Inside Voices Vs. Outside Voices

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Does anybody else have distinctions between the voices they hear inside their heads and the ones that come from outside their head, kind of like internal noise vs external noise? I find this is really helpful when discussing with my psychiatrist and therapist because they know that in my case inside voices are more harmful to me than outside ones.
For example, inside voices for me are two specific people who tell me what to do or comment on what I’m doing.
Outside voices consist mainly of screaming, whispers, and abnormal sounds that are mainly just temporarily scary but mostly just annoying.

Does anybody else do this?

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At times I’ll hear an inside voice begin to bring up the past and claim I’m some sort of monster and a worthless friend to many. At night I deal with outside noises. Typically calling my name and such.

Its been quietish today.

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I definitely know what you mean. Sometimes it feels like someones yelling right in my ear, but since its just an outside voice its easy to move past. The inside ones are very destructive in my opinion. Which is why I don’t understand all these people who claim to be best friends with their hallucinations.

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My inside voices tell me to kill myself, harm others, sometimes laugh at me. Outside voices I hear sometimes, could be hearing someone calling my name, or other random stuff.

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Yes this is the same for me.

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For more replies, here the thread that happened yesterday…

My inside voices are pretty mellow these days… in the past, it was very upsetting. The thing for me is the outside voices are usually the inside ones that just get so loud my brain thinks it must be from someone or something outside my head.

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i only hear inside voices luckily so i don’t know what it’s like to hear them outside my head. inside voices are a pain in the arse but after 14 years, i’ve learned to cope and deal with it as best i can. xxx

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I have outside voices mostly. One tells me to hang myself. Also they talk to each other, not including me in the conversation at all. It’s like they are talking above my head, making me feel small. I also hear a woman speak finnish. She speaks to me. Tries to be my friend but I don’t trust her.

I have a nice voice too. Michelle. She speaks inside my head. She helps me to decide what to shop and what to do for dinner. Dhe also reminds me of things I’m supposed to do.

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I mainly hear inside voices. He tells me to kill myself and things like that. I rarely hear the outside voices

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The internal voices I have learned to control. It’s the external ones that confuse and bother me the most. They interfere with real conversations going on.

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I rarely hear outside voices, most of mine are inside. Though unlike some have tried to understand these are not my own thoughts, I can not control what they are saying or showing me, I cannot simply make them stop or change what they are saying by “thinking positive”. Most of the outside noise I hear sounds like a bang here, a bang there…once in a while I may think I hear my name being called. Sometimes the hallucinations come in forms of images, like a TV changing changing channels or something but again they are in my head.

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This is all pretty interesting considering how much it differs from person to person. It’s good to communicate these things clearly when discussing I think! I also cannot control what my voices say, as I only have outside voices (whispers that I can’t understand, despite them being loud and in my ear, can whispers be loud?) Really thankful that I got rid of the inside voices, not sure what made them leave now that I think about it, but I also can’t remember. They made me do some atrocious things though. Landed me in a ward for a bit.

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I only heard inside voices while delusional. Once I stabilized I’ve never had voices anymore. Initially when I first lost the voices and started to realize I had been ill the whole time, I pretended I thought I heard the voice I loved when I would think I heard something, trying to hold on to the delusion that I was the right hand man for Jesus. It was hard to accept but I am so thankful I don’t have voices anymore. Especially that I don’t believe things that aren’t true anymore. I am sorry you got put in a ward CarleyGee.

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Jukebox, when I lost my voices, even though they were cruel or depressive, I kind of missed them. I felt like I lost a bit of myself, despite consistently having visual hallucinations and outside voices. Now I realize that life got significantly better without them. I could actually complete tasks and gain confidence.

And don’t worry about the ward, it was certainly an experience to remember, but I suppose it had a somewhat positive impact on my life, in the fact that I was finally prescribed Seroquel. Hallelujah! Too bad I can’t keep taking them anymore.

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you’re not stopping your psych meds are you? I sure hope not. Schizophrenics need meds to be stable. You can’t be happy if you aren’t stable. Maybe I am missing something.

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I have had to be taken off all my psych meds due to my gastroparesis condition. They could potentially put me in a coma and kill me, same with alcohol. Abusing pain meds would be inadvisable unless given IV at the hospital in a controlled setting.

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you sound functional but not? It is strange. You might be unstable CarlyGee but you seem to be controlling it somehow. You should ask another opinion from another pdoc to see if there is some antipsychotic you can take? I am worried for you.

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I am functioning as normally as I can. I try to be social and hygienic, I ignore all of my hallucinations, but most days I hermit by myself and avoid doing as much as possible. Don’t worry about me. I think I have this mostly under control. I would just rather no coma and no death over schizophrenia. I’ve come to a point in my life where I am actually afraid to die now. Well not afraid, I just don’t want to. I like life enough now. Now, I will be honest and say I do daydream about my stomach failing and falling into a coma, but I wouldn’t seriously wish that upon myself.

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Glad to hear you feel o k about no meds. I doubt the stomach can induce a coma. The brain and the stomach are not hooked up that way. I can see pain causing your brain to feel pain from your stomach but no coma. Try to stay positive as you seem now. I’m rooting for you.

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YES - The fake noise can sound like it is coming from outside of you or inside your head.

Outside voices are sometimes gang stalkers/cause stalkers/thought broadcasting. You would be better off to google these terms and understand the mental care refuses to discuss this stuff, calling it delusional, causing the confused to go insane sometimes. This is policy of mental care. You will be given no coping skills training when the crazy strangers start to bother you. If you show any frustration or anger with your mental care team, you will be forced into the psych hospital under warrant for as long as your doctor can justify. This almost always results in loss of employment and maybe homelessness. Change doctors if your care is not meeting your needs.

Some of the part-time psychotics follow orders from the voices to stalk specific strangers to verbally harass them about private stuff…Some cities have A LOT of this behavior as even some of the pastors in huge non-denominational and pentacostal churches advocate this behavior from their parishioners so the people will be okay enough to work…If you engage in this behavior, you will be pestered into vandalisms, harassing customers, ruining work for specific customers, trespassing and even seeking out specific person to date with intention of harm…The worst of these guys end up being the wife beaters almost always and the women are so nuts they serial cheat, spend the rent money on fake nails or worse stuff…

The psych doctors & even therapy will just tell you to take the medications as prescribed and maybe increase the dose. You really don’t even need to discuss this behavior from strangers if you do not wish to, just be aware this happens and some of the wrong people will know who you are which can be very troublesome if you live alone as you get all the unwanted nutty ones. Some of the male coworkers, even church goers, are a piece of ■■■■ and will ruin female coworkers who are alone to do a sexual harassment. This is the unfortunate side of the mental health diagnosis…You also see a lot of discrimination in higher education with some of the male professors bullying mental care consumers…The church is hiding a lot of people who had someone on a disability check, a whole lot of nuts and sometimes nothing more than a social club of bullies…

From this point forward, it can be an advantage to only socialize with your old bunch of friends you know are okay & only work contacts. You may meet a lot of the wrong people in other places, but even church. If you decide to check out a church, I strongly recommend you already know a few members so you will not be mistreated…If you want to check out a church on your own, I would only go to seasonal observances and then attend the services without giving out your private information except for your junk email address & first name… Getting involved in the wrong church will increase the amount of gang stalking which can make it hard to work in some cities with the wrong people knowing your private life & these are employed in lots of the good employers…You will also find out Christ Jesus & God have totally different meaning to some people to the point of being a perversion so see if these ‘live the way’ of your beliefs, Some churches are more like a mafia of bullies & the labor for the social events…Some people will got a passive aggressive recommendation from some part-time crazy person to attend specific problematic churches…Some churches will even throw out the unprofitable parishioners, be surprised by nothing.

Despite the efficacy of the medication, you will learn to ignore the voices. You will be able to recognize the good people from the crazies as some of the crazies chose not to even say ‘HELLO’ to anyone normally any longer… If you end up in an employer with someone this messed up and you share the same work flow, you will probably need to change jobs quickly enough to a different department or leave this employer…This is our burden to bear as a schizo but manageable. Work on staying healthy emotionally & physically, try new things to keep away the depression. Eat right to keep the weight off. Work on improving your concentration & attention span, things improve over time. You can fight some of the brain rot by staying brainy on a few topics to avoid ‘cognitive complaints’ of schizo. I would work on learning job skills for whatever field interests you with a preference towards working alone…Some of the colleges keep the bully professors and will ruin even pell grant & student loan users so you need to take 2-3 classes and pay cash to make sure the place is okay for you but you still may run into a professor who isn’t okay & the school tolerates him. You can sign up to use disability support services at the college with help from your psych doctor to get around these situations if they happen…The online degree thing is a relief to me after seeing how some pieces of ■■■■ will treat another human. I earned my degree prior to my nervous breakdown so at least there is hope for others with online degrees; but, a lot more employers in some cities with bad social problems will respect a self-taught person and grant interviews there. DO NOT TALK TO YOURSELF ALOUD…Voices may stop.

Lastly, some folks met a person who seems to cause symptoms. In my case it was a sex abuse victim who was introducing around her abuse so she would not be hurt any longer. She told such scary stories to gain submission, some of the victims who lived alone actually had nervous breakdown followed by long term psychosis as victim was convenient to use. Victims of this group have been bothered for 30 years…Local police just leave this to happen repeatedly and even terrorize the victims, most of which leave town after having all their belongings ruined repeatedly by a trespasser (previous victim) who got access to their keys. Restraining orders are useless here and Legal Aide regularly denies plaintiffs advice here on these matters. If you move to a new city & meet someone bragging about illegal stuff, you may have a scam running like this lady’s…If you quit talking to the person & all her friends, sometimes you get relief from the psychosis symptoms after time has passed and you don’t discuss it. Another problem is some of the mental care is telling people they have ‘false memories’ sending victims back to these wealthy abuser groups getting some of the women hurt and credibility ruined so no charges could be filed. If you have a psych doctor using this term, you may want to change care… If you are in high school with this kind of group, I am so sorry. All you can do is stick to academics, refuse to talk to these people & their friends and do not even attend any of the social events at school or with the popular crowd. Stick to your little group of friends and move as soon as you are able. Ex-wives, sex abuse victims, business and college rivals, unwilling mistresses are falling crazy as a revenge by the wealthy…Sometimes, the abuse will go after friends of the victim so you may need to quit talking to her to be okay yourself…

Honey. I move to a bigger city to get better job options and had multiple people surround me 3 times and harass me about being ‘on the check’…I NEVER discussed it EVER except with my landlady from another town. Some of the nutties ones will go outside and shoot the gun up in the air when the voices demand. I lived next door to one of these for 10 years. I was SO sick of having fire crackers thrown into my yard (frequently just the cap gun), I was happy to move and start over just because it was too close to the wrong people. After seeing a city with so many part-time psychotics and a real caste system running with these poor folks all forced into retail or fast food jobs, city had a ton of people who would act up when another psychotic was just shopping for the basics. The real predators were working in the good jobs & harass anyone labeled a crazy or good opportunity (for mistress)…City had so many people who were crazy part of the time, no one gets a disability check for this so there is LOTS of anger about this on the streets… There was so much more need for charity handouts than availability.

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