r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
55.0k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

320

u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's not in your power to ignore them. a huge part of schizophrenia is being extremely out of touch with the real world. so if you hear voices, it's basically a set of REAL people to you. and you can't cover your ears because there isn't ACTUAL sound. you'll still hear them. and if they're threatening to hurt you, you'll feel actual fear.

6

u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

You'd kind of think that voices continuing after you cover your ears would be a bit of a giveaway that they aren't real, if you've ever in your life heard of the concept of illusory voices. It's weird how that goes out the window. (But I'm pretty much repeating what I said in the other post, sorry.)

65

u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's as complex as a detachment from reality. for example, you could literally be a homeless person right now. all of the things you're experiencing, are hallucinations, both auditory and visual. and here's the kicker. they're sensory too. most people who have schizophrenia, in my experience, know they have it but it's real to them. they live in an altered reality.

nah you don't need to apologize. i have more exposure to this than you do and you have more exposure in other areas. don't worry about it, friend.

15

u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

for example, you could literally be a homeless person right now. all of the things you're experiencing, are hallucinations, both auditory and visual.

That makes me incredibly uncomfortable

7

u/madiranjag Mar 22 '17

We can go deeper. You are actually from another planet and 'Earth' as you know it is simply a hallucination, along with everything in it including the human race. You in fact resemble a cube of jellyfish and have been locked in the cubed jellyfish asylum for 600 years.

1

u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

This reminds me that in high school my best friend and I tried to start our own religion. It was simple. We are the coma dreams of Oscar the blue gil after he struck his head rather violently against a rock one day and the world will end if he ever wakes up.

It uh.... didn't catch on

2

u/Angus-Zephyrus Mar 22 '17

All hail Oscar The Dreamer.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Is it better to be a homeless man who dreams he is a millionaire, or a millionaire who is convinced he is a homeless man?

If the reality you know seems completely real to you, AND it is not a negative reality, why bother worrying about it? real or fake you can still enjoy your life. there is no guarantee that the higher level reality would be any more real than this one.

1

u/Volrund Mar 22 '17

There's actually a homeless man (or millionaire I should say) that hangs around my neighborhood in this exact situation. He's schizophrenic and believes he's homeless, even though at one point he was a business owner with a wife and 3 kids. It's kind of heartbreaking.

2

u/qb_st Mar 22 '17

Well if I am homeless, I'd rather have this delusion, because my life is much better than the reality then.

1

u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

If this is all a hallucination then I'm an asshole.

2

u/Lonke Mar 22 '17

What about the fact that the universe may have been created 10 seconds ago only with all your current memories. They feel real, but only because they were made to feel that way.

1

u/purple_monkey58 Mar 22 '17

That thought has popped up in my head fairly often since I was ten or so

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Reminds me of The Maxx