#auditory hallucinations

[schizopositivity]

Hallucinating is normal, many people experience it. You have most likely at least passed someone in the street who was hallucinating once. Or you've worked alongside a coworker who was actively hallucinating and you didn't even notice. Or your loved one hallucinated while you were in the room, but they were afraid to tell you.

Hallucinating is common, it's just not commonly talked about in everyday situations. If you don't experience it, or don't know someone who does and tells you about it, you've probably only heard it in the news or on TV. And they only really represent the worst possible outcome for shock value. But that isn't representative of how most of us who hallucinate experience it.

Most of us are just like everybody else, living our lives, just with the addition of hallucinations. We may need to take pills every day, or need therapy, or need to stay in mental hospitals sometimes, or need to be checked on by loved ones, but so do a lot of other people who don't hallucinate.

Hallucinations are just a symptom. Just like anxiety, or trouble concentrating, or tiredness. A lot of people experience it and have to learn to cope overtime. The only difference is we don't generally talk about it to people in casual settings. And it's because of the stigma. If you don't hallucinate, or know someone who does, you probably don't see hallucinations as a normal part of life, a symptom, just a thing plenty of people experience. But it is, it's not special, it isn't more dangerous, it doesn't have to be a huge deal.

Obviously hallucinations can be life changing and horrific, but so can other mental health symptoms. Hallucinations can also be neutral, or just annoying or even a positive experience. It's just a symptom, it doesn't automatically mean someone is in the worst mental state possible if they are hallucinating. It doesn't automatically mean someone is dangerous or unpredictable. It just means a person is experiencing senses that the people around them are not.

You have to learn to accept that it's just a symptom, and that people around you experience it, and they deserve to complain or talk about it just like anyone else gets to with other things in their lives. All you have to do is listen, and try to be understanding. Hallucinating is normal, you just need to stop treating it like it's abnormal.

[ayyliencat]

Hey there, just needed to say something quick. ALL of this misrepresentation about schizophrenia everywhere is ableism. People that say “schizophrenia is spiritual”, “schizophrenia is satanic”, “schizophrenia is demonic”, “schizophrenia means that you have demonic entities attached to you”, “schizophrenia means that you are in spiritual warfare with demons”, “schizophrenia just means that you are going through a spiritual awakening” is just so frustrating for people who ACTUALLY have this mental Illness or suffer from psychosis. It all comes from people who don’t even HAVE this illness or experience these things. It is dangerous to tell people who have or don’t have schizophrenia/ schizoaffective disorder, people who are on the schizo spectrum or people who experience psychosis that what they are experiencing is real and is caused from external forces or that they are just in a “spiritual awakening”. Stop spreading your misinformation on this mental illness and do some research, your ableism is showing. This goes to all of you new age spiritualists that say “people with schizophrenia just experience the world differently than us” No, we are suffering from psychosis/hallucinations or delusions. It is a mental illness, not what your idea of what schizophrenia may seem like to you. I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, I’m not haunted or “woke” I’m mentally disabled, It is a mental illness PERIOD.

[whumpster-dumpster]

This just in, baby's first sleep-deprivation-induced auditory hallucinations (it's me, I'm baby) and it was surprisingly chill. A ticking clock in a room where I don't have a clock, dripping sounds and muffled singing as if it was through the wall

[sophieinwonderland]

r/systemscringe still doesn't know voice hearing is a symptom of DID!

This is from the DSM-5:

Papers report voice hearing being more common in dissociative disorders than psychotic disorders.

In a comparison, DID systems were far more likely to start hearing voices before the age of 18, and to hear more than one voice.

Another r/systemscringe user claims that this isn't like there's a commentator in your head. This is also false in many cases according to research.

In the same study I referenced earlier, it was reported that the voices in DID would often make a running commentary in 55% of cases.

That's not every case, but is a slight majority and was more common than in the Schizophrenia groups.

There are lots of reasons to not put stock in the words of fakeclaimers, but the biggest one might simply be that however confident they seem in their misinformation, these people do not have even the slightest understanding of anything they're talking about.

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Psychotic System Culture is...

Not reacting to a noise around others because you assume it's an auditory hallucination and don't want to seem weird, only for it to be an actual external sound and being weird for not reacting to it

[autisticdreamdrop]

this user experiences hallucinations

[b4bybunnie3]

Me with my comfort stuffed animals because they keep me safe from the hallucinations

[dreamytfw]

Using one of @bardicious's tags as an excuse to nerd out about one of my favorite critiques ❤️

So late-stage SPN has a BIG problem with telling and not showing. It's ESPECIALLY bad in the Dabb-era, and Dean telling Mary that solitary was worse than Hell is THE example for this.

Let's start out by establishing that solitary confinement is a form of torture. Humans are a social species above all else and we tend to suffer A LOT of adverse effects if we're completely cut off from any and all social interaction. I am by no means an expert in this - I'm a just a nerdy information junky - so I'm going to leave a TedX talk here that describes what happens to prisoners who go through solitary confinement

I knew all of this before the episode aired, so I had no problem believing Dean when he said that being in solitary was worse than Hell. So I was genuinely shocked when most people walked away from that line going "pft, yeah right. Dean's tougher than that!"

So I went back and rewatched the scene. That's when I realized that the show does a fuck awful job at communicating what solitary confinement does to someone. Like, seriously. I would include a clip here, but I couldn't find it on youtube, so go and rewatch it again or look at a gif set if you need a refresher, I guess.

Their first mistake was breaking up the scenes of Sam and Dean in solitary. I don't know whose decision this was (probably Singer since he was director, but I don't know for sure), but it's a very bad one because it breaks up the mind-numbing tedium of solitary that the scenes should have been communicating. The first thing they do with the solitary scenes is have the anti-terrorism guy whose name I can't be bothered to look up tell Sam, Dean, and the audience that they're going to lose their minds before they get locked in. Dean counts the days with a loose screw (HAHA GET IT??? 'CAUSE HE HAS A SCREW LOOSE!! I hate you Andrew Dabb), Sam and Dean's different reactions to the prison food, them pacing their much too large for solitary cells, Sam working out a couple of times, and... that's it. Also who the FUCK decided Dean would have a razor in solitary that man would NOT have a razor jfc. A good chunk of the shots are wide shots of the cells, too, so the scenes don't even get across a sense of claustrophobia. The only thing they communicate is boredom. Probably because Singer himself was bored because he's a boring director who makes the most boring directorial choices 9 times out of 10.

I know what they were trying to do, though. They were going for that scene in that one Law and Order SVU episode where Elliot Stabler voluntarily gets locked in solitary for 3 days and starts to lose his mind from 2009.

I want y'all to pay attention to the choices made in both the SPN and SVU scenes. The solitary scenes in SPN are brightly lit with warm colors, they have a lot of wide shots, they have a guard talk when he delivers their meals, and the music wouldn't be out of place in an action movie. Hell, these whole scenes wouldn't feel out of place in an action movie.

Meanwhile, the SVU scene is dark and lit with green (green lighting isn't something that tends to occur naturally IRL, so a lot of the time green lighting in film is used to denote that something is wrong), the cell is A LOT smaller and more accurate to solitary cells in real life, the overwhelming majority of shots are TIGHT on Elliot's face to communicate the claustrophobia he's feeling, the shots that show all of the cell are shot through a grate to show how caged he feels, and the music is dissonant and off-putting with hallucination murmurs (I've had a couple of episodes of psychosis before, and SVU fucking NAILED what minor auditory hallucinations sound like). The SVU scene is shot like a horror movie.

I'd also like to look at the acting choices (or lack thereof. J2 stans, if this section bothers you, log off and go hug your pet or smth idk). imo Jared makes better choices than Jensen in the solitary scenes. Sam at least looks stressed and on edge. While Dean just... I'm sorry, but the man is blue steel-ing all over the place and it just makes him look bored and mildly annoyed 😭 Meanwhile, Chris Meloni goes from mildly bored when he first gets locked in, to actively stressed, to completely terrified by the end of the scene. This is not me saying that Chris Meloni is a better actor even though he is fuck you fight me. I don't know how many choices came down to the actors and how many came down to the directors. For all I know, Jared and Jensen would have also made similar choices to Meloni if they'd had a director who wasn't scared of doing anything interesting and could be bothered to collaborate with his actors like directors are supposed to do.

What I am saying (or trying to, at least) is that, in-universe, 6 weeks of solitary likely was worse than Hell for Sam and Dean. Like, at least Dean had some semblance of sensory input and got to interact with other people while he was being carved up. The problem is late stage SPN is incredibly lazy and can't be bothered to communicate that to its audience by showing us. Dabb and Singer just expected us to hear "you're going to lose your minds" before the solitary scenes, then hear "this was worse than Hell" after the solitary scenes, and expected us to just nod along and smile, no thoughts, head empty. Unfortunately for them, we're not stupid and SPN is a TV show, so if you don't show the audience, what you tell them is going to ring incredibly hollow. And that's exactly what happened for the overwhelming majority of fans.

TLDR: solitary confinement is torture, late stage SPN is bad at its job of showing and not telling, and we should abolish the American penal system in its entirety.

[painsandconfusion]

Whumpee gets auditory hallucinations a lot since they've been rescued, so they've learned to just cover their ears and ignore Whumper's voice or Caretaker's screams, knowing that they're safe at home and no one is going to get hurt.

So. One day, when Caretaker actually screams, pleading for help and for Whumpee to call the police, they don't think anything of it.

[sawxz]

⠀⠀MY AMANDA YOUNG HEADCANONS

these are all based on my own thoughts, or to bring representation and awareness to things i and other people experience, are, or identify as. if you don't like these headcanons, don't interact with this post.

⠀⠀·⠀⠀thought that she had a crush on hoffman for the longest time, leading her to be bisexual–now she realizes it was more of a sibling dynamic between the two and is questioning being lesbian

⠀⠀·⠀⠀she was born intersex and currently identifies as a female using she/her pronouns

⠀⠀·⠀⠀born and raised in germany with both parents being german, leading her to have german as her native language. she lived in germany until she was ten, her family relocated to canada, which made her learn english and pick up on canadian french, though she still speaks german around her parents since they never cared to learn english or canadian french

⠀⠀·⠀⠀went through severe trauma that caused her to have bpd and ends up getting attached to people quite quickly

⠀⠀　　　⠀⠀　got attached to lynn because of how sweet she was towards her, despite the fact that she was constantly angry due to fear of losing john. when lynns collar went off, she looked at the body in terror, feeling remorse for what she did towards lynn before jeff shot her

⠀⠀·⠀⠀giant fear of being in cars or learning how to drive due to being in a horrific car accident at the age of twelve, she prefers to walk everywhere unless it's a days walk away, if it is, she'll only take public transport since buses have more impact endurance

⠀⠀·⠀⠀listens to a lot of music to pass free time and distract her from auditory hallucinations she has, music is the only way she knows to make them stop

⠀⠀·⠀⠀needs constant background noise no matter what she's doing because of an intense fear of being alone, the noise tricks her brain into thinking someone else is there with her

⠀⠀·⠀⠀giant fear of death, no matter how suicidal she felt, she never did it due to being scared of what would come after. when jeff shot her, her last few moments of consciousness were spent panicking about what would happen now. reincarnation? spirit? pure darkness? what will happen to her

⠀⠀·⠀⠀at some point, her self h@rm addiction got bad again, so bad she would be at a constant point of hitting the fat layer. lawrence always had to stitch her up whenever this happened

——————————————————————

there may be more added to this at later dates, but for now this is everything. thank you for reading.

[disabled-sysboxes]

[TEXT ID: this system struggles to decipher what is and is not an auditory hallucination]

[IMG ID: a red rectangular box with a dark desaturated red outline with an icon of a person with multiple versions of themselves coming out from the back of them, each one becoming slightly more warped, with a question mark and exclamation point next to the top of their head to the left, and the text 'this system struggles to decipher what is and is not an auditory hallucination' to the right.]

–

Like & Reblog if you use!

(Reblogs can be private)

[schizopositivity]

I'd love it if more people understood the difference between hallucinations and illusions. So let me try to explain with examples. [TW: examples of auditory hallucinations and illusions described as you experiencing them]

1. Imagine you are home alone with your windows closed and it's silent. And then you hear unfamiliar voices talking about you, it sounds like they are coming from another room. You go to check but no one is there. Your brain created entire voices of people out of thin air. This is a hallucination. There is nothing but your brain creates something.

2. Now imagine you are in the same scenario but your windows are open but the curtains are closed. You hear your neighbors having a conversation, and you hear it as them talking about what you are doing in that moment. They couldn't possibly see what you are doing, so realistically they can't be talking about you, but your brain makes you change the words and hear it that way. This is an illusion. There is something but your brain changes the real thing into something unreal.

It's not always easy to know the difference when you are experiencing it. But if you do know which one it is (nothing there and something unreal appears or something there changes to something unreal) then I think it can be really helpful to label the symptom accurately.

For me it was helpful to gage the effectiveness of my medication. I noticed that I have more illusions than hallucinations, and for me that was a sign of improvement. It can also go the other way, to see if your psychosis is getting more severe.

[ayyliencat]

Hey there 😊 just wanted to say a thing quick.. 💖

If someone has schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder or on the schizo spectrum, please do not say that they are gifted, that they’re clairaudient, telepathic or anything of that sort. I know you’re just trying to make sense of it all but please 💖✨don’t✨💖

It feeds into their hallucinations/delusions that they are experiencing and that is DANGEROUS to someone who is hallucinating *them already thinking that the voices are REAL, that they actually can read minds or that they are thought broadcasting and everyone can read their minds all while actually believing it to be real* and can lead to them thinking they have a gift and can lead to them putting themselves in danger by thinking that what they are being told while hallucinating is REAL because they “have a gift” or are “gifted”. I’ve been told this before early on when I was first diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder about 5 years ago I had to find out on my own with my diagnosis that not knowing what’s real and what is real is just apart of having this mental illness. We are not being haunted by demons or ghost’s, it is a mental illness just like anxiety or depression, and unfortunately we suffer from hallucinations, catatonia, depression, and labile affect(Inappropriate involuntary laughing and crying) amongst a lot more symptom’s, just like you take meds for anxiety and depression we also have to take medications, it is a mental illness and should be treated as such, with knowledge and treatment can help someone get clarity about their recovery and can help reduce their symptoms. Thank you for reading 💖✨😊

[kai-the-creature]

bro having AIWS is so weird, and I think being a system makes these episodes a lot more visceral

last night I was talking to The Voices™️ (aka my headmates) about what their favourite trinket was and how I should create my headspace, and as I would talk to each of them I felt my body shifting in size (when I talked to princess my body would feel like it’s shrinking, when I talked to ruby my body would grow) and it got so much worse when I talked to Something.

it legit felt like I was growing and shrinking and the body parts were growing and shrinking and extending and it was so weird—it was like someone was playing with the customization options of my body (like when you get to customize your character at the beginning of a video game and you can choose your size and how big you want certain body parts to be).

this continued for probably 20 minutes even after I stopped talking to Something (give or take, my time perception goes out of wack when I get these episodes), and it was honestly really weird. when I get these episodes it’s normally one body part or my whole body (usually it’s my hands that increase in size, or me feeling like I’m way taller/bulkier than I actually am), but this time nothing was safe from my hallucinations. I also heard random super quiet whispers, which was definitely unpleasant

also I don’t see nearly enough representation for people with AIWS… I wish I had more folks to connect to over this weird condition

ALSO ALSO! We’ve finally decided on our system name!! From now on, us as a collective will be know as The Trinket Collective! We’ll probably make a post talking more about it in the near future -📺📚

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Psychotic System Culture is...

"<current fronter>, stop swatting at nothing! It's not real, and your mother keeps staring at us like we're crazy!"

[pumpkin-the-girlie-girl-vixen]

Understanding Schizophrenic Hallucinations: Beyond Sight and Sound

When most people think of hallucinations, they often envision vivid visual experiences or unsettling auditory sensations. However, hallucinations associated with schizophrenia encompass a much broader range of experiences that can involve all five senses. It's essential to unpack this complexity to foster a more profound understanding of what individuals living with schizophrenia may face.

The Nature of Hallucinations

Hallucinations can be defined as perceptions that occur without any external stimulus. They can manifest in various forms:

1. **Auditory Hallucinations**: This is perhaps the most well-known type. Many individuals hear voices that may comment on their actions, converse with one another, or even issue commands. These voices can feel incredibly real and can lead to feelings of confusion, distress, or fear. The tone of these voices can vary significantly; they might be familiar or completely alien, nurturing or abusive.

2. **Visual Hallucinations**: Some individuals report seeing things that aren't there—shadows, figures, or even detailed scenes. These visual experiences can be disorienting and frightening, impacting one’s sense of reality. For example, someone may see a person standing in the corner of a room, only to realize that there is no one there.

3. **Olfactory Hallucinations**: While less talked about, smell can play a significant role in hallucinations. Some individuals might perceive foul odors that others do not notice, sometimes associated with memories or feelings of disgust. Conversely, they may experience pleasant smells that provide a fleeting sense of comfort.

4. **Gustatory Hallucinations**: Taste, too, can be impacted. An individual with schizophrenia might experience tastes that are not present, such as bitterness or metallic flavors that can be unsettling and contribute to a general feeling of unease.

5. **Tactile Hallucinations**: These involve the sensation of physical touch or movement on the skin. Someone might feel as though insects are crawling on them, or they may experience phantom sensations that can provoke anxiety or distress. This can lead to confusion about what is real and what is not, often exacerbating feelings of fear and paranoia.

🧠Schizophrenia Sucks🧠

The Emotional and Psychological Impact

The presence of these hallucinations can lead to significant emotional turmoil. Individuals may feel isolated, fearing that no one can understand their experiences. The unpredictability of when these hallucinations will occur can cause anxiety and make daily life challenging. The reality of living with such experiences is not just about the sensations themselves but also about their implications for one’s mental state and social interactions.

Moreover, hallucinations can interfere with one’s ability to distinguish between reality and illusion, leading to potential misunderstandings in social situations. This misunderstanding can result in strained relationships with friends, family, and coworkers, as others may not comprehend the challenges involved.

Seeking Support and Understanding

Living with hallucinations requires a robust support system. Therapy, medication, and open lines of communication with loved ones are crucial in managing these symptoms. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help individuals develop coping strategies and tools to navigate their experiences, while medication may assist in reducing the frequency and intensity of hallucinations.

Raising awareness about the multifaceted nature of hallucinations in schizophrenia can foster a more compassionate approach from society. Understanding that these experiences can involve all five senses can encourage empathy and support for those affected.

Conclusion

In conclusion, hallucinations in schizophrenia are a complex and often misunderstood aspect of the disorder. They are not limited to just seeing and hearing; they can encompass smells, tastes, and tactile sensations as well. By sharing these experiences and advocating for greater understanding, we can help create a more supportive environment for individuals living with schizophrenia, paving the way for healing and connection.