Transcriber: José Miguel Godoy Muñoz Reviewer: Amanda Chu
Ta-da!
(Laughter)
Thank you, you were so patient waiting for so long.
I so appreciate you staying. I was expecting a mass exodus.
I do hope I'm worth it.
Right, here we go.
Sorry, glasses.
They're quite cool, though, eh?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Right.
When I was about 12,
I was introduced to a group of people,
who were enthralling and delightful.
They were entertaining and amusing,
and I was captivated
by their engaging conversations and their fascinating ideas.
But just as easily, unfortunately, they'd turn on me
and their words would become brutal, humiliating and very critical.
They crushed my spirit with their savagery.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, they said they would stick by me,
they said they would never desert me.
And they began to protect and guide me
but also punish me
if I didn't do what they thought I should be doing.
We would spend hours in deep conversation,
where I learned the world's a dangerous place.
They told me I was hated,
that people were out there that wanted to get rid of me;
they told me I was useless, that I was hopeless,
that I was fat,
that I was ugly and I was stupid,
things I had tried so desperately
to hide from myself and from others,
but they had uncovered the truth.
I became terrified of going out and suspicious of everyone.
They told me I was a messenger from God,
and they promised me redemption if I proved myself worthy.
They led me down some very dark paths
with promises of enlightenment,
but all I ever experienced was bitter disappointment.
I became dependent on them.
My companions were authoritative,
but they were vibrant, vital, and impossible to ignore.
They knew so much about everything, and I was totally absorbed by them.
Over time, it became hopeless to release myself from their clutches,
and I excluded everyone from my life,
including those people who were the most important
and those people who had dared to love me.
I was now in a slave-master relationship.
It's impossible to flourish in life when you are hidden from light.
I constantly endeavored to gain their approval, their praise,
and an invitation into their inner sanctum,
but that door remained closed to me.
All of this disappointment just reinforced my internal self-loathing,
which dominated my every thought,
and I became marooned from all that's wondrous in this world.
Yet without them, I felt so desolate, so alone
because they filled a huge void in my life.
You see, I hear voices.
I hear a variety of different voices -
male, female, young, old.
Some of them even have these crazy accents,
and they are completely obsessed with me.
They observe and remark on my every action, my every thought.
There's no privacy, there's no place of sanctity,
they can access my thinking at will,
and I am never free of their ceaseless commentary and criticism.
This collection of internal narrators
meddles in every aspect of my life.
"So, what's it like, this voice-hearing thing?"
I'm sure you've asked yourselves.
I'm a pretty garden-variety voice-hearer.
All that happens is I hear people when they aren't in the room,
and it's as clear and concise as if someone's directly in front of me.
I tend to hear my voices from behind me,
so I'll look around -
sometimes there's someone there, sometimes there isn't,
but the experience is exactly the same.
Like most voice-hearers, I live in a world dominated by words;
I am easy prey to the power of words.
Words can defame, they can defile,
but they can also bring a heart back to life.
I have come to view voices as an extreme form of anxiety,
a coping strategy to deal with my high levels of anxiety
and my propensity to worry about everything.
Try to think of it this way.
When feelings become too intense,
the mind decides, "You can't cope. You can't cope,"
so you cultivate a technique to ensure you will survive the onslaught
and will not become overwhelmed by your emotions.
There's little question
that the primary objective of voices is to isolate,
creating the ideal environment for them to have exclusive access to you.
It deprives you of any alternative view,
and you are completely dictated by their views.
Then that isolation, it becomes a protection,
and it becomes a protection
against the anguish of living with such an extremely fragile soul.
The specific clinical term is "auditory hallucinations."
So, auditory is hearing, as I'm sure you know.
And yes, I hear them. Yes, that's fine.
Hallucinations in terms of imagining -
well, no.
The fact is I hear voices other people don't hear.
That's my reality.
But I acknowledge that is my reality,
and I acknowledge that not everyone is attuned to these exchanges.
That doesn't mean they don't exist.
There are a lot of things that we experience as individuals
that we do not share.
They are unique to ourselves; that does not mean they don't happen.
Our mental health operates on a continuum,
a sliding scale oscillating from low to extreme stress,
depending on life events.
Living is a stressful business, is it not?
And no person is immune to the trials and tribulations of everyday life.
As human beings, we are brilliant, just brilliant,
at dealing with complex, difficult situations.
As well as the external stressors, we have internal vulnerabilities,
which make us susceptible to certain stressors,
sensitivities that have accumulated over our lifetime:
fear of failure, fear of rejection,
fear of conflict, fear of being out of control -
you share these fears, I have no doubt about that.
And each vulnerability brings with it a mental load which we carry,
like in a backpack on our back.
Most of the time it's light
and we can easily carry around that burden,
but when circumstances add to that load, such as:
arguing with someone you care about;
dropping your new phone, and it's always your new phone,
down the toilet -
(Laughter)
I know, you tell yourself, "Don't put it in your pocket,"
and then it goes, "Plunk";
your favorite auntie dies - it's never that witch;
(Laughter)
your cat gets in a fight, and you're racing off to the vet.
As each instance occurs, the load accumulates,
and in your backpack of stress, it's getting heavier,
and the effect multiplies exponentially.
Your stress level has moved along the continuum;
it has gone from medium to high to unbearable.
There is a limit to how much stress any one person can tolerate,
and when you add in our quiet vulnerabilities,
the effect will multiply, and there will be a response -
there has to be.
When we get stressed,
voice-hearing is a technique that we use to divert our attention
and keeps us from the deeply wounding issues
that overpower us at times and make us incredibly fearful.
The voices become a guide to help navigate a world
that throws so much adversity and animosity towards us.
Fear is an instinctive response to a perceived threat,
and it safeguards us against danger.
When your fear is activated, your anxiety level will increase,
and your brain will be bombarded with instructions
about how to deal with this imminent threat.
With voice-hearers,
that fear response is triggered constantly and consistently.
Feeling unsafe, you constantly scan for danger,
and when you look for it, you will find it,
and this will increase your anxiety tenfold.
Ultimately, extreme fearfulness becomes the mind's default position.
That will make you hypervigilant to any threat, real or not.
When that converts into unrelenting, extreme fear,
panic ensues,
and that is incredibly debilitating.
When I panic, I seek refuge.
I will frantically try to collect myself and may even shut down completely.
Trying to maintain the facade of being calm and in control
when you're internally freaking out
requires huge amounts of energy.
When my internal and external world collide so dramatically,
that is when you are likely to see me openly talking to my voices,
and when our calls for help and acceptance are rejected,
that makes that task so much more difficult.
It's not a crazy person you see
but rather a person
dealing with intolerable psychological and emotional pain.
When you are overwhelmed, overcome by fear, and desperate,
it's perfectly reasonable
to hide yourself away and lick your wounds,
to stay hidden.
It's a very typical human response.
It's not madness you are observing, it's a person trying to survive.
The concept of madness is an interesting one,
arguably constructed by society to dictate social and cultural norms.
Up until 1974, homosexuality and epilepsy were both considered mental illnesses,
so times have changed.
Masturbation, smoking in church, these were symptoms of mental illness.
I suspect there might be a few of you
who might even qualify or meet the criteria.
(Laughter)
You may be surprised to hear that 1 in 25 people report hearing voices.
History, our history, is littered with voice-hearers.
There's Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Winston Churchill.
Their memories are not marred by being identified as a voice-hearer;
rather, they are seen
as heroic, great orators, great thinkers,
yet every one of them would be considered mentally ill
by today's standards.
As for me, I'm only mad because somebody else says I am.
If I say the neighbor told me,
"Don't drink from the tap. It's contaminated,"
I'm socially connected, and I can sustain relationships.
If I say a voice told me
not to drink from the tap, because it's contaminated,
then clearly I'm crazy.
And if I say, "I hear the voices of dead people,"
I would probably get my own TV show.
(Laughter)
Please, I'm asking you, please.
Please don't be fooled by those negative images
portrayed about voice-hearers.
They come from a place of arrogance and ignorance.
This is not a lifelong affliction
in which people are condemned to progressively decline
in their mental well-being.
I can assure you there are thousands of people
who are getting on with their lives and continuing to thrive.
I found the key.
It's not easy, but it's absolutely doable.
Through perseverance, support, and commitment to be proactive,
I discovered a way to liberate myself as well as my voices.
I now live the life I so craved.
And I dedicate my time
to working with people who hear distressing voices.
I developed an approach based on my own experiences
to help others unshackle themselves from the tyranny of voices.
I call it "the modern approach,"
and I work in a clinical setting here in New Zealand.
We provide a safe, compassionate learning environment
to assist people whose lives have been violated by negative voices,
who have lost family, friends,
and their material and spiritual richness.
My fellow voice-hearers share their experiences
and are so generous
with their expertise and their wisdom and how to deal with them.
We have amassed a treasury of information
and actions from their unselfish desire
to help themselves and others who are negatively affected by voices.
I want to applaud my voice-hearers,
who every day demonstrate true courage
when they face their many challenges.
I wish to thank those who sail these uncharted waters with us,
those fabulous people who believe we're worth it.
It is that cherished quality
that will help us all usher in a better world.
I want to thank you for giving me this precious moment
so I can talk to you, so I can be heard,
for you have come
with compassionate hearts and inquisitive minds;
you support me just by listening to me.
I am a fearful person.
I'm quick-thinking.
I have a desperate need to be liked.
I have low self-esteem.
I worry excessively.
I laugh too loud. I talk too much.
But I'm kind, and I'm generous, and I am quite cheerful.
I am the possessor of a mutinous mind,
but I'm not mad.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)