PEOPLE WHO HEAR VOICES ARE NOT LUNATICS

PEOPLE WHO HEAR VOICES ARE NOT LUNATICS.

Unfortunately, that is not what you may believe if you accept only what you receive from the ‘media’.

 

Yes, the ‘media’ would have you believe that individuals who hear voices are ‘psychotic’, ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ – even ‘violent paranoid schizophrenic’..

Have you ever met someone who says that they ‘hear voices’?  Will you stay and talk?  Will you run a mile because suddenly they might produce  a gun/cleaver/ machete… ?

If this is you, why not stop a while and meet me?  I have been hearing voices for more than 30 years without being ill (or chasing anyone with a hatchet) and I will introduce you to my book and its title

Listening to the silences 

in a world of hearing voices.

It has been published free on the Internet for more than 10 years, and from it, I get frequent contacts by letter or email from individuals who, without exception, hear voices.  Here are two emails that arrived within the last two weeks – read them, and examine for any signs of lunacy…  

This arrived from Kristin from Norway: 

Dear Mr. Vincent,

I’m very happy to have discovered your online-book and at moment I'm still at the beginning of the book. But I would like to write you by now, how grateful I am that you make your book free available for everyone. Thank you so much! :)

Since 2000 I’m hearing voices after I had been practicing with a textbook to educate the mediumistic sense. The exercises for clairaudience (clear hearing) were successful quickly, but then, I couldn’t interrupt that.

The consciousness of myself and my own thoughts help me at first to live my daily life but the voices harassed me very much and I couldn’t avoid hearing the voices.

After several years of searching and trial and error I began with the aid of mindfulness meditation to learn to elude from the voices better and better. The focus on my breath, my body or the activities that I exercised just helped me more and more to be with my attention by me and in the material world. I meditated, if possible, twice a day 5 - 10 minutes. I tried no longer internally desperately fight off the listening to the voices. I tried to be completely relaxed, let them be there and no further notice of the voices. The prior inner defense against hearing voices had this rather reinforced.

I did these things with time more and more easier, like automatically, and the voice became ever more silent and appeared less and less in evidence.

While falling asleep I used auto-suggestions such as: “I am completely safe and protected and don’t clear hearing” or “I am healthy and don’t clear hearing”.

I have also read about treatment with homeopathy much good, but I haven’t tried this by myself.

Now I am looking forward to continue reading your book. :)

I wish you all the best.

Yours sincerely

P.S.: Please excuse the terrible English - it's a mixture of my own poor English and Google Translator.

~~~~~

And this from Marianne in Canada, which she wrote after reading a poem I Don’t Believe In Magic that I have posted on my Blog: 

Dear Mr. Vincent,

​First of all I thank you for writing about hearing voices and for making your book available online for free.  I've only read the first page but can see that reading your book will be beneficial to me as I've been hearing voices for twenty years or so.  I am amazed that you function so well in spite of voices and look forward to finding out more about the ways you get along with them.

Secondly, the poem "I Don't Believe In Magic" ​touched me deeply.  I've always carried a deep conviction that no evil, neither real or imagined, is bigger than my God and my Bible.  Sometimes things get pretty scary and I wonder if God and my Bible are really there for me but then things will happen to prove that yes, God is real and yes, my Bible wins over any spell book out there, like the old rock, paper, scissors game.... Bible always wins.

I can't concentrate very long on something like a book so it's going to take quite a bit of time for me to read the entire work and I hope to stay in contact with you during the process.  I'm sure a lot of questions will arise and, if you're willing, I would like to "pick your brain"  (that sounds pretty gross, I wonder whomever coined that phrase in the first place!) on all that is related to hearing voices and its affect on you and your life.

Take good care and God bless you.

~~~~~

So, did you find any signs of Lunacy?  Maybe you found two people who are different in their approach to life.  And maybe if you actually talk to folk whom you may meet and who hear voices, you will find ‘individuals’ – sensitive, intelligent people – individuals who are just that – individual, and prepared to think and live ‘outside the box’ that is the norm for the bulk of humanity.

Here is the poem that Marianne quotes –

I Don't Believe In Magic

by Duncan MacKellar

I don't believe in magic,

Or superstitious tales,

Or witches' spells and potions,

Made from newts and snails.

I don't have time for werewolves,

Or ghostly apparitions,

Spirits, ghouls and warlocks,

Or spooky premonitions.

Goblins, elves and angry trolls,

Dragons spitting fire.

Mere fables and make believe,

Cloaked in mist and mire.

Mysteries of the occult,

Are easy to resist.

I'm not afraid of monsters,

That really don't exist.

I've never seen a poltergeist,

Or proof of any haunting.

I'm not afraid of darkness,

While others find it daunting.

There is but one bewilderment,

From which I seek protection,

I've yet to find a mirror that will,

Cast my own reflection.

My book is free to download at

www.royvincent.org

ROY VINCENT

MID-SUMMER 2014

WHEN CLARRY TOPPED HIMSELF, NO ONE KNEW WHY - NO ONE...

WHEN CLARRY TOPPED HIMSELF,

NO ONE KNEW WHY…

…NO ONE.

Satellite television has brought me a fascinating window on a wider world and the opportunities to observe and try to understand people from a vast range of cultures - people whom one had seen, if one saw them at all, as ‘performers’ in documentaries or devised programmes and subject to the presentation and interpretation of the programmes compilers. 

Now I can watch them completely untainted by the intervening ‘editor interpreter’.  I watch them in their own dramas, chat shows, news bulletins and a variety of presentations and versions of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’  I look at faces and expressions, moods and reactions, but ‘look’ and ‘watch’ are the two operative words, for apart from sensing the general mood of the piece I have not the slightest idea of what is being said.  When I watch Chinese television there are subtitles – but they also are in Chinese. 

I would dearly like to know what Dunia and the people whom she interviews on Abu Dhabi television are discussing, because it appears to be serious and intelligent, but apart from words that sound vaguely like ‘Iraq’ there is nothing to guide me.  Worse still is a news bulletin when the person being interviewed is speaking English, but is then being talked over and the screen has rolling subtitles all in Arabic.

The world and outlook of those who are locked into their inner voices is something like this.  They have their own transmission received inside their head that no one else can hear or comprehend, while, viewed on the screen of life that is going on outside them, they see people, faces expressions, actions, moods and reactions, and try to interpret something that is far off.

A world that is almost unreachable from within a mind and body that are often numbed by the drugs that are meant to make life more bearable (but which often are there solely to ‘contain’ them).

A world with which they find it increasingly difficult to communicate.  So difficult, that attempts to do so may be abandoned altogether, especially when the inner world can appear warm and friendly.

Is it easiest simply to abandon them to their inner world and the companions that frequent it?  An inner world that can be welcoming, friendly, comforting – an inner world that suddenly can spawn terror and threat; create immeasurable anxiety; propose devilish and obscene compacts – compacts that if accepted can bring down an even heavier rain of threat and castigation from the unseen tormentors. 

One can go on and on in seemingly endless speculation, and offer insights and advice that may or may not have relevance to an individual – if indeed one knew that the torment was actually there behind the closed door that a life and the face fronting it have become.

It would be difficult to forget the time when my stable was being re-roofed.  Right to the fore of the action were the two Geordies – Big Derek and Brian.  They came and worked - and worked hard - for ‘readies’, and stayed until about one o’clock when they went to the King’s Head for a liquid lunch, and then possibly an afternoon fishing off the beach. 

One morning they came and they were immensely subdued - in fact, for such a big man it was odd that Derek seemed close to tears.  “Clarry’s topped his self” said Brian eventually.  Work was pointless, and they went off to the King’ Head for more appropriate solace. 

Clarry – or Clarence to give him his Sunday name – had farmed with brother Ronnie, until they had given up the farm.  But farmers never retire, and one met them here and there as they helped out on other farms - hedging, dykeing, hay-timing - or working in people’s gardens.

Clarry had retired to a cottage beside the main road and I saw him frequently as he worked around a friend’s premises.  This particular morning, his daughter had come downstairs, to a fire newly laid in the grate, a cup of tea part drunk and still warm, a sandwich half eaten, and, puzzled, had gone outside to find Clarry hanging.  And no one knew why! 

That was over ten years ago, and I don’t think anyone knows to this day.  Why?  There in his inner world something had thrown a switch – but he had not been ill that anyone knew about – certainly not mentally.  What was it that Clarry couldn’t talk to anyone about – confide - consult?

I thought of him in happier times, as, for instance, when the local Shepherds’ Meet and a meet of the Beagles had coincided, and the Brown Cow had been open all day – and Clarry hadn’t wasted a minute.  There he was, well into the evening, a huge turkey drumstick in his hand, beating time to the choruses of the hunting songs, and swaying perilously to and fro, and the picture of him swaying gently at the end of a rope is one that even now I find unbearable.

I have difficulty revisiting the time when I desperately wanted to die and escape from all that plagued my mind and the situation that I couldn’t understand but from which I frantically wanted to flee.  I wasn’t then hearing voices, but had seemingly insurmountable problems.  Why didn’t I just do it?  As I wrote earlier, it had to appear to be an accident, and I couldn’t devise one that I thought would be convincing.  Relevant to my thoughts about Clarry – I couldn’t talk to anyone, because I couldn’t put my inner agony into words. 

I vaguely remember once saying to a Consultant Psychiatrist, as I attempted to broach the subject, something such as “I wish I had a terminal illness” – thinking that that would be a way out that would not create problems for anyone.  “I suppose you want cancer” he said – and said it with a sneer; nothing else will describe his tone.  I never tried to speak to anyone about it ever again, and I have only recalled the painful times for the purpose of writing to you to help you to understand the torment in the unseen world behind the facade of a face, and a life that, seemingly, is being ‘lived’ successfully.

‘Writing to you’ – I began to write more then five years ago.  Some has come easy; some with the pain of unhappiness and disaster revisited.  I hope that it has been worthwhile in that it may help someone.  I began with the words of the diminutive Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Camera - and cannot think of any that are more appropriate to end with.

Don’t get annoyed

If the people coming to see you,

If the people wanting to talk to you

Can’t manage to express

The uproar raging inside them.

Much more important

Than listening to the words

Is imagining the agonies

Fathoming the mystery

Listening to the silences

(And, with those words, in 2003,  I completed my Book.)

Yes.  Writing to you.  Yes, you.  It may be that you are the one to whom I was writing, whom I had in mind during all of those five years.

Chapter One bears the title “We had to destroy it to save it…”.

The ‘it’ in question was my mind.  And I had all of the material necessary to be able to write a full and minutely detailed account -  I had all of my medical notes covering a period of thirty years.

But it was only with you in mind that I could read and face the personal agonies within – and then write about them

To read and recall how, step by step, therapy after therapy, drug after drug, my life, my home, my career, my family were slowly peeled away – and then to recall how all of this had been the ‘gratuitous invention’ of ‘psychiatry. 

You see – there had been nothing wrong with me at the outset – other than uncontrollable diarrhoea – yes - uncontrollable diarrhoea.

There were times – many times – when I would have abandoned the whole project.  Even hoping that my computer would ‘crash’ and everything that I had written would be lost –

because I knew I would never start again…

And that was before I had even begun to think about writing about

 ‘Hearing Voices’ 

- which, after all, is the reason for writing in the first place.

But I always came back to you – yes, it is you again.  I used to say to myself “If I can help only one person – just one person – back to sanity, then it will have been worth it.”

And thankfully, it has been worth it!  Yes it has.  You in your various forms have emailed or written to me to tell me just what the book has meant to you.

Yes, you have been “Al….” a seafarer in the Philippines “…now you inspire me a lot.”  Or Igor in Moscow…. Monica in Mumbai who was desperately worried about the harm that anti-psychotic drugs were having upon her son.  (So many parents and carers have written as she did.)

You have been Anne-Marie who had been assailed by malign voices while in a plane returning from a very happy holiday.

 

Then again, you have been Rosey in Arizona, so worried for your son.

My heart went out to you, James, on Death Row in a gaol in Georgia, who could still find the will to write to me, in spite of a very uncertain future…

It was Steve, in Lancashire, who finally clinched it for me –

It was Steve who wrote the ‘magic’ words –

“You have saved my sanity”

So, if you are reading this and wondering what the book is all about, it is free to download on the Internet – yes, free.

Who knows – I may have written it for you.

LISTENING TO THE SILENCES

IN A WORLD OF HEARING VOICES

www.royvincent.org

ROY VINCENT

MID-SUMMER 2014

I DON'T BELIEVE IN MAGIC...

I Don’t Believe In Magic

By Duncan MacKellar

I don’t believe in magic,

Or superstitious tales,

Or witches spells and potions

Made from newts and snails.

I don’t have time for werewolves,

Or ghostly apparitions,

Spirits, ghouls and warlocks,

Or spooky premonitions.

Goblins, elves and angry trolls,

Dragons spitting fire,

Mere fables and make-believe,

Cloaked in mist and mire.

Mysteries of the occult,

Are easy to resist.

I’m not afraid of monsters,

That really don’t exist.

I’ve never seen a poltergeist,

Or proof of any haunting.

I’m not afraid of darkness,

While others find it daunting.

There is but one bewilderment,

From which I seek protection.

I’ve yet to find a mirror that will

Cast my own reflection.