Hearing Voices Documentary: Living with Voices

[Music] have you ever felt like you've heard someone calling your name but nobody has been well you're not alone 75% of people have had a similar experience but research suggests up to 10% of the world's population Hear Voices regularly the experience is different for every individual that's why we're traveling to Bradford to find out how some people cope with hearing [Music] voices [Music] I connect with a song Under the Bridge because to me it seems like a time when um the the guy that sung the song and wrote the lyrics he was having a hard time in his life and I think like um it's about kind of getting back to some positivity and uh life being meaningful and worth living again um so I can kind of connect with this song Because over the last year and a half I've had quite a tough time actually it's been uh it's been quite tough so I think like um it's if you've been through something hard it's such a relief to get back to something positive sort of thing so you may think that if someone hears voices they hear more than one but for Chris this isn't the case he's had one consistent voice that composes both positive and negative depending on the day I I started experiencing um some issues about 10 years ago um I was sort of 21 at the time and um I was spending a lot of time by myself and um but I wasn't really doing that well on the and I started to hear uh voices basically and um it it sort of culminated in her hospital admission and then over the last few years I've kind of been in and out of Hospital the the first time I was hearing the voice was 10 years ago and it coincided with a time when uh Jehovah's Witnesses came around to my house and uh I I kind of invited them in and we we did like a Bible study and um a lot of it seems to seem to make sense to me and um I kind of uh really got into just believing what they said and then the nature of the voice that I hear has like a spiritual element to it um I believe it's like a higher power speaking to me the the uh the way you see your voice is um something uh quite interesting because the way I see the voice is I truly believe that it is someone speaking to me even that I'm at stability now I still believe there is a person speaking to me and I'm not sure how how frequent that is I guess I guess that's from the people I've spoke to actually I've heard that that's quite common that they they actually believe their experiences are real at times um the dynamic with the voice has been quite good but other times it's it wants me sometimes to do quite sort of arduous sort of tasks um sometimes like going without things um maybe perhaps going about eating or um fog going some cigarettes at times and he wants me to like um do stuff like standing out in the cold and uh there has been times when it can be uh it can be quite tough and I guess ways to overcome it one way was um setting deadlines sort of thing it were like um I was setting these deadlines saying I'm going to do it for two or three more days what the vice says and then that's it you know that deadline that's that's going to be it I'm not going to do anymore cuz one thing with the voice that hear it was like it wanted me to do all these things but never really told me why it wanted me to do them so one of the deadlines I set was I'm saying okay in a week's time if it hasn't come to light why I'm supposed to be doing these things then I'm not going to do anymore the initial experience of hearing voices can be quite unnerving most can remember the precise moment they first heard a voice I want try to explain it to a psychiatrist and I said it's like half my brain's good and half my brain's bad quite often the bad side is the stronger one but I try and control it I just given birth to my second daughter uh I had poal depression which people hadn't picked up on and when she was 6 days old um I became very ill and um tried to basically kill myself so uh I ended up on a mother and baby unit with my youngest daughter at first I didn't really notice it because I was feeling so ill otherwise and then gradually it kind of um crept upon me that I was hearing things in my head and I couldn't work out why I was hearing those things because they weren't happening in real life the bad thing was I started sometimes reacting to what my voice was saying you know if it was telling me to hit someone I'd hit them simple as that but sometimes I do talk to them and it like a talk them down if you know what I mean like they could be up here and I'll talk them down and then maybe get to out here one doctor once told me um that I'd read the wrong kind of books when I was younger um like I around mine Camp when I was 12 you know and as you can see looking around the cottage I've got some pretty weird books in here sometimes it's got the over the years I mean when I first heard the voices I was scared stiff I mean thinking back you know to like when I was first ill obviously you're sitting there and all of a sudden you hear somebody saying you bastard why did you do that and you know sitting there thinking where' that come from and it would just generate further and fur and you get FR you do you get frightened because you you hear this voice and you think oh there nobody else in the room you know what what's going on you know like we're sitting here now and I'm I'm hearing voices while I'm sitting here talking to you but the good voices that I can hear at the moment you know they're saying tell them the truth on tell them how you know whatever you say they're not going to be upset between 70 and 90% of people who Hear Voices have done so following a traumatic event in their life I think they've diagnosed me with schizophrenic and uh what do they call it now uh uh schizophrenic parid schizophrenic yeah that's it that's all that's the one CH yeah that's the one uh so I don't I don't really talk about them hearing voices that's what it means hearing voices I must have said to them when I were po I would he hear in voices I I think I told them there were quite a few there were some here some there you know what I mean like people do I just thought people were at me getting at me telling me stuff and I used to say I wish itd go away there were no signs it just came just just came like that and uh we had to get uh people in to see me and uh I were living in some Flats with me lad and uh I was still work I was working then and I used to do 60 70 hours a week that's a lot of hours I used to work weekends Saturday mornings Sunday mornings cuz if I didn't do that I just felt like I were going to be a failure in life and I were going to be a failure to me lad I was a damn good worker and I grafted my dad were a grafter he's always been a grafter but he's dead he's dead now my dad died about 10 years ago my dad used to hit me with a Lea belt they got down to that and they think that brought it on as well I uh I have problems but I I have to deal with it I what I do at winter time I stand here and I look at this tree here there's a tree around here I look at all birds and robins and that and I stand there I can get great satisfaction out of it sometime you know it's just watching n you know and listening to records now I'm a big lover of Music I've got my earphones where it doggies and I put them on regular and it just sooes me head it calms the anxiety down and it just calms my system down and I love it you know it's beautiful [Music] feeling Dr Rufus May runs the hearing voices group in Bradford he recommends that people should engage with the voices they hear rather than suppress them my name's Rufus uh I'm a I've worked as a psychologist for 20 years in the NHS um now I'm freelance um so I facilitate the hearing voices group here in Bradford with Richard uh when I first came to this group I was uh recommended it by uh he were a counselor but he'd had experience in in hearing voices I learned profiling and that's a method of helping you distinguish who who they are what what they are and maybe what even the purpose is of The Voice or what role they play in your life I use an approach called voice dialogue sometimes we do that in the group that seems to be helpful for some people where we ask the person to ask a voice questions and get get a dialogue going with the with the voice um and sometimes that can really help people it's somewhere where I can come and feel normal tell people what I'm experiencing without it sounding like way out oh my God what what what's Happening Here I actually feel like I fit all sorts of things can happen when people get together and as equals try and help each other I guess we we we've inherited the very top down way of helping where doctors prescribe or psychologists say this is what's best for you and actually I think a lot more exciting things happen when you create a More Level Playing Field where everybody's seen as having having some wisdom and people try and help each other it's difficult for people to talk about this condition as it's different for everyone but each day people like Chris Anne David and Richard learn how to cope with the voices they hear opening up is a good thing because it gets it all out it's out of your head it gets everything out we haven't really got a language for it you know in Western culture it's taboo so in a way in a group we develop that the basic illness is the same but each person has their own little bit that's different it is a personal experience however when I've been in the hospitals and things and I've met other um other people who are experiencing uh similar um circumstances and I uh I can identify with them I finally sort of got the courage to start speaking and once I started speaking it it it it's helped me a lot with what I'm hearing and what I'm experiencing so if you two or three of you get together and start talking and you you hear bits from them and they hear bits from you and other people who are experiencing the same can empathize with you and they explain what they're going through and we can talk for is over and sometimes you will say something to somebody and I'll say well it's funny you saying that but I've been suffering with that kind of thing but I just thought it was you know something else you can get very lost but if you discuss things with other people it becomes oh yeah I can look at it like that they don't always share everything um but sometimes they might say something that kind of resonates and that might be something you could find useful yourself to try and approach or something some sort of coping method we have a husband who comes with his wife he's much more comfortable now talking about her voices with her if he hadn't come to the group he wouldn't be able to do that tried to be positive get these negative thoughts out of your head start believing in yourself and uh take each day as it [Music] comes [Music]

Channel: Creative Support Ltd

Views: 195,756

Keywords: hearing voices, voice hearers, mental health, documentary, rufus may, the dr who hears voices, dr rufus may

Id: 68kk01K55fU

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2016