A symptom of StPD is hearing voices, though not associated with it directly and is more associated with Schizophrenia. This would fall under hallucinations, Unusual Perceptual Experiences, and thus a “Positive” symptom, as it’s adding something to daily living. Now, hearing voices is quite stigmatized, you might hear a lot of “hearing voices is bad, if you hear any you should go to the dr.” or what my parents would joke “hearing voices is fine, just don’t let them talk back to you.” As if having a conversation with them will suddenly make hearing voices a bad thing. The voices could be as mundane as an intrusive thought, or thinking someone said your name when they didn’t.
Where hallucinating voices starts to indicate something more is when it continues to happen, when you can notice it happens around certain situations, and the varying degree in which they speak. You might go through an episode of a mental health flare up and that’s the only time you hear things. Though a problem occurs if voices persist past that event in normal living. Do you often hear people call your name, or mistake people for saying things they did not? Those can be indicative of sensory processing issues, simply mistaking hearing things wrong, or it could be a sign of something else. When it happens is quite important, are these auditory hallucinations occurring when overstimulated, in the shower, when people are yelling, out in public, etc. And are these voices saying disruptive statements, bringing your mood down, twisting your thoughts. That is when it becomes a disorder.
For me, auditory hallucinations are quite common. Mostly, it’s because I have hypersensitive hearing, a lot of noise and varying noise tends to create its own noise. Where as controlling the noise level and what that noise is can make me enjoy it more, like music. So when I am in the shower and it’s just that little bit overstimulating this time all the water noise accumulates and in that white noise creates voices. Voices that I am so confident are my partner, my friends, roommate/s, trying to communicate with me through the bathroom door. It’s not just one or two voices, the paranoia takes over, the curiosity of “what if something happened and I’m needed, others are trying their hand at getting my attention.” but that is often false. I can usually tell it’s hallucinations by how quiet they are, how they mix and play in the already present sound. I do my reality checks and confirm to myself something of a baseline in noise, calm myself, and recheck if the voices are true or not. After the shower I will investigate and find that no one needed me.
There have been less paranoid auditory hallucinations I’ve experienced. In high-school while walking through the halls I caught myself in between crowds, placed between two large groups each on the far ends. I being at the center heard a voice next to me trying to get my attention, it called my name very clearly but was distinctly formed to the environment I was in. Turning to it, I found there was no one there.
At the other end of this spectrum, the situation in which I hear voices at their worst quantity and quality is when my triggers go off. When my emotions are ripped into and torn apart, exposing a web of tangled and tensed string strummed, vibrating its presence across the dark depths I never knew. Sobbing so deeply that everyone in a mile radius is aware, not in control of my own body and how I react, how I move. That takes a few forms, sometimes it’s on the ground where ever I was at that moment, sometimes it’s in my cozy and controlled Safe Space. The different between those two is appealing to social acceptance. If I’m not in my safe space then the social anxiety takes over and worries more about how I appear crying to others. In the safe space, it’s a paradox. Simultaneously, I am both safest and at risk, when I’m my most vulnerable. My emotions, thoughts, see that I’m free and so take the extreme rollercoaster. They produce troughs that take me to Tartarus, to the crushing oblivion of the Mariana’s Trench, I spiral into a journey with my evil self touring the museum which features my greatest hits.
Voices creep in, my evil tour guide collects an audience for her shift at the museum. A tour with varying voices, people, personalities, all critical of the art displayed before them. Little regard given for the type of art, that’s the norm, that’s what they’re used to. This place is like the inverse, you’re not shown the good or the mundane, you’re shown the bad and ugly. And it’s criticized for not being worse. Every exhibit only perceived for a few seconds till it twists and distorts into an abomination. My concern is drawn to the horrific imagery that is haunting me, stunned, I hear the chitter of voices saying “hahaha it’s so bad”. Here’s the thing, this art is me, this art is my core, my ugly and bad on display, the voices aren’t detached critiquing an artist, they’re against me and my decisions for the collective of all those here. “You’re such an idiot, incapable of simple things”, “This is why you can’t have friends”, “We will always be alone”, “It’s better if we kept to ourselves, having never existed in the lives of these people”, “Everything you do fails and dooms us”, “If it weren’t for their generosity we wouldn’t be able to survive in life”, “Smart? HA, you’re not smart, you can’t even do …”
Overstimulating, exhausting, they take the wheel and lock me away. All I can do is curl up and cry, consumed by my emotions while trying to tell the voices to stop hurting me. With each voice, a new punch hits me, I may calm down for a moment only to pick up the fight once more when I hear words that cut deep. This lasts for hours, till my body gives in and says “no more”, till my firefighters finally get a grip, until I’m so dead that suddenly all feeling in my body is ripped away from my perception and I’m left an unfeeling and un-crying mess. Detached, disassociating, dying and dead. That death lasts for hours to rest of the day, the lingering death lasts into the next days.
Despite all that, I am under the delusional thinking that there isn’t much problem there. That somehow it’s normal to be gripped by thoughts so loud they become their own person momentarily. That those voices only last while I’m in distress and aren’t affecting my daily work.