Is it ever normal to hear voices? Yes, and that's what
I'm talking about today. I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make mental health education videos. In general, when we hear that
someone is hearing voices, the knee jerk response is to believe that that person is experiencing
a psychotic episode. Psychosis is a break from reality and not knowing what's
real and what's not real. Usually, hearing voices, also called auditory hallucinations, doesn't happen in a vacuum. They can be part of a depressive
episode or a manic episode, or you can see them with
the psychotic illnesses, like schizophrenia or
schizoaffective disorder. Another scenario where
you can hear voices is when you have certain medical problems, like being in a temporary
state of intoxication from drugs or alcohol, or being delirious, or having migraines or seizures. But there are people who have
no medical problems whatsoever and still hear voices. And when I say hearing voices, I'm talking about hearing
a voice or multiple voices as if someone were speaking
it but no one's around. It can seem like it comes
from outside of your head like someone's in the room with you or it can sound like it's
coming from inside your head. Voices inside your head are
more than hearing your own voice as you're thinking. Or sometimes you can be
thinking about what someone said and you can imagine the person talking and kind of hear them speak. This is not what I mean by
hearing voices in your head. That's more of a daydream,
imagination kind of thing. The voices in your head are
similar to an experience of hearing a discreet sound. It just sounds like it originated
from inside of your head instead of inside of the room. So that's what I mean by hearing voices, just so we're on the same page with that. There's a lot of research on this topic of non-pathological voices
or non-clinical voices, and I'll put some references
in the description for you. Some of these studies used functional MRI to look at brains of people
who reported hearing voices. The functional MRI shows brain activation in certain parts of the brain
(bells ringing) when the person is hearing the voices. It's estimated that one to 3% of people with no psychiatric disorder hear voices. In one study from 2017, they
analyzed several studies and saw differences in the voices between the clinical and
the non-clinical group. And the clinical group were people who had some kind of illness
that produces hallucinations. And what they saw was that the voices in the clinical group tended to be more negative, more frequent, and caused more distress. People with clinical or
pathological voices tended to feel more controlled by their voices, either because of hearing
commands to do things or just feeling like they
couldn't get a handle on them or stop hearing them. Non-clinical voices tended to be more positive and reassuring. And examples of this
would be hearing a voice of a deceased relative. Some people tell me that
they like being able to hear their mother's voice or their husband's voice talking to them. People with a spiritual
background can hear voices of spiritual entities. And here's another scenario. Have you ever been peacefully
drifting off to sleep when you're jolted awake because you hear someone
calling your name? This is another form of
hallucinations called hynagogic, if it happens when you're falling asleep, or hyponpompic, if it happens when you're waking up from sleep. These kinds of hallucinations
can be the sign of a sleep disorder,
especially if it happens a lot. Or it can be a normal experience
that just happens randomly. And while I'm talking about this, I just wanna include that this experience is not to be confused with
that thing that happens when you feel like you can't
wake up because you can't move. That's sleep paralysis. And just like with sleep hallucinations, sleep paralysis can also happen when you're falling asleep or waking up. There's a problem with the transition between your rapid eye movement sleep and your non-REM sleep, and it's normal for your body to be paralyzed during REM sleep so that you don't act out your dreams. When you're in a state of sleep paralysis, you can hallucinate, you can also sense that there's a presence in the room, and some people can even feel like there's something
pressing on their chest. It's very scary but it's not
a sign of something dangerous. It can be the result of a sleep disorder or it can happen under stress or from a disrupted body clock. And your body clock can get out of whack when you have wide swings
in your sleep schedule, like shift workers, but I digress. One more difference
between non-clinical voices and clinical ones is that
the non-clinical voices tend to start in late childhood, earlier than the voices that come along with a psychiatric disorder. Some studies have seen a
high prevalence of people with childhood abuse experience this. And in this case, the
association doesn't mean it causes voices. We can't draw that
conclusion but it may mean that children who have
experienced early trauma, especially repetitive trauma, may be more vulnerable to hearing voices and having the voices be a
soothing mechanism of some kind. If you have this experience
of hearing voices, it doesn't mean you need
to see a psychiatrist unless it causes distress for you. And the things that people hear that cause distress are
commands to do things, like harm yourself or others, hearing lots of negative
commentary about yourself. If you want support on this issue, there are some self-help support groups such as the Hearing Voices Network, and this is a site that's based in London and it has a lot of
useful information on it. You should see a psychiatrist
if you hear voices and have other problems
like feeling depressed, or having trouble with your
thinking or communication. These are signs that the voices may be connected to an illness And if you wanna know how this
differs from schizophrenia, watch this video that I have
explaining schizophrenia. It's a lot more than hallucinations. Subscribe to my channel
if you wanna keep up with mental health information. See you next time.
