Hearing voices is a rich, varied and often meaningful experience. For some people, however, the voices can be intrusive, disturbing and even frightening. Studies around the world indicate that between 6-10% of the general population hear, or have heard voices. However, only about a third find them intrusive. There are far more voice-hearers who do not experience their voices as problematic.
During the past 25 years, I have met and worked with a great many people around the world, who have shared their experiences with me. Voice-hearers have taught me so much about understanding unusual states such as voices, sounds, and visions.
Having trained as a psychiatric nurse in the U.K. (and later as a psychotherapist in Denmark). I was taught that hearing-voices, i.e. auditory hallucinations, were a symptom of mental illness, typically schizophrenia. Many years later I was fortunate enough to attend a two-day conference where I met Marius Romme, Sandra Escher and Ron Coleman (see ‘The Hearing-Voices Movement & The Maastricht Approach).
This almost random meeting changed my entire way of thinking, not only about hearing-voices, but also about the way in which psychiatry approaches and attempts to ‘treat’ people with personal problems. I am not afraid to say, that despite working in the field of psychiatry most of my adult life, I am deeply opposed to most of the ways in which traditional psychiatry meets and treats the majority of people who are referred to, and inducted into, the system.
“Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throughout the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and in gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul.” CJ
Hearing voices is a common human experience (see feedback).
Clearly, there are also a vast number of good, professional and well-meaning people working within that system.
I elected to continue a career within psychiatry in order to, if possible, augment some kind of change. (see ‘Bio)
It is possible to find meaning in these often distressing and intrusive ‘messages’ and thereby change the relationship/response to them.
I now work full-time to help and support people with these experiences, both individually and in groups.
Through workshops, lectures and training days, I offer professionals/staff help in developing alternative ways in which to understand and support voice-hearers.