My analytics on the blog indicate that the most popular of my posts to date is the Die!Die!Die! post in which I discussed the die command, a pernicious voice in my head that persistently and over the years periodically commands me to die. As the discussion of the experience of being in the head of someone who hears voices seems to be a popular one, I would like to return to it and discuss further the experience of voice commands in an effort to give my readership more of what they seem to find interesting.
Up until the fall of 1994 voices in my head issuing commands was an unknown phenomenon to me. In the outer world I had a strong aversion to being told or commanded to do something. I responded much more positively to being asked. Given that being told what to do was anathema by me, it is not surprising that I did not expend any effort telling myself what to do on the inside. When the voice commands began it was quite jarring. I recoiled inwardly in fear and annoyance, and revolted against or resisted them as I did commands in my outer life as best I could. I took them to task by yelling and screaming at them (in my head with my thoughts and sometimes out loud). I reasoned with them. I cried. I begged them to stop. I despaired. I used every means at my disposal to get them to stop but they persisted. However, with practice, the initial influence the voices had on me, and the distress they caused, waned as I learned to cope with their presence.
Beginning in 1994 to the present day I have experienced or experience a broad array of commands. In this post I speak of only a few. Presently, on a bad day, I might hear 30 or 40 commands. Some were/are quite malicious like the commands to die, rape, and murder, while other commands were/are quite benign like “look left,” “sit back in the chair,” and “turn and walk away.” While the violent commands have, in the most part, run their course, the more benign commands continue to this day.
My first memory I have of being commanded by a voice in my head came in the fall of 1994 and was one of the worst that I can recall. It was frightening not only because it was unprecedented and I was unprepared for it, but also because of the violent nature of the command. I was alone with a girl I knew in her apartment engaged in what I thought was a perfectly reasonable and persuasive argument to convince her that we should hook up. When she rebuffed me an unknown, loud, angry, and authoritative voice not my own erupted in the calm of my mind and commanded me to rape her. Being completely unnerved and caught unaware by the experience of hearing a voice in my head yell at me to harm her I blurted out to her face, “I’m not going to rape you,” which I didn’t. I was mortified by my response because it admitted that I was even thinking of rape. Looking back I wish I had just kept quiet and she never would have known what was going on in my head. It was a painfully awkward moment to say the least. I beat a hasty retreat to the door and left without further incident. In the years since we have never spoken. I don’t think she would want to. I would be too ashamed to.
Throughout all the long years of voices commanding me to violence or harm I have never harmed another person or myself. Thought about it. Had reason to want to settle a score or two on occasion, but, when voices commanded violent or injurious actions, I always showed, and continue to show, a necessary self restraint. For some time now I have come to hold that violence is only acceptable in self-defense when all other options have failed. Fortunately, as an adult, I have never had to employ violence on another person or persons as an act of self defense. To be honest, violence, and the contemplation of violence, unnerves me. However, voices that command me to do harm have become so commonly familiar through the years that I no longer attach much significance to them and, consequently, they no longer cause me the same distress or reaction they did initially. Additionally, I concluded long ago that I cannot harm another person without harming myself, especially in the act of sexual violence. In a way, I am being perfectly selfish by refusing to do harm because to do so protects me. Being peaceful is for me an act of self preservation. As well, I have learned to keep the knowledge of the occurrence of commands of violence to myself, mostly because it is unsettling to others, and because sharing that knowledge with the wrong person or people can land one in a psych hospital under certificate as a perceived danger to oneself or another, regardless of whether or not one has a history of violence, which I do not. And Lord knows I hates them psych hospitals. Been there, done that, was forced to take the drugs. In the end, I find that I have the inner resources necessary to restrain myself from acting out malicious commands, though I admit to having beaten the hell out of the odd tree with fallen branches in an effort to direct feelings of anger and rage in a non-injurious manner. (Got caught doing so and that, my friends, landed me in a psych hospital. Go figure.)
On the lighter side of things, one example of seemingly benign commands is the ones that attempt to direct my thinking. Examples of these commands are “conclude” (my thoughts), “comment,” “say the salient point,” “begin(a discussion in my thoughts),” and “summarize.” Commands of this type at first appeared helpful as they seemed to clarify my thinking. However, I have come to understand of myself through experience that I do not trust voices to direct my thinking and so I resist these commands. Nonetheless, I would be less than honest if, in reflection, I did not admit to being influenced by them from time to time when my mind is on other matters and I am not observing the content of my thinking.
Another example of benign commands is more of a process that repeats itself. I will be thinking in my own thoughts of something that a voice seems to be able to hear. The voice then synthesizes the nut of what I was thinking and issues it as a command. For example, I might be thinking about how the company I work for is going through a cost cutting process at work. I might be reviewing in my mind the different costs I am aware of that the company has cut. The voice takes the nut of this musing, cost cutting, and issues the command to “cut costs.” Another example might be that I am thinking in response to a news article I read online in the morning about a foreign country that has just gone to war with a neighboring country. The voice takes the nut of the musing, going to war, and issues a command “start a war.” The command itself is often insensible as it has nothing do with me personally, with what is going on either in my inner or outer life. This process can be repeated numerous times throughout a day and then not heard of for weeks or months at a time, but it has been occurring periodically for years. Presently, it amounts to nothing more than a minor irritant of little or no consequence to which I attach no significance.
To conclude, my experience of hearing voices issuing commands is, to one degree or another, a daily occurrence. Coping with commands is the practice of critically thinking about the commands before choosing to act or not act and keeping one’s core thinking process independent of the voices. I remain independent of the voices by identifying my own voice (thoughts) in my head separate from the voices not my own, an identification that comes to me naturally. In this way I can stay in control of myself and my thinking and cope with the voices and their commands, while remaining non-violent. I have learned to respond to voice commands in my head in a similar fashion to how I would respond to a person commanding me in my outer life, which is to say that I give neither power over me and maintain my critical thinking in the face of both, making conscious choices on how to respond to them. It is a little messy, and perhaps a tad convoluted, but it works and allows me to function as well as or better than any person that does not hear voices. It also renders me harmless.
And that folks is all for now. However, I would like to end on a positive yet unrelated note. I got promoted at work three weeks ago! Woot!
Look for another post in two to three weeks. I promise. See ya.