Have you ever had the experience of hearing your name called, but when you turn around, no one is there? Perhaps you’ve thought of buying comfort foods while on a diet. Or beer when you were attempting to stay sober? Those are common experiences.
But the intrusive thoughts I’m about to discuss are not about things you desire. Quite the opposite. They are bothersome and worrisome. Likewise, the voices are disturbing. Instead of calling your name, they call you names and say mean and degrading things.
As a psychologist, I worked with patients who suffered from intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations (hearing voices). My first instinct was to try to understand each person’s inner experience.
This is what I learned from my patients. This is what they have gone through. Please do not use this as a tool for self-diagnosis.
If you or your loved one is suffering from intrusive thoughts or hearing voices, please seek professional medical and mental health help to get diagnosed and the proper treatment.
To learn what others have experienced, let’s start with a description of intrusive thoughts.
Intrusive thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are unwanted and unwelcome thoughts or images that pop into your head uninvited. The inner reaction to those thoughts is disgust, shame, guilt, embarrassment, or fright. The thoughts or images can represent what you consider immoral, forbidden, taboo, harmful, hurtful, or revolting.
These are not thoughts of cravings. These ideas or images are not things you desire. What’s worse is that you cannot stop these thoughts.
As a result, you may fear that you’re losing your mind.
Auditory hallucinations (hearing voices)
Hearing voices or other sounds is frightening when no one is around to say or make those sounds. The voices can be adult or child, male or female. They can speak individually or yell all at the same time.
Sometimes, the voices sound like they’re coming from heaven, sometimes from the apartment next door, the vents, behind your shoulder, or inside your head. They can be really loud or barely audible.
When experiencing this, it is tough to focus on what is happening in your environment. Imagine trying to have a conversation with a customer when you hear a bunch of unrelated voices yelling or commenting on the conversation. Because you cannot stop them, you fear that you’re losing your mind.Intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations can be part of several mental health or medical conditions.
Mental health conditions that include auditory hallucinations or intrusive thoughts
Experiencing intrusive thoughts and hearing voices accompany several diagnosable mental health disorders.
Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) patients are more likely to suffer from auditory hallucinations (hearing voices.) Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are likely to suffer from intrusive thoughts.
The voices can be made to stop with medications, such as in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, but in other cases, it’s not that easy. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder’s intrusive thoughts and other symptoms will sometimes yield to medication, but not always.Persons suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), will experience intrusive thoughts and hear voices.
I will describe the patient experience by diagnostic category, as they differ somewhat.
Schizophrenia and voices
Patients suffering from this condition report hearing male voices.
These usually emanate from a source outside of their head, such as the apartment next door, the vent, or the surrounding area.
Sometimes, the voices will criticize the person in a repetitive, mean, and degrading way. Other times, the voices warn him that he’s being spied on or plotted against.
Command hallucinations (voices) are the most dangerous as the voices tell the person to kill himself or kill others. Visual hallucinations may accompany voices experienced by patients who are suffering from Schizophrenia.
Bipolar Disorder and voices
Bipolar Disorder used to be referred to as a Manic-Depressive Illness. It is characterized by mood swings from very high to very depressed. The voices in Bipolar Disorder are most likely to occur when the person is in a manic state, after several sleepless days and nights.The person may hear God or angels speaking directly to him, telling him he has an important mission on earth. At other times, the person may hear voices of familiar people commenting on what he’s doing. Some people report hearing voices during their depressed state, telling them to kill themselves.
The source of the voices is outside the person as if someone was standing next to him, behind him, or above him.
Dissociative Identity Disorder and voices
You may recognize Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Sometimes, people with this disorder will have intrusive thoughts that feel foreign to them, or they hear voices in their head. There can be one voice or multiple voices. The voices can criticize the person or argue about what to wear, what makeup to apply, whom to date, what job to get, or which friends to trust.
In times of stress, the voices can tell the person to kill himself or to harm someone else.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and intrusive thoughts
Persons with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder suffer from intrusive thoughts and visual images. Hearing voices is rare. OCD is generally thought of in terms of visible symptoms, such as excessive hand washing, repeated checking, counting, list making, or making repetitive movements. These are powered by massive anxiety and intrusive thoughts.
The thoughts can revolve around harmful germs. The person washes his hands repeatedly to get rid of the germs. If he tries to stop, the anxiety kicks in. If he starts washing again, the anxiety is relieved. Repeated checking to ensure he locked the front door is powered by thoughts of possible intruders. The repeated checking is powered by anxiety. If he tries to stop checking, the anxiety comes back in full force.
But those are just the observable symptoms. People with OCD also suffer from intrusive thoughts and visual images. For example, thinking of poop in the living room and seeing it there. Thinking of sexual acts that the person disapproves of. Thoughts of stealing — something the person would never do. Thoughts of killing someone — scare the person experiencing this. Thinking mean or disgusting things about a loved one. Thinking of cuss words — which the person does not use.All of this is very wearing on the sufferer of this disorder. The good news is that this disorder is treatable with medication and psychotherapy.
It’s best to seek medical attention instead of self-diagnosing because several medical conditions can cause a person to have auditory hallucinations (hearing voices) or visual hallucinations (seeing things that are not there.)
Voices not related to mental disorders
Some causes of auditory hallucinations are temporary, and others are not. Here is a summary of conditions from the Cleveland Clinc.
The temporary conditions are high fever, long periods of sleeplessness or hunger, long periods of isolation in a dark room, or having too much medication in your body due to poor kidney function. Other causes are drug and alcohol use, waking up from anesthesia, extreme grief, or side effects of certain medications.
With medical help, you can reduce fever, induce sleep, get IV nutrients into your body, and manage medication.
But there are chronic (ongoing) conditions such as narcolepsy, Parkinson’s disease, migraines, stroke, brain tumor, severe hearing loss, and dementia that cause more ongoing problems with hallucinations.
If you or a loved one suffer from intrusive thoughts or auditory hallucinations (hearing voices)
Please seek medical and mental health help.
Please do not suffer in silence.