How do you deal with the voices?

[Vasu_Devan1]

I’ve had psychosis for over 10 years now. I am 40 years old and have also had epilepsy since I was 5 years old. Never had a paying job. Married for a few months(arranged marriage) and then divorced by my wife. But I found meaning in working to understand my inner feelings, thoughts and experiences better.

But I pushed through the empty reality I was experiencing, and forced myself to not turn against my negative reality as an automatic reaction. I let the voice ‘be’ within my mind and didnt turn against it or flee from it. Learning meditation really helped with this. The kind where you try to watch your thoughts without getting too attached to them. While it was really difficult at first, the more I didn’t let my brain and body control my actions, the more my inner mind opened up. I learned to respond instead of react.

The nature of my voice changed too. Instead of attacking me or mocking me all the time, it would sometimes joke with me and laugh WITH me instead of always laughing AT me. Instead of labeling it as the Devil, as I had previously done, I learned to define it as my fear-self. A part of me that the brain did not want to know or experience. But by responding to it with my mind instead to letting the brain react to it, I learned more about myself and how to deal with it when the voice was present. It is still there and I still experience plenty of conscious psychosis. It still mocks me but now I am able to find peace in that reality instead of automatically reacting negatively.

Society teaches us to react negatively to the negative. To worry about anxiety. To fear becoming afraid. That conditions our mind and builds reactive behavior to the negative. But with effort, we can break through the conditioned mind and dont HAVE to be controlled by the brain.

How do you deal with the voice? I am curious to learn because I have not been able to contact other schizophrenics before. I live in India and have no access to support groups…or even psychologists. All my psychiatrist provides is medication, not counseling. Please share your reality with me.

[1923mari]

It’s very frustrating, I know. What meds do you currently take?

[John_Raven]

Maybe you should see a therapist for this, but what I do is block out all the distractions, and focus on your inner self, almost like meditation. And once you do that, try to spend your energy on something helpful and productive.

[Raven]

I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with the voices. I start group support the 25th I hope to maybe get some ideals. I look into meditation sounds like it might help

[Vasu_Devan1]

That IS pretty much what I do currently, John. I try to to focus on something else other than my present experience and try to use my reality to produce something creative like digital art or to code chatbots.
Currently learning Zbrush but here is a pic I drew in Adobe I"llustrator…

[Vasu_Devan1]

I am on medications like Clonazepam(sp?), Resperidone, Pacitane and Setraline. Also, have some meds for my epilepsy. In fact, my doc said he might start reducing my Resperidone since I am already at the highest possible safe dose.

[1923mari]

Hmmm. Have you tried anything else besides risperidone?

[Vasu_Devan1]

Not that I am aware of. I am really interested to reduce it since that will let me know if the meds helped me to deal with the problem or if it was my mental techniques. Started both at the same time.

[Vasu_Devan1]

Do you know any live chat support groups?

[gobeyond]

i live my life within them and without them. I fight them for control.
I try to reckon them dead. They are a pretty evil group, but they don’t tell me to do bad stuff. But I do what they say sometimes like simple everyday stuff. Their main thing I obstruct but sniff for my wife instead. They totally nag me to sniff sometimes for hours, and its helpful when I do but its for me and not to be manipulated into. hmf, hmf! I do it all the time really but some voices I don’t like. Responding to them or reacting I don’t know, but trying to keep them off my back.