- Hi everyone and welcome back to
the Living Well with Schizophrenia Channel.
In today's video I'm going to be going over
what exactly I'm referring to
when I say "thought broadcasting"
and going over whether people with schizophrenia
can read people's minds or have people read their minds,
or what's going on with the term thought broadcasting.
(gentle music)
Hi my name's Lauren,
and I make videos about what it's like
living with schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia.
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Okay, so what is thought broadcasting?
It's basically a delusion
where you think that people can hear or read your thoughts.
For some people this literally means
that they believe that their thoughts are being broadcasted
by the internet, the radio, or television,
and that their thoughts are being read out
by presenters on these medias.
In fact, a study done of radio stations
and television stations in 1999,
found that it was a really common occurrence
for people to show up at these broadcasting stations
to ask the broadcasters to stop broadcasting their thoughts.
Now, like I said,
it doesn't necessarily have to be that a media source
is broadcasting your thoughts,
it can be simply that you think that
the person you're speaking with is reading your thoughts
or that they can inherently know
what you are thinking.
Thought broadcasting
is often one of the symptoms a patient may be experiencing
to suggest a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
So I wanna talk a little bit about
what my own personal experiences with thought broadcasting
have been like.
So thought broadcasting
was one of the earliest symptoms that I noticed,
that came about in terms of my development of schizophrenia.
It started happening around high school time,
where I was convinced
that people around me could hear my thoughts
or they could hear what I was thinking
without me having to say anything.
You know, looking back
and thinking about this critically now,
it doesn't make a lot of sense,
because I know that people can't read minds,
but there's just this delusion that brews bigger and bigger,
that tells me that it is true,
that people can hear my thoughts
and that they can read my mind.
It definitely wasn't something that started out
as an intentional thing,
it was something that just kind of overwhelmed me,
in terms of thinking that people could read my thoughts
or my mind or whatnot.
Now I kind of try to harness it a little bit
and try to sometimes send people messages with my mind,
if I'm having a lot of intense thought
that they can read my mind.
No, it doesn't make a lot of sense,
but yes, I still do it.
So this feeling of thought broadcasting used to happen
basically with every interaction I had with somebody
or anytime I was in a room with other people.
It happens a lot less frequently now,
or maybe I've just gotten more accustomed to ignoring it.
I've been asked if I can reality check
with thought broadcasting,
and the short answer is, not really no.
I have asked my partner on a few occasions
if he could hear my thoughts
or if he could hear what I was thinking.
And, you know he always responds with,
"No, I can't read your mind."
However, this isn't entirely effective,
because it's a delusion that's kind of greater than that,
that is telling me
that the other person that I'm speaking with
doesn't want me to know that they can read my mind,
and so you know, having him tell me,
"No, I can't read your mind,"
is not the most effective,
because I have this greater delusion
that he doesn't want me to know that he's reading my mind.
I also will sometimes try to send the person
that I'm communicating with
telepathic prompts,
like "Blink twice if you can hear what I'm thinking,"
or that kind of thing,
that like I can kind of gauge their response to.
But the same problem exists where I'm convinced
that they don't want me to know
that they are reading my mind,
and so why would they blink twice
to let me know that they could.
I also sometimes try to kind of flip the logic,
and think, "Well, I can't hear what they're thinking,
"so why would they be able to hear what I'm thinking?"
And this my friends,
is the beginning of a rather large rabbit hole
I sometimes can spiral down,
into where I'm convinced
that there are larger simulations at play
and that there are controlled environments
at play around me,
and the delusion kind of grows from there.
Sometimes I try to think critically about whether or not
the person that I'm communicating with's actions
indicate that they can hear what I'm thinking
or that they can hear my thoughts,
and try to think critically about that,
and see if they're kind of acting
based on the knowledge of my thoughts.
However beyond that,
there's not really much that I can really do
to reality check when it comes to thought broadcasting.
So given all this information,
I'm sure you can kind of understand why
something like thought broadcasting
maybe kind of inhibitive
for someone in their daily functioning,
and it can be a little bit debilitating in some senses too.
So some of the ways that it can be debilitating
are just leading to avoiding people,
because you're not wanting them to hear your thoughts
or you're not wanting to engage with people
because you're worried that they can hear your thoughts,
and it's kind of a anxiety inducing thought.
You also might not be able to
participate fully in conversations,
because you're very preoccupied
with the idea that the person can read your thoughts,
before you've even said them or anything like that,
and so it can be a very distracting thing
when you're trying to communicate with someone.
Another problem that I personally experienced is
that I often assume that people
that I'm communicating with
already know what I'm thinking,
and this can be a hindrance to healthy communication.
I know this happens a lot,
especially with my partner,
where I just assume that he already knows what I'm thinking
because he can read my mind or whatever,
this delusion that's kind of always there,
and so I don't communicate as fully as I could or should,
and that leads to breakdowns in communication.
It can really begin to interfere with regular functioning
and a lot of thoughts or feelings come up around this,
where you're feeling embarrassed or ashamed,
because, you know, it's embarrassing
to have your internal thoughts broadcasted to the world
or broadcasted to the person you're communicating with.
So, you know honestly I think actually
having thought broadcasting as one of my symptoms
has kind of made me a better person
(laughing)
because generally I'm just more aware of what I'm thinking
because I think that the other person can hear me
or people around me can hear what I'm thinking,
so I try to keep my thoughts very positive in nature.
And it's kind of funny
'cause sometimes I will just compliment people in my head,
because I think that they can hear me,
and I'm trying to put out positive vibes into the world.
So, you know, there are detriments to thought broadcasting
in terms of your ability to communicate effectively
with other people and to engage with people around you,
but there are also some not bad benefits,
like it's made me a generally better person I think.
(laughing)
So I just want to take a moment to just make it clear
that these experiences that I've been speaking about
have been my own experiences with thought broadcasting,
and I understand that there is a variance
in terms of the experience that someone can have
with thought broadcasting.
And I know that there are also things like thought blocking,
where someone can think that someone
or some external force is blocking their thought process,
or there is thought insertion
where they believe that somebody
is inserting thoughts into their head.
So I understand that there's a bit of a spectrum
when it comes to thought broadcasting,
and I would love to hear about your own experiences
with thought broadcasting in the comments below.
So thank you so much for watching.
If you would like to see more videos like this one,
make sure to subscribe to our channel.
And if you wanna help support the creation
of future videos like this one,
please check out our Patreon page.
If you'd like to watch more videos on this topic,
the first time I mentioned it was in
my experience with schizophrenia
and schizoaffective disorder,
and we also did a video on
positive and negative symptoms
of schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder.
Thanks so much for watching,
and wishing you and your loved ones good health as always.
Take care, bye.