I always remember “Fact-checking.” Ironically, a voice taught me that trick at the very beginning. When they get bad your mind will not have much room of its own to think so having the simple phrase “Fact-checking” is fast enough for me to get in there and start disabling delusions.
2 Likes
I have recently gained more control over silencing my voices. At first, the end of what they were saying would get softer into a low mumble, then i would get the end of their “sentences” to cut off. After a while, I became very aware of when the voices would start to talk and I could cut them off before they could even say the first word. Now, they really cant say anything thar is coherent other than a few phrases. My voices have only been able to say a few phrases throughout my pyschosis, and they have been able to say new ones over time but old phrases would be replaced. Its like they only have a small bandwith for the thoughts that could be “said”. It helps a lot to know that they are repeated, and when they queue. For example, when I feel anxious after making some kind of mistake like if I forgot to do something, they would say something like, “see…hes retarded”. The more i became aware that this would happen, the more desensitized I became to it. I think this desensitization contributed to my being able to mute them before they could finish “talking”. As for how I muted them…its a little difficult to describe but its kind of like stopping a thought that you are aware is going to unfold. An analogy would be like if you are watching a scary movie, during the part where suspense is building you can feel your fear and anxiety rising, if you actively try to stop that by distracting yourself or even telling yourself not to be scared, then your fear becomes reduced or even stops completely. Its different because your doing that with voices instead of emotions, but what I’ve noticed helps is to think of your mind as being only able to handle either only hearing the voices or your own thoughts at any given moment–never both at the same time. So when i would start to hear the voice go off, i would immediately just think of it stopping. It was difficult at first because i felt almost a want to hear what was being said, but as i said before, because my voices were always repeating the same things, i became desensitized to it which made this ‘active ignoring’ a lot more successful. So i think part of the control ive gained also has to do with uncoupling the emotions that i would feel when thinking or actually hearing the voices. It was mainly anxiety and fear, but after a while, like most things, those emotions get weaker and weaker the more you are exposed to whatever is triggering them. So my advice is if you feel stressed out and fearful about hearing them, its ok, because with time you will eventually become emotionally desensitized to them. Its helped me to think of voices like i think of dreams, they may seem very real at the moment, but they are just imaginary and carry no weight or truth. Typically, voices say things that are very stupid, complete nonsense, or have no real evidence or support…so they really are meaningless in my life. In fact ive opposed the voices so much, theyve even said things showing i am in control like “he knows…” or “hes so lucky”. I accept them as trophies of dominance over them in our imaginary war against each other. But seriously, they are just signals in your brain, and I take my experience as evidence that you can stop them by ignoring it. Good luck to you.
I tell myself that they are not real. That they are just hallucinations. But, it’s easy for me. Because all I hear is mumbling voices.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.