is left to me is to find a way to tolerate them as best I can and find ways to live with them as part of my life experience. There came a certain amount of peace when I finally accepted that they were here to stay. I gave up putting off living a productive life until that hoped for day when they would be gone and took up the challenge of finding productive strategies to function with them along for the ride. To be fair, parts of my experience of the voices has been at times quite positive,
2. Detachment. As I understand and employ detachment in respect to hearing voices it is the act of not becoming emotionally invested in what the voices say and the inner drama they have at times created in my inner life. I admit that not becoming emotionally invested in the inner drama is easier said than done and that the practice of detachment took years to develop. Very often the voices talk about personal matters that are near and dear and therefore pull at my heart strings. It is hard to not respond emotionally. When the voices started to predominate in 1994 I actively engaged the voices and was wholly invested in the inner drama. I became unsettled. Likewise, since then, when I have experienced an episode (there have been three since my diagnosis 13 years ago), I have lost my detachment and become heavily invested in the inner drama. It is clear that I do poorly when I do not practice detachment.
3. Self-restraint. For me, this is the act of compartmentalizing my inner life and outer life and keeping them separate. In simple terms, this is the practice of not acting out my inner life where the voices reside in ’the real world,’ the outer life. An example of this would be a voice on the inside talking about or commanding harming someone and not acting this out in the real world (outer life). Or not talking to the voices out loud. Self-restraint comes from an understanding that I am in control, not the voices, and that I can choose to act on what goes on inside or not. It also has meant not discussing my inner world with people outside of my support network. Presently, I have decided to share my experiences in the hope that it will make life easier for other sufferers and their loved ones. However, again, not acting on the inner drama is easier said than done, especially when delusions are in play, and in the early years following 1994 when I harbored delusions and the voices became more vocal they influenced the choices I made governing my actions, though I have never harmed anyone. In years more recent, the voices are less predominating, I do not suffer delusions, and I have had more practice with self-restraint, so that keeping my inner and outer lives separate and making more rational choices concerning my actions has become easier, even during the three episodes/relapses I have suffered since 2001.
I will be following up in the next two posts with at least six more strategies that I use to cope with hearing voices. Have a great week folks.