Is it ever normal to hear voices?
Yes, and that's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
In general, when we hear that someone is hearing voices,
the knee jerk response is to believe that
that person is experiencing a psychotic episode.
Psychosis is a break from reality
and not knowing what's real and what's not real.
Usually, hearing voices,
also called auditory hallucinations,
doesn't happen in a vacuum.
They can be part of a depressive episode or a manic episode,
or you can see them with the psychotic illnesses,
like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.
Another scenario where you can hear voices is
when you have certain medical problems,
like being in a temporary state of intoxication
from drugs or alcohol, or being delirious,
or having migraines or seizures.
But there are people who have no medical problems whatsoever
and still hear voices.
And when I say hearing voices,
I'm talking about hearing a voice or multiple voices
as if someone were speaking it but no one's around.
It can seem like it comes from outside of your head
like someone's in the room with you
or it can sound like it's coming from inside your head.
Voices inside your head are more than hearing your own voice
as you're thinking.
Or sometimes you can be thinking about what someone said
and you can imagine the person talking
and kind of hear them speak.
This is not what I mean by hearing voices in your head.
That's more of a daydream, imagination kind of thing.
The voices in your head are similar to an experience
of hearing a discreet sound.
It just sounds like it originated from inside of your head
instead of inside of the room.
So that's what I mean by hearing voices,
just so we're on the same page with that.
There's a lot of research on this topic
of non-pathological voices or non-clinical voices,
and I'll put some references in the description for you.
Some of these studies used functional MRI
to look at brains of people who reported hearing voices.
The functional MRI shows brain activation
in certain parts of the brain (bells ringing)
when the person is hearing the voices.
It's estimated that one to 3% of people
with no psychiatric disorder hear voices.
In one study from 2017, they analyzed several studies
and saw differences in the voices
between the clinical and the non-clinical group.
And the clinical group were people
who had some kind of illness that produces hallucinations.
And what they saw was that the voices
in the clinical group tended
to be more negative, more frequent,
and caused more distress.
People with clinical or pathological voices tended
to feel more controlled by their voices,
either because of hearing commands to do things
or just feeling like they couldn't get a handle on them
or stop hearing them.
Non-clinical voices tended
to be more positive and reassuring.
And examples of this would be hearing a voice
of a deceased relative.
Some people tell me that they like being able
to hear their mother's voice
or their husband's voice talking to them.
People with a spiritual background can hear voices
of spiritual entities.
And here's another scenario.
Have you ever been peacefully drifting off to sleep
when you're jolted awake
because you hear someone calling your name?
This is another form of hallucinations called hynagogic,
if it happens when you're falling asleep,
or hyponpompic, if it happens
when you're waking up from sleep.
These kinds of hallucinations can be the sign
of a sleep disorder, especially if it happens a lot.
Or it can be a normal experience that just happens randomly.
And while I'm talking about this,
I just wanna include that this experience
is not to be confused with that thing that happens
when you feel like you can't wake up because you can't move.
That's sleep paralysis.
And just like with sleep hallucinations,
sleep paralysis can also happen
when you're falling asleep or waking up.
There's a problem with the transition
between your rapid eye movement sleep
and your non-REM sleep,
and it's normal for your body
to be paralyzed during REM sleep
so that you don't act out your dreams.
When you're in a state of sleep paralysis,
you can hallucinate, you can also sense
that there's a presence in the room,
and some people can even feel
like there's something pressing on their chest.
It's very scary but it's not a sign of something dangerous.
It can be the result of a sleep disorder
or it can happen under stress
or from a disrupted body clock.
And your body clock can get out of whack
when you have wide swings in your sleep schedule,
like shift workers, but I digress.
One more difference between non-clinical voices
and clinical ones is that the non-clinical voices tend
to start in late childhood,
earlier than the voices that come along
with a psychiatric disorder.
Some studies have seen a high prevalence of people
with childhood abuse experience this.
And in this case, the association doesn't mean
it causes voices.
We can't draw that conclusion but it may mean
that children who have experienced early trauma,
especially repetitive trauma,
may be more vulnerable to hearing voices
and having the voices be a soothing mechanism of some kind.
If you have this experience of hearing voices,
it doesn't mean you need to see a psychiatrist
unless it causes distress for you.
And the things that people hear
that cause distress are commands to do things,
like harm yourself or others,
hearing lots of negative commentary about yourself.
If you want support on this issue,
there are some self-help support groups
such as the Hearing Voices Network,
and this is a site that's based in London
and it has a lot of useful information on it.
You should see a psychiatrist if you hear voices
and have other problems like feeling depressed,
or having trouble with your thinking or communication.
These are signs that the voices
may be connected to an illness
And if you wanna know how this differs from schizophrenia,
watch this video that I have explaining schizophrenia.
It's a lot more than hallucinations.
Subscribe to my channel if you wanna keep up
with mental health information.
See you next time.