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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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