The ‘Coming Out’ About Hearing Voices

Yesterday the Sunday Express shared a story of mine about how Stephen Fry is my inspiration.  One of the things I was quoted as saying was:

“Friends used to ask what was wrong. I’d be seeing things and hearing voices but couldn’t tell them because I believed they would think I was weird. You don’t tell the people closest to you what is going on in your head because you love and respect them and you don’t want to lose them. You feel that knowledge may push them away.”

After the piece was made public a few of my friends said to me “I didn’t know you heard voices”, or “you never mentioned voices to me.”  I think this shows that you don’t tell your closest friends everything, which I do feel bad for not sharing this with them.  I have always been open about my past and my mental health, so why didn’t I share this with people until now.

So, yesterday in front of the whole country it appears that I ‘came out’ about hearing voices.  I thought it would be a lovely opportunity to share with you my experiences, though I want to get this out there now before I go on any further – the voices are in the past.  I have one current one, but the rest are no longer present.

The voices started quite some time ago, though it was only really one form that was there from the beginning; a comforter, which is the voice that remains today.  It is hard to explain what this voice does because to me it’s more than just a voice; it’s a presence that is with me whenever I need comforting and support.  He holds my hand or gives me little internal hugs when I’m feeling down.  I like this presence, though it’s a shame I can’t say that about the other voices I experienced.

I spoke with my psychiatrist about the forms of voices and he explained to me why they are the way they are.  The other two forms are the ‘criticiser’ and the ‘attention seeker’.  They both do what they say on the tin, the criticiser ridicules me when I do things that the id doesn’t like or the ego isn’t getting its own way.  Though the attention seeker, while simply craves attention which causes more damage than you’d expect.  While out shopping with a friend I heard the voice call my name, over and over.  I started exploring where this voice was coming from and left the shop as it seemed to be from outside the store.  Next thing I knew I was in the middle of a car park and a car had to slam on its break to miss me.  This happened on more than one occasion.

Yes, the article mentions that I heard and saw things.  The seeing things I relate to the time I was using drugs quite heavily and have labelled that, on my own terms, as being drug induced psychosis.  What happened in this vision scared me, it may have even been the trigger to me sorting my life out, and I’m not sure I’m ready to share that story just yet.  Not so much the actual experience, but more what happened leading up to and after the vision.  The clash of hallucination and reality wasn’t pretty and I admit that innocent people got hurt (not at my hands I might add), it’s something that I don’t think I could explain the truth to you right now.

Well there you go, I ‘came out’ about hearing voices.  Obviously the hearing voices phenomenon is more detailed than I explained hear, and there is a hearing voices network that maybe can give more information and/or support about it.