Posted by Tony P on November 16, 2001, at 0:56:17
In reply to Re: hearing voices is not schizophreniac?, posted by ttt on November 14, 2001, at 19:21:02
Whilst as several have pointed out, hearing voices or other sounds (music is common) _can_ be a result of depression, stress, some kinds of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, some of these are just extreme cases of a perfectly normal phemomenon - although I've been told by some schizophrenics that the quality of realness of their voices was quite different from the effect I'm going to describe.
Years ago when I was working late at night, stressed out, by myself in a noisy lab (lots of white sound), I kept hearing a radio playing music in another part of the lab. I would go searching for it, and never be able to find it. One day, I tried mentally changing the song the radio was playing - and it worked!
Was I schizophrenic? No, just a bit stressed and strung out. My overactive brain was trying to extract some sense from all the noise around it.
Here's an experiment anyone can try: Plug headphones into an FM radio (an older one is better) and tune it to the hiss between stations (if you can find a place between stations these days!). Relax, close your eyes, and try to listen for the words that are hidden in the noise. After a few minutes, if you try hard enough, you will begin to distinguish words and even sentences, or maybe voices speaking some foreign language. Is it space aliens speaking to you? No, your mind is applying that most useful faculty that allows you to fill in the blanks in a half-heard conversation at a party - except in this case it's filling in all the blanks!
None of which is to say that there are not people with schizophrenia who hear voices. But hearing words or voices or music in anything which has a loud more-or-less random or confused sound is quite a normal thing. Mind you, if it happened a lot, and wasn't connected with listening to a particular kind of noise, I'd go and see my doctor - a number of medical conditions, quite apart from mental ones, can cause noises in the ears, and it's often (as I said) a sign of stress.
Tony P
-------------> I'm still confused. If you misterpret external noises and think that it might means something based on your knowledge or memory or experience, would this be a schizophrenia? Would Dr. prescribe medication for this?
>
> I know one time I listen to a CD and picked up some voices that seemed to have sublininal effect. I replayed that seconds many time over and there it was every time. At first, I tend to interpret it as some words but listened so carefully, it was some sound mixed in the music. It could be a glitch in bad recording since it was MP3 from the web. Is my sensitivity a form of schizophrenia?
poster:Tony P
thread:83893
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011113/msgs/84381.html