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Let the walls crack, 'cause it lets
the light in
Let 'em drag you through hell
They can't tell you to change who you are
That's all I know so far
All I Know So Far – P!nk
A good few years ago, I
began collaborating with the author of the book Emily’s Voices (which you can
buy here), and she
asked me to write a chapter for the book she was in the process of writing; The
Practical Handbook of Hearing Voices! The book was scheduled to publish a while
ago, but the pandemic kind of put a spanner in the works and so I’m really
pleased to say, it has been officially published TODAY!!
Find a metaphor
or expect a lack of empathy
I think that when I discovered a
metaphor for my auditory hallucinations not long after creating, I’m NOT
Disordered in 2013, it was a real turning point in me feeling understood and that
gave me the experience of an overwhelming sense of relief.
Without that metaphor, I experienced such a lack of empathy – which I attributed to the pure fact that no one could understand or appreciate what I was going through. And I believed this was the case because admittedly, even I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I didn’t have the words to form an explanation that I believed would be efficient and powerful enough so that others would understand. That might seem hard to believe considering I’m a blogger and all I do is come up with words to explain things! So I think that not being able to do that, really illustrates just how new, scary, chaotic, and unpredictable things were.
It’s not very common knowledge,
but people who hear voices (auditory hallucinations) can hear them in
completely different ways. Which means that even though hallucinating is
already a very misunderstood and misinterpreted occurrence, there’s the added
difficulty that even that can then be unique to the individual!
It meant that the metaphor I
thought of might only be applicable to the way in which I hear voices, so I’m
not suggesting it’s used by the wider voice-hearing community – I’m just trying
to recommend that finding something like this can be so helpful in your care
and the treatment you receive from professionals. I mean, when I found this
metaphor to explain my experiences, it resulted in me being prescribed an antipsychotic
medication and after finding the right dose, my head has been my own for over
one year.
So, I used the idea of listening
to music through headphones. I think it illustrates that I could hear voices as
though they were coming through my ears, but then somehow, they managed to fill
my entire head so that there was no room for any other sounds. No ability to listen
to any of my own thoughts. I want the metaphor to show just how all-consuming
my hallucinations could be. How powerful and omnipresent they were. How much
time and space in my head they controlled.
Prepare for
misinterpretation
As I said, creating that metaphor
was a great tool against misinterpretation – something which is so – wrongly –
frequently experienced by voice-hearers.
In the early days of my
hallucinations, professionals put a lot of thought into considering me to have
Schizophrenia, but then a Psychiatrist asked me questions relating to the diagnostic
criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder… When he determined that I matched
all nine symptoms (you only needed to have five to be diagnosed) it was like
everyone’s mindset changed. Like all of a sudden everyone changed their views
of me. Changed their interpretation of my experiences and my mental health on a
whole. Suddenly my hallucinations weren’t genuine; they were related to the
trauma I had eventually began talking about. And those beliefs around the
voices developed into a general attitude that I was simply attention seeking
and that all the hospital admissions and Crisis Team assessments weren’t necessary.
Sometimes, I actually wished that
to be true. I wished the hallucinations were fake and that I was lying. I
wished that I had control over my safety, instead of the voices being so convincing
of me self-harming or attempting suicide. But, unfortunately, this wasn’t the
case and – in my opinion – because professionals began to doubt me and withdraw
care, things escalated, and I began experiencing visual hallucinations. The
fear that things were going to continue to worsen and my belief that even if they
did, I still wouldn’t get the right help; led to my third suicide attempt which
– for the first time – landed me on life support in Intensive Care.
Know you may face
stigma and discrimination
Whilst a lot of people attribute
stigma to nastiness, I consider it to largely be a result of a lack of
education on whatever subject the stigma and judgments are concerning – because
this isn’t just true for experiencing hallucinations.
Unfortunately, the stigma and
judgement isn’t exclusive to the Police profession, in fact, I think it’s
probably more commonly found in comments online! With that, it isn’t just about
a lack of education on the subject, it’s also about those individuals making
the comments are able to either remain completely anonymous or publish them
under some sort of alias. Either way, they are ‘gifted’ with the power to cause
someone great upset and not receive any sorts of consequences for it – because do
people who do that really have a conscience?
This stark behaviour and activity online
has meant that there’s been a number of controversial issues come up where I’ve
had very passionate opinions, but they haven’t been fierce enough for me to be
willing to face any judgmental comments. So, in the end, I haven’t felt able to
express the opinion, to have my say, or to find and recognise my right that I should
be able to speak up without that fear. So, I hope that this illustrates that in
talking about hallucinations, I’m passionate and dedicated to doing so.
Focus on a
goal or aim
In preparing to face stigma,
discrimination, judgments, a lack of empathy, misunderstanding, and so much
more(!), a helpful thing to spur you on to continue to speak out regardless of
all of those things is having a goal or an aim in what you’re saying.
Having a goal can also help where your
writing about hallucinations might affect your own mental health. It’s ironic
that writing about mental health can sometimes worsen it, but triggers are important.
So, giving a trigger warning in your writing can be helpful for your readers and
for reminding yourself of the gravity of the impact it can have.
The reasons why I write about
hallucinations:
ü To raise awareness of hallucinations, the general facts around
them, and the way they can impact someone
ü To educate those who can be essential in caring or treating
someone who hallucinates
ü To feel relief for myself for speaking out about something that’s
taking up my life and controlling a lot about it
ü To provide others with the knowledge that they aren’t alone in their experiences of hallucinations
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