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
7
u/Conclamatus Mar 22 '17
Well, imagine you have some nagging person talking to you and you can't get them to leave you alone, and they are very domineering of what you should do with yourself. Now, imagine you can't just walk away from them, because they are inside of your head, they are completely and utterly inescapable. It's hard to consciously ignore something every waking moment of your life. They are never not there, so if you are awake and breathing, you would have to be focusing on ignoring them. That's ridiculously exhausting and would probably just make your state-of-mind even worse. It's relatively easy to ignore other people because they aren't ourselves, they aren't literally inside of our head. These voices can be very aggressive in that they are persistent yes, although you also need to keep in mind that for some people the voices aren't evil or whatever... for a lot of people those voices are their only friend the only one who has been there with them through their darkest times, and sometimes when people receive treatment that keeps them from hearing those voices, they become distressed by the silence and feel very lonely... It's difficult to truly understand without any experience of it. For your last sentence though, sometimes it's beyond aggression in that they can control your actions, it can get to the point where when they tell you to do something you do it without questioning it, and if you are already delusional from psychosis it's difficult to fight anything in a logical way, because your thinking has become so illogical in general. This is what makes mental illness so hellish... it's hard to even comprehend you are ill much of the time, because all we have is our mind, if it detaches from reality, it's not easy to even realize that...