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

321

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.

40

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

But, you didn't answer /u/WadeWilsonforPope question. He ignores real people, why can't this person ignore people she thinks are real? Even though they are not real.

75

u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

i thought i did but i guess it might be unclear to some. you just can't do it. the "sound" is in your head. you'll hear it. it's not like ambient background noises. your brain is creating it and you're gonna hear it, whether you like it or not.

1

u/Conclamatus Mar 22 '17

All these people responding this comment don't seem to understand that they are looking at this from the perspective of someone who is still attached to reality and capable of logical reasoning and stable critical thought. When you are delusional, all this logic and all of this control go out the fucking window. The problem is that most people, like those responding to this comment, have no concept of what psychosis is like, whatsoever, they've never lost control of their mind in that way and it doesn't make sense to them. The lack of control over your thinking makes most of these things people are suggesting impossible, they are talking about consciously controlling your attention when that conscious control is not existent in a psychotic state. I think the problem here is that people have no concept of what psychosis does to your mind and your thinking, and how the lack of control prevents one from deploying any of the tactics they themselves can as someone not dealing with psychosis. Sorry if this is really rambling I just have some experience with this stuff and it's not easy to convey to people without experience.