What does it mean to hear voices?
If you hear voices in your head, you are not alone. The experience of hearing voices differs from person to person. Some people hear the sound through their ears, just as if someone is speaking. For others, there may be one voice or several. The voices can be encouraging and supportive or dismantling and intimidating. You may recognise the voice as someone in your life, or it may be an entirely new voice. Hearing voices falls into either a mental health category such as, depression, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, dissociation, post-traumatic stress, disorder (PTSD) psychosis or schizophrenia, or they are caused by traumatic experiences such as abuse, bereavement, bullying, drugs/alcohol, hunger, physical illness, or tiredness. If voices try to tell you what to do this can be a very frightening experience.
How can Clear Counselling help?
Counselling can help by giving you clarity about where the voices are coming from. Whose they are and the messages they convey are important because they are unique to you, so are not to be dismissed – understanding this can be an important step towards accepting that they are there. After acceptance comes understanding, where a counsellor might ask you to consider what was happening in your life when you first heard these voices, and how you felt at that time. They might ask where you were, and what they said. Counselling may help you to expose the feelings around these voices, and it is a good idea to keep a diary so that you can understand your condition in more depth, take some power back and look after yourself in a positive way.