Comment by pain_1993 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pain_1993 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I wouldn't believe anything in this article.

But early 2022. I started hearing voices too. They all said horrible stuff.

They claimed that people close to me (family & friends) were planning to kill me & steal my crypto.

They also gave me "evidence" that proved my friend was a professional hitman.

Looking at extremely thin, starving Ethiopians on TV they said "Look! You going to look like that, we shall make sure of it, probably worse"

A bus getting a flat tire and people pulling out tools for changing tires was interpreted by the voices as "murder weapons for bludgeoning me to death"

Fortunately, I got in touch with a psychiatrist and he gave me a combination of pills & injections.

It took about 2 years for the voices to completely disappear.

This set me back so badly financially.

Luckily I now feel very normal and confident that I was 100% delusional. I am healthy now & slowly trying to get my life back together. (been off medication for like 1½ years now)

But here is my piece of advice (as a former victim).

If someone is "hearing voices".

Don't try to call them delusional or "bring them back to reality".

What you should do is listen to them & try to provide protection.

- if they feel like they are going to be poisoned by the waiter, cook for them

- if they feel like they are being stalked, offer protection etc

Normal people my claim that this "feeds" into their delusions. But at least it works in the short term to reduce the paranoia.

There is nothing worse than thinking your wife is going to stab you in your sleep and her trying to be around you longer that she usually does. She should send you pictures/video calls of her in another continent.

So as a previous victim here is a recommended approach.

- in the short term (show empathy)

- in the long term seek psychiatric assistance

P.S

Leave your email if your happy to talk. This is a throw away account

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'd like to point out that there are other victims too- the wife suddenly being accused of murderous intent is very much a victim too, and in some cases the person hearing the voices acts first.

I had a friend who developed similar symptoms, and I was very afraid for my own safety when he started sending me paranoid threats.

Good advice there at the end.

Have some limited training in managing these situations.

Listening and avoiding judgement it keeps the person in crisis talking. As the person in crisis continues to talk and experience connection they begin to move out of crisis mode. Once out of crisis mode then work together to find professional help.

> Normal people my claim that this "feeds" into their delusions. But at least it works in the short term to reduce the paranoia.

This is a good insight for anyone who works or deals with folks that aren't fully moored in their reality by their five senses! I've used the buy-in / reduce anxiety approach in a lot of contexts, be it toddlers to dementia to mentally ill family members to addicts to others with unspecified issues.

Correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't think you're suggesting doing this indefinitely, which isn't sustainable IMHO, but in terms of reducing acute episodes.

Thanks for sharing, and glad you got better.

I've never heard voices or similar, that I'm aware of.

What I struggle to understand, is what makes these voices so compelling or persuasive, for the lack of better words.

I could understand them being highly annoying, in the same way someone is listening to the radio while you're trying to relax or work.

But what is it that makes it hard to brush aside, that drives people to act on them?

It just seems to be more than "just" hearing voices, at least in many cases.

Not trying to be snarky or anything.

For me they can be very real. They can say things only I know and they respond to that. In addition, they know every feeling of uncertainty and doubt that I have, and they respond in cruel ways to that and get "in". It's like telling someone your dearest secrets, and then they go and be mean about that. And that, again and again, every morning again when waking up, with no end in sight.

Then there is the thing that they can become so strong and draw so much attention to them, that normal life gets to second place. The surreal world with voices is becoming the reality and is taking over. At that point, it can get dangerous, for yourself, and in some cases, others.

Thank you for sharing.

Having such a barrage sure does sound stressful and fatiguing, and I can see how that could get under your skin, so to speak.

I try to put myself in others shoes, but it's so difficult with things like this. So while it's far from experiencing it myself, this helps.

I have no direct experience of it, but I imagine it as this: truth or persuasiveness is a feeling just like sound. If your brain can hallucinate a sound where there is none, it can also hallucinate a sense of truth where there is none.

Yep I have direct experience of that. I have had the feeling "I'm having an epiphany" or "I'm about to figure out something huge" but there wasn't actually anything there

- They can predict things (who's coming to visit and what they are gonna say). In my case they predicted that that bus was going to break down. They claimed for example that this was a plot by the killers to isolate & murder me.

- They know your emotional insecurities in & out. So they know exactly how to hit you where it hurts.

- They make you doubt alot.

Thank you for the follow-up.

I said I hadn't heard voices myself, but as I sit here it seems that's not entirely correct. I have an active inner dialog, and that dialog is as if I had said the words myself. Sometimes I actually do say them out loud.

I could imagine that if there's a disconnect such that my inner dialog did not feel like it was me talking to myself, it would perhaps be like hearing a voice that isn't there.

There's a striking similarity in your and mpol's response though, in how these voices play on fear and insecurities in a negative way. It's a theme that seems highly correlated, based on casual observations.

I guess it's possible others have it in the opposite way, but that doesn't manifest in a "problematic" way so we don't hear about it much.

Again, thanks for sharing.

It's great that you were able to notice that this was not normal and get treatment, I wonder why you were able to when many others aren't. I wonder if a propensity for religion or other types of magical thinking make it harder for some people to realize the voices or intrusive thoughts aren't "normal".

I don't know if it was the medication. But at some point the voices stopped making sense.

For example if my care takers wanted to poison me. Why am I still alive? They have fed me for months?

These people trying to kill me. Why haven't they made their move.

I had actually given up on trying to evade my "enemies" and simply waited for them to kill me. But for months they never made thier move. This made me realise that I was delusional.

what were you diagnosed with, in the end? I always thought you'd need medications for life, for conditions like this - are you 100% off them?

I really don't know. I wasn't told.

But from Googling about the medication (Risperidone).

It looks like I had bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

Yes. I am 100% off meds. It has been about 1½ years now.

I don't hear a single "voice in my head".

Those voices are very different from "thinking" or "talking to yourself".

I am glad I haven't heard them in a long time.

I was also on Risperidone, for what was thought at the time to be schizophrenia

Even had the same experience of checking into the mental ward thinking I was going to be killed, and then just wasn't.

Same age as you, too, born in 93

Can you describe the earliest symptoms you recognized

- It started with long periods of insomnia and without any voices.

- I received strange phone calls from languages I didn't understand (it was a Belgian number)

- The voices started telling me that my phone was hacked using NSOs Pegasus by a well connected criminal gang.

- they picked stuff that was real. My spam caller, knowledge of spyware corporations.

- they then used that to build stories and paranoia to the point of delusion.

- at the peak of my delusion. They mimicked voices of people I trusted (mum, friends etc).

- they even claimed that NSO was so advanced that they would summon the cenobites (from Hell Raiser) to come & touture me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com