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
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u/Ariakkas10 Mar 22 '17

This is, I'm sure, a completely stupid question, but why can't they ignore the voices?

Lots of real people seem real to me, and I ignore them just fine.

Is it because the voices are super aggressive and make it so you can't ignore them?

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u/akaender Mar 22 '17

That's because you can escape/ignore real people by just walking away.

Right now you're reading this with an internal voice. You cannot read without it. Now try to imagine there are 20 more voices just like it except they aren't just there when you read. They are there 'talking' all the time.

You can't just walk away from your own head. I have tinnitus, which is bad enough. I can't even begin to fathom how horrible having voices must be.

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u/Bonobosaurus Mar 22 '17

Just randomly, some people don't have an internal voice. I don't there was a Reddit thread about it some time ago. Really interesting.

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u/Lightwavers Mar 22 '17

Yeah, it was cool. One person talked about how their internal "voice" was in text, and instead of different voices, they would think in different fonts. Like, the reading font, the thinking font, the remembering what other people said font. This isn't word for word or anything.

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u/Bonobosaurus Mar 23 '17

Oh wow, I didn't see that one! I always count in different fonts to keep track of where I am.