- Hi everyone and welcome back to the Living Well with
Schizophrenia Channel. In today's video I'm
going to be going over what exactly I'm referring to when I say "thought broadcasting" and going over whether
people with schizophrenia can read people's minds or
have people read their minds, or what's going on with the
term thought broadcasting. (gentle music) Hi my name's Lauren, and I make videos about what it's like living with schizoaffective
disorder or schizophrenia. So if you're new here, make sure to subscribe, so it's not to miss any
of the future content that we put out. And also if you would like to help support the creation
of future videos like this one, please make sure to check
out our Patreon page, the link's in the description below. Okay, so what is thought broadcasting? It's basically a delusion where you think that people
can hear or read your thoughts. For some people this literally means that they believe that their
thoughts are being broadcasted by the internet, the radio, or television, and that their thoughts are being read out by presenters on these medias. In fact, a study done of radio stations and television stations in 1999, found that it was a
really common occurrence for people to show up at
these broadcasting stations to ask the broadcasters to stop
broadcasting their thoughts. Now, like I said, it doesn't necessarily have
to be that a media source is broadcasting your thoughts, it can be simply that you think that the person you're speaking
with is reading your thoughts or that they can inherently know what you are thinking. Thought broadcasting is often one of the symptoms
a patient may be experiencing to suggest a diagnosis of schizophrenia. So I wanna talk a little bit about what my own personal experiences
with thought broadcasting have been like. So thought broadcasting was one of the earliest
symptoms that I noticed, that came about in terms of my
development of schizophrenia. It started happening
around high school time, where I was convinced that people around me
could hear my thoughts or they could hear what I was thinking without me having to say anything. You know, looking back and thinking about this critically now, it doesn't make a lot of sense, because I know that
people can't read minds, but there's just this delusion
that brews bigger and bigger, that tells me that it is true, that people can hear my thoughts and that they can read my mind. It definitely wasn't
something that started out as an intentional thing, it was something that just
kind of overwhelmed me, in terms of thinking that
people could read my thoughts or my mind or whatnot. Now I kind of try to
harness it a little bit and try to sometimes send
people messages with my mind, if I'm having a lot of intense thought that they can read my mind. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but yes, I still do it. So this feeling of thought
broadcasting used to happen basically with every
interaction I had with somebody or anytime I was in a
room with other people. It happens a lot less frequently now, or maybe I've just gotten more
accustomed to ignoring it. I've been asked if I can reality check with thought broadcasting, and the short answer is, not really no. I have asked my partner on a few occasions if he could hear my thoughts or if he could hear what I was thinking. And, you know he always responds with, "No, I can't read your mind." However, this isn't entirely effective, because it's a delusion that's
kind of greater than that, that is telling me that the other person
that I'm speaking with doesn't want me to know
that they can read my mind, and so you know, having him tell me, "No, I can't read your mind," is not the most effective, because I have this greater delusion that he doesn't want me to
know that he's reading my mind. I also will sometimes
try to send the person that I'm communicating with telepathic prompts, like "Blink twice if you
can hear what I'm thinking," or that kind of thing, that like I can kind of
gauge their response to. But the same problem
exists where I'm convinced that they don't want me to know that they are reading my mind, and so why would they blink twice to let me know that they could. I also sometimes try to
kind of flip the logic, and think, "Well, I can't
hear what they're thinking, "so why would they be able
to hear what I'm thinking?" And this my friends, is the beginning of a
rather large rabbit hole I sometimes can spiral down, into where I'm convinced that there are larger simulations at play and that there are controlled environments at play around me, and the delusion kind of grows from there. Sometimes I try to think
critically about whether or not the person that I'm
communicating with's actions indicate that they can
hear what I'm thinking or that they can hear my thoughts, and try to think critically about that, and see if they're kind of acting based on the knowledge of my thoughts. However beyond that, there's not really much
that I can really do to reality check when it
comes to thought broadcasting. So given all this information, I'm sure you can kind of understand why something like thought broadcasting maybe kind of inhibitive for someone in their daily functioning, and it can be a little bit
debilitating in some senses too. So some of the ways that
it can be debilitating are just leading to avoiding people, because you're not wanting
them to hear your thoughts or you're not wanting
to engage with people because you're worried that
they can hear your thoughts, and it's kind of a
anxiety inducing thought. You also might not be able to participate fully in conversations, because you're very preoccupied with the idea that the person
can read your thoughts, before you've even said
them or anything like that, and so it can be a very distracting thing when you're trying to
communicate with someone. Another problem that I
personally experienced is that I often assume that people that I'm communicating with already know what I'm thinking, and this can be a hindrance
to healthy communication. I know this happens a lot, especially with my partner, where I just assume that he
already knows what I'm thinking because he can read my mind or whatever, this delusion that's kind of always there, and so I don't communicate as
fully as I could or should, and that leads to
breakdowns in communication. It can really begin to interfere
with regular functioning and a lot of thoughts or
feelings come up around this, where you're feeling
embarrassed or ashamed, because, you know, it's embarrassing to have your internal thoughts
broadcasted to the world or broadcasted to the person
you're communicating with. So, you know honestly I think actually having thought broadcasting
as one of my symptoms has kind of made me a better person (laughing) because generally I'm just
more aware of what I'm thinking because I think that the
other person can hear me or people around me can
hear what I'm thinking, so I try to keep my thoughts
very positive in nature. And it's kind of funny 'cause sometimes I will just
compliment people in my head, because I think that they can hear me, and I'm trying to put out
positive vibes into the world. So, you know, there are
detriments to thought broadcasting in terms of your ability
to communicate effectively with other people and to
engage with people around you, but there are also some not bad benefits, like it's made me a generally
better person I think. (laughing) So I just want to take a
moment to just make it clear that these experiences that
I've been speaking about have been my own experiences
with thought broadcasting, and I understand that there is a variance in terms of the experience
that someone can have with thought broadcasting. And I know that there are also
things like thought blocking, where someone can think that someone or some external force is
blocking their thought process, or there is thought insertion where they believe that somebody is inserting thoughts into their head. So I understand that
there's a bit of a spectrum when it comes to thought broadcasting, and I would love to hear
about your own experiences with thought broadcasting
in the comments below. So thank you so much for watching. If you would like to see
more videos like this one, make sure to subscribe to our channel. And if you wanna help support the creation of future videos like this one, please check out our Patreon page. If you'd like to watch
more videos on this topic, the first time I mentioned it was in my experience with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, and we also did a video on positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder. Thanks so much for watching, and wishing you and your loved
ones good health as always. Take care, bye.
