- Many people who live with schizophrenia also experience negative auditory voices which is a part of their hallucinations. And so in today's video,
we're going to be looking at what exactly these negative voices are. And also looking at some of the reasons why they might happen. (gentle music) Welcome back to the
Living Well Schizophrenia YouTube channel. My name is Lauren and I make videos about what it's like living with Schizoaffective
disorder or schizophrenia. If you would like to see
more videos like this one, make sure to subscribe to our channel so as not to miss any new content and also if you would
like to help to support the creation of future
videos like this one, please make sure to check out
the link to our Patreon page. It's in the description below. Any support is really appreciated. Thank you. All right. So first off, what exactly do
we mean by negative voices? So negative voices are really any auditory hallucination that is frightening
to a person, distressing, threatening, includes
commands of dangerous natures or of distressing natures
or criticism of a person. So I personally don't experience
negative voices constantly but when I'm becoming more ill or when things are going downhill,
I do experience a lot more of the negative voices and negative talk. And this takes the form typically in the form of dangerous
command hallucinations or threatening command hallucinations or criticisms such as, thing that I'm not good enough or that I am stupid or incapable in some way or those kinds of criticisms of me. So some of the potential consequences of dealing with these
negative voices include, obviously lower self-esteem. If somebody is criticizing
you in your head all the time and saying distressing things, it plays a toll on your
mental health in that alone. It's also debilitating in terms of social engagement
and social interactions because if someone is
in your head constantly saying things that are distressing to you, it's very hard to engage normally with other people which
leads to social isolation. It also leads to a greater
need for increased care. And also one of the major things that
it can lead to is suicide. So we are talking about
the negative experience of voices in this video, but
it's also important to note that not everybody experiences
voices in this way. This is really common,
especially in North America to experience negative
voices with schizophrenia, but it is not the way
everyone experiences voices. And so we are going to
be discussing findings from an article that was published in the clinical psychology
review, which kind of goes over several different studies that kind of speculate on why
there's this difference between people who
experience negative voices and people who don't
and kind of speculating as to potential causes for this. We'll link to this article
in the description below. All right. So in this article, they
discuss two major points that seem to be emerging as to why people experience
these negative hallucinations. And so these include experience
of adverse life experiences. And so this can include
anything from sexual, physical and emotional abuse as well as physical and emotional neglect. Another point that is
emerging is the concept of cultural significance
in a person's life. All right, so just diving
into the first one, being adverse life
experiences, a little more, they discussed two different studies or three different studies actually that find a little
bit of different results. The first one found a correlation between adverse life effects or adverse life experiences
and negative voices. Now this doesn't necessarily
indicate causation which means that adverse
life experiences lead to negative voices, but
they did find correlation. So the two were connected in some way. The second study did not find correlation but the third study found
something interesting. And so what this third study found was that adverse life experiences
became a proponent for hypervigilance, which
was a mediating factor in terms of experiencing negative voices. So what I mean by hypervigilance is that if someone experienced
a negative life experience in their lifetime, it led
to them being in a bit of an increased and elevated
state that was kind of fearful of bad things happening again. And this is what they
mean by hypervigilance. And so this hypervigilance
is what they found led to the experience of negative voices. Now, again, this is all just speculation and it's really more of a correlational effect that was found in these studies as opposed to,
again, a causational effect. So they don't know that
this is what happens, where adverse life experiences
lead to negative voices or this hypervigilance concept
leads to negative voices but they are speculating that
it could be a potential cause. And the second major point
that they were discussing in this article was the concept of culture and cultural
significance in a person's life. And so they mentioned two
studies in particular. The first study was a bit
of an Aero-base study. This study examined
patients with schizophrenia from the same hospital, but
from two different time periods, the first one being from 1933 to 1939 and the second period
being from 1986 to 1987. And what they found in terms
of these two cohort groups were that, they all experienced or mostly experienced
auditory hallucinations but the sources and the
content of them were different. And so the group from the 1930s experienced
primarily religious and more benign auditory hallucinations and people from the 1980s, they also experienced
religious hallucinations, but they also experienced more secular hallucinations as well as technology-based
hallucinations in terms of the negative voices that
they were experiencing. So some examples of these included the
1930s cohort experiencing auditory hallucinations, such as be a better person, live right, be good and go to
heaven, lean on the Lord. So kind of these more benign but religious toned
hallucinations and the group from the 1980s experienced
hallucinations such as kill oneself or others, do perverse things, set fire to the lawn. So clearly far more negative
and distressing in a way. And so there was also reported differences in terms of effective content of the auditory verbal hallucinations. And so the 30s group was we want to go to heaven versus the 80s group being more like you will be crucified for your sins. And so the cultural
middle year of the time really plays a role in
terms of shaping the content of these negative auditory hallucinations. All right. And the second study that
was looked at in terms of cultural significance
was a cross-cultural study. So there was a group that they
examined in the United States and also a group that they
examined both in India and Africa, they realized
through their study that there was a big difference in
terms of the American group having more negative
experiences of hallucinations and the group in India and Africa having more benign
and relational experiences with their auditory hallucinations. And so there was some speculation as to why this may have been and primarily it included
the concept that in America, there is more of a undertone
of the self and the mind, the mind essentially
being a private matter and being an individual matter. And so the Indian group and the African group
saw the mind and whatnot as more of a relational
component and had a more poorest relationship with
the mind and thought. And so, if those two assumptions are correct, it's kind of easy to see how
the Americans might see voices as more of an intrusion and a
distressing thing, as opposed to how the Indian and
African cohort side, as more of a benign relational
thing that was connected to the other people around them. And so the American cohort saw their negative hallucinations as an external presence that
wasn't necessarily a person. And that was just kind
of this menacing figure in their mind. Whereas the African and
Indian cohort saw it more as people in their life, they
experienced the hallucinations as other people in their life. And they had more of her relationship with their voice that
wasn't necessarily negative and that was more constructive in nature. And so there is a huge
cultural difference here in terms of how Americans
interpret their voices and how cultures such as Indian cultures and African cultures
experience their voices. All right. So those two main things,
adverse life experiences and cultural components were
the two main things discussed in this protocol that could
be reasons why someone would experience negative voices. I also wanna talk a bit more about some of my own speculations about why negative voices exist or happen. So for me personally,
I know that when I am under a lot of stress, I think
the voices get more negative. And so I don't know if there's
a correlation necessarily between people who
experience negative voices and the amount of stress
that they're under. People in North America are
under a lot of stress in terms of just the capitalistic individualistic society that we live in. It creates a lot of stress in a person. So maybe that is feeding into the negative
hallucinations a little bit. I don't know. I think that stigma and shame and self-acceptance also
play a large role in terms of the occurrence of negative
auditory hallucinations. The go-to treatment modality in North America is to Medicaid. When someone is experiencing
distressing voices and to try to eradicate those
voices as much as possible. And so this kind of sends
the message to patients in North America, that
they are faulty in some way because they are experiencing voices and that they need to work towards
medicating away these voices. So when they can't medicate
away all of these voices, it kind of makes sense that
the voices might turn negative and they might find or
interpret these voices as distressing or menacing
because they shouldn't be there. And so there might be a bit of a shift necessary toward understanding that it might be okay
to live with some voices and you may not need as much medication or medication might not be the be all end all in terms of how to deal with
and manage your hallucinations. I think there is still a lot of stigma within our culture and society
too, around mental illness and especially mental illnesses
such as schizophrenia. And so I think that there is
a lot of internalized shame for people who are living with an illness like schizophrenia, which could result in some of that hypervigilance
that I was talking about earlier or could result in just
negative self worth which could easily lead to negative voices being
heard by the individual. I know that for me personally, I've been on a very long journey of
self-acceptance and I'm for sure not at a point of complete self-acceptance but I do accept myself
and my illness a lot more than when I first started
out on this journey. And I've noticed a difference in terms of the negativity of my
hallucinations when I first started out and first was
experiencing these symptoms. It was a lot more negative more frequently and with a lot of work on
self-acceptance and whatnot, the frequency of the negativity in terms of the voices has gone down a bit. And so I think that
self-acceptance plays a large role in terms of the negativity
of the voices as well. And also, I think just an extension of the cross-cultural study that I talked about earlier, I think that, collectivism versus
individualism plays a big role in terms of the cultural
identity of a person and how they experience their
symptoms like hallucinations. So if someone is in an
individualistic society such as in North America, I think it's more likely that the concept that I discussed earlier of being a single person fighting off this illness and thus interpreting it as menacing or distressing
and an intrusion on their mind I think is probably the way things go in an individualistic society, contrary to a more collectivist society which welcomes differences a little bit more and celebrates differences and whatnot and leans on that relational
component as well. I think that it creates a lot more room for someone's experience of hallucinations to be
more positive in nature. And another kind of idea
that we were kind of tossing around when brainstorming
this video was the concept of introvertedness versus extrovertedness and whether or not that plays a role maybe in someone's
experience of hallucinations. I personally am more of an introvert. And so maybe I experience
the hallucinations more as an interfere, an unwanted interference and an unwanted presence,
which would maybe lead to more negative experience of the voices. Whereas if someone was more extroverted, they may welcome the experience of communicating with their
voices a little bit more and they may appreciate that
extra company, which may lead to more positive experiences
of hallucinations. I have a friend who is very extroverted and
she loves communicating with her hallucinations most of the time. And it's a very comforting presence for her in her life and a positive one. And so I don't know if this
is a correlational component but it's something to think about. All right. So in conclusion, I just want to share
that for me personally when I'm experiencing
really negative content of auditory hallucinations, it's generally a sign that I need to seek
additional help and support. And it's a sign that things are kind of getting worse for me. Now, that said, obviously, this is not something that I
experience on a constant basis. And so my heart really goes out to people who do experience
this on a more frequent basis and experience these negative voices as a constant presence in their life. I can't imagine what that must be like because I know personally that it's very distressing when
the negativity comes my way in terms of the voices that I experience and it's really hard to
manage and to get through. So I understand and I
really sympathize with you if you experience it on
a more frequent basis. If this is a really distressing and difficult to manage
part of your symptoms, being the negative voices that you hear, please don't be afraid to reach out for additional
support or help with that. This may mean changing up your medication or altering doses or
whatnot, or it may be more therapeutic interventions such
as CBT or that kind of thing through therapy with someone
to address your relationship with the negative voices a little bit more and maybe addressing some
of that hypervigilance if that's playing a
role in your experience of negative voices or working on some of the things that
may be contributing to the voices being negative. All right. So thank you so much
for watching this video. I hope it was helpful or
insightful in some way. If you'd liked it, please make
sure to give us a thumbs up and also make sure to subscribe so as not to miss any future content. Also again, 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 is in the description below. Thank you so much again for watching and as always wishing you and your loved ones, good
health, see you the next video. Bye.
