Hearing VoicesHow schizophrenia can teach us to listen

when i was writing that yesterday

i remember feeling very on edge agitated

and excited

i think i was thinking about things i

wouldn’t normally think about

i have control over everyone and can

manipulate people for my own benefit

i don’t need to eat ever again

this morning i’m in a low

the only thing i want to do today is die

my body is completely drained of all

energy

like an empty shell that’s being

unkindly forced to exist in suffering

i don’t want to compose i don’t want to

eat

i just want to die if i had a gun right

now

i’d shoot myself

i’ve just eaten and i’m too drained to

even pull a trigger

i wrote that down in 2017 on day 32 of

my

five-month admission into a psychiatric

unit

after a completely uneventful childhood

a wash of psychosis

mania and depression engulfed my life

for about a year

after being discharged and receiving a

myriad of medical opinions

i finally received the news matthew

you’ve got schizophrenia

specifically diagnosed with

schizoaffective disorder

the condition encompasses both elements

of bipolar disorder or depression

and schizophrenia where the sufferer may

both have mania and depression

as well as psychotic symptoms such as

hearing voices seeing things

or holding delusional beliefs

now i’ve been hearing voices on and off

since i was about 14 years old

but it was only at university when these

started to impact my day-to-day life

they would shout at me when i was trying

to listen talk over me when i was trying

to speak

or just tell me that today is going to

be a bad day

at the end of my hospital diaries though

i wrote a short note to myself

it said you’ve got no choice other than

to hear voices

but you can choose how you listen to

them

over the few years of psychological

treatment that followed

many therapists seem to echo the same

thing

there’s nothing that you can do to stop

the voices in the moment

but you can change how you react to them

now there’s a parallel here between

mental health and physical pain

treatment

if you suffer from an excruciating pain

in your elbow

you can become increasingly frustrated

by the pain

or you can focus deeply on the pain

noticing and being mindful of every

element of the pain

how the pain may pulsate or ache or

radiate up the arm

focusing on the elements that make up

the pain can often help you in

dismantling the internal structures

that cause your initial frustration and

anger towards that pain

now for me it’s the same with hearing

voices

i might be hearing a voice telling me

that you’re worthless

it might be repeating that short phrase

over and over again like a mantra

or a fire alarm but

instead of getting increasingly

frustrated with the voice

i try and dismantle the individual

elements of that

sound i won’t hear the words as words

i’ll listen to the pitch the speed

the texture how it’s articulated and

pronounced

as someone with schizophrenia i feel

that i could deal with voices better

but as a composer and musician more

importantly

i still found listening to music really

difficult

so maybe if i listen to music in the

same way i listen to the voices

i might hear sound in a new way

so i tried it and i did

i began listening to music i never

thought i’d listening to

focusing intensely on dismantling the

specific qualities of each sound

i heard the more i listened

the more self-aware i became and

subsequently

the better my mood was this doesn’t have

to just apply to music you don’t like

or music you do like so an exercise

find a piece of sound it might be a

soundscape

or some ambient sound or it might be

some music

make it a mission to invest every bone

in your body

to listen to that sound notice the

different layers the textures

how it might even interact with your

surrounding environment

now this doesn’t have to just relate to

a more formal listening experience

though

it might be the sounds around you when

you’re walking through a woodland

waiting in a queue or sitting on a bus

try walking slower when you can take

time out and allow your mind to wander

between what is

the consuming whole and the intricate

parts

of your environment because you never

know what you might hear

growing up my only real exposure to the

word schizophrenia

was through the media and specifically

criminality

i’ve experienced firsthand the

stigmatization of people suffering with

conditions from psychosis

perhaps though by listening to people

who suffer from these conditions

we can not only understand better what

it means to live with schizophrenia

and psychosis but we also may take away

coping mechanisms that can be brought

into our own lives

because after all it’s not just about

hearing

our voices it’s about listening