Do you hear voices in your head?

[PhryneFisher]

I’m posting this under AIBU a) for traffic and b) because I don’t want people to think I’m trolling or mocking. I’m genuinely not and am actually quite scared so here for some reassurance I guess.
My question is, do you have a voice in your head that tells you what to do? And as a sub question, do you have a part of your head that thinks you are someone else?
Long story short, I have always been unorganised, chaotic, and prone to procrastinating. Therefore my house is a mess, my wardrobe is overflowing with clothes that don’t fit and my general appearance is shabby chic without the chic.
For as long as I can remember I have had this view that this isn’t how “normal” people are. But recently I’ve started noticing a voice in my head that tells me how to be normal.
Case in point, this morning, my son asked for some toast, I took the last two pieces of bread out of the bag, then just left the bag on the side. A really clear voice in my head said “Put the bag in the bin, for fuck’s sake, like NORMAL people do.” So I did.
I only seem to be able to think about how to do “normal” things if this voice is there, telling me off, almost. It’s never yet told me to do anything really bad (well once, 9 years ago, but that was due to a postnatal psychotic episode I was treated for) but I do occasionally get a very fleeting urge to drive into a wall or jump in front of a train, then it goes away again as quick as it appeared.
If the voice isn’t telling me to do something, I tend to procrastinate and do nothing, almost as if I don’t know WHAT to do. If I do something very mundane like load the dishwasher without being “told” to, I genuinely feel like I just won a gold medal at the Olympics, it feels like such an accomplishment to do something SO mundane, it’s ridiculous.
Also, though, I often get really, really strong feelings that I am someone completely different, living a completely different life. A while ago, a colleague mentioned she had gone to Halifax to see her mum.
I said “Ooh, lovely, I love Halifax.”
I have never been to Halifax in my life but for a fleeting moment I thought I had. I wasn’t just saying it, I thought it.
I then had to pretend I went years ago and don’t remember much about it so she didn’t ask too many questions.
I quite often see something expensive and think I might buy that at the weekend , but I’m on minimum wage and just about get by.
I daydream about the open top bus parade I’ll be on when I win the FA Cup, despite not being a professional footballer and being nearly 50 but I’m always surprised when 5 seconds later I realise the truth.
I walk down the street and sometimes in my head, I am expecting people to recognise me for my extensive TV work. I’ve never been on telly in my life. When I realise that, I’m then confused as to why I thought otherwise in the first place.

I know this all sounds a bit weird and possibly childish, but I have booked a GP appointment for this week because I take antidepressants for my sleep and my anxiety and need a review, but I thought I would post on here first to see if any of this is actually just normal and nothing to worry about? A friend of mine once said “You do realise there’s no such thing as normal and none of us are, don’t you?” I’m hoping she was right?

@phrynefisher yes diagnosed adhd. I have lots of internal monologues but I don't literally think I'm someone else

I read this as an extension to the Eleanor Oliphant book 😄

My internal monologue doesn’t sound like a literal voice, more images and abstract thought.

I’ve had times of experiencing audio hallucinations (acute post natal anxiety and sleep deprivation, plus a period of acute anxiety) that were voices that I ‘heard’ telling me off/warning me about things. I think yours sounds more like that?
Absolutely worth a GP trip.

You have a big imagination and fantasies and daydreams!

One place that might help you work out what's going on is the Hearing Voices network, they have some amazing resources and can be very reassuring that this does not make you 'mad' but rather you might hear an external type voice in your head in common with about 5-10% of the population. If we include hearing a voice or a shout or a noise or seeing something when we are falling asleep or waking up, that's over 50% of people.

For some people who are psychotic, those voices can be dangerous as they take them into another world/can cause them to behave in different ways, but for many other people it's a feature of life, as are intrusive thoughts.

Lots of people also have an internal monologue but this varies so much from a clear voice to muddy thoughts to nothing and mainly pictures, it's so interesting how much it varies.

I would mention this to your GP or whoever you see next for your meds review, it's also worth mentioning that common drugs like anti-d's can even make these worse as well as better, so it's all very individual.

The one thing you are not is mad, and that's most people's fear in these situations, but it's common, a lot of people keep it a secret for fear of this judgement which is a shame, because there are lots of ways of dealing with these things, from trying to treat them to leaving them to exploring them in therapy to just accepting it as a feature of life. Hope this reassures you a little bit, you sound extremely creative and interesting, and I do wonder if there's some neurodiversity in there kicking about, which is triggering some of your more impulsive thoughts/reactions (like the Halifax one! That's really common- you just have more thoughts, and more interesting ones, than the average person!

I think a lot of us have internal voices of some sort, but mentions you make of occasionally getting urges to do something dangerous or your previous episode mean it’s sensible to get a medical opinion.

The same for feeling like it might be someone else’s voice, and the mini-delusions. These need checking out.

Mental health issues are not fun @GarlicGrace ffs

It sounds normal to me, like a different part of yourself telling you what to do. Everyone has different parts of themselves eg if you look up transactional analysis you can engage the Parent part to comfort the Child part.
My first thought was do you have ADHD?
I get the urges too.
I'm autistic, fwiw.

Haven't rtft but have you read anything of Carolyn Springs accounts of dissociation? Many people split off different parts of themselves as a way of coping with life. It usually starts in childhood and gets worse under times of stress. It's often a subconscious attempt to function well but sometimes goes a bit heywire.

Vivid escapist fantasies are not a mental health issue, @continentallentil ffs.

See this and hundreds of similar threads over the years:

And this one 😊 You know life coaches actually teach people to do it?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4702476-pretending-to-be-someone-else-normal-or-not

I have ADHD and I can relate to some of this, not all. I occasionally have intrusive thoughts. My family used to call me thick and lazy and when I need to get on with a task, I hear their voices in my head telling me to get on with it. Sometimes I have OCD, like, "finish the washing or something bad will happen to the kids". It's fucking horrible and antidepressants made it worse. I feel like I'm functioning under constant fear and shame that's trauma induced from having undiagnosed ADHD growing up.

I can relate to some but not all.
Tidying as you go comes totally naturally to me, so I don't have an inner voice for that. I might have one in a situation where, say, I felt uncomfortable.
Sometimes I imagine situations in my head, and then feel mildly surprised when it doesn't pan out how I thought So say for example I'd lost something. I might imagine that I'd found it. And then a minute later, be annoyed that this didn't happen whilst still looking for it!

Oh and I have quite a critical inner voice too.
You should hear her when I miss the bus

Oh, and intrusive thoughts are normal. I think most people get them from time to time (eg the train jumping one). They're very fleeting and we tend not to act on them!

I have ADHD and recognise a lot of what you are saying there. I either experience it or something similar.

"occasionally get a very fleeting urge to drive into a wall or jump in front of a train, then it goes away again as quick as it appeared."

Please don't worry about this. This is really normal. Almost everyone has these types of thoughts but in most people they pop in and disappear before they've registered them. I've been told this by more than one psychologist/therapist. People with anxiety can get really hung up and panicked by these fleeting thoughts and make them bigger than they need to be but they don't make you dangerous to yourself or anyone else. They are just random thoughts. I think ADHDers probably get more of them as our brains are constantly going off on random tangents and thinking seemingly random things.

I would say also that I do get my internal monologue in my head telling what to do sometimes, and I also get random voices when I am coming down with something. Hearing voices is not necessarily a sign of anything worrying and can be completely normal.

The "I love Halifax" thing could be impulsive blurting. In social situations I often blurt out complete rubbish. It comes out if my mouth and I think "wtf did I say that I don't even think that!" By the time I've processed it the conversations moved on and it's too late to correct myself! Or like you I then double down and have to run with it! So embarrassing!!

I can totally see myself excited and interested in your friend's conversation and rather than saying something like. "Ooo Halifax sounds nice, I'd love to go there", or " oh I've heard Halifax is lovely" or similar (ie like a normal person and actually what I was thinking), "I love Halifax" comes flying out of my mouth. 😂

I also often get words wrong, and I also struggle with word and fact finding (ie recall). This is a executive functioning problem - your brain can't always make the connections it needs to. I think the random blurting is tied up with that. Along with ADHD impulsivity.

This might be a bit outing but, I'll name change so it's ok.

I have 3 'voices' in my head.
They sound different. 1 speaks in a very clipped and polite British accent like Jeremy Brett in an old movie. The other sounds like my voice but as it sounds on a recording. The third voice sounds like how I hear my voice when I speak.

Jeremy - he's quite mean. When someone annoys me, Jeremy pipes up and tells me the absolutely horrific and worst way to handle it.
He's countered by my Recorded voice who tells Jeremy to be quiet and not to do those things or I'll get in trouble. My speaking voice is the voice I control, I can tell them both to be quiet and decide on what I want to do.

The two voices in my head and my voice argue and bicker and have conversations about things during the day. Like earlier I was in Tesco looking to get some Almonds. In my head it Jeremy was telling me that they're in aisle 12 but Recorded said they weren't, Jeremy is wrong, they're in aisle 10 and I was pretty sure they were near the crisps and I didn't know what that aisle is.

Anyway, I found the Almonds, near the crisps, Jeremy was upset he was wrong.

Now all that might sound a bit strange I suppose, but a few years ago i had bit of a breakdown and Jeremy became a bit too loud and almost took over. There was an incident I won't detail. Luckily I took the decision to contact my GP before someone got hurt. I ended up going to therapy and talking to a consultant psychiatrist who risk assessed me and went through a few things etc.

He said that the voices in my head aren't that unusual. He reckons that quite a few people have these types of voices but they don't know it's rare or they're not as clearly defined as the voices in my head. They're not seperate people in my mind, they're all.me, it's just that I've seperate my thought processes into separate voices that give different viewpoints etc. He had no concerns about the risk i posed to others but he said it was likely a good idea I don't drink alcohol. (When I drink alcohol, Jeremy gets very loud and my recorded sounded voice goes very quiet so isn't there to counter his violent suggestion etc.)

Turns out, and I don't know if this is relevant at all, I also have a personality disorder and I'm on the autistic spectrum.

So yeah. If you ever see someone near the almond shelf and it looks like they're having an argument with the pistachios, it's likely me. 🤪

@KateJohns very interesting, but can see why you don't want Jeremy to win out! Someone in my family has voices in their head and we do make jokes about it occasionally!

Have you heard of maladaptive daydreaming? Have a look and see if any of it applies. I have another world running in my head, a whole soap opera of characters, sometimes I'm a version of me in it and sometimes someone else like a glamourous actor or whatever. But it's not a brief daydream, but a plot that goes on for sometimes years.

I can relate to a lot of what you've said. I suspect I have ADHD. I have a voice, but I am aware it is part of me. I struggle with organisation. I sometimes have unwanted intrusive thoughts (the driving into a bridge thing), but they are fleeting and were only a problem when I had PND, I've learnt not to react to them.

I'd be wary of taking people's view of what is normal. Because a lot of people have no clue that not everyone processes the world in the same way. Someone upthread mentions Aphantasia, which is a good example - people who don't visualise in their head, not realising that other people have a whole movie theatre going on up there, yet both are normal.

@Susannainblue that daydreaming sounds like what happens in my head when I'm trying to fall asleep. A full fictional world with distinct characters and stories. There's a a wedding planner, a campsite, a farm, a pub etc like a crap Emmerdale Farm playing out.

@Highdaysandholidays1 if Jeremy took over and I didn't stop him, some of the things he suggests, I'd be locked up. Some of the things are like stuff out of horror films. (He just told me he only suggests those things because people deserve) and I'm not sure anyone deserves being Hung Drawn and Quartered for mildly annoying me tbh... Now maybe a little keelhauling, but that's about it. 🤪

That sounds like hypnogogic hallucinations

@KateJohns

I do find it really beneficial at night. Insomnia doesn't bother me as I just go off into my own world, so no tossing and turning. I'm never bored either! But yes, I have a few different sets of characters. Some come from films/ TV and I just carry the storylines on. Sometimes it's me in a different life.

@KateJohns it's nice to hear you talk about it so openly, my dd was terrified when she first had similar experiences, thinking she was mad and beyond anything. I think it's very much a trauma response in her case (beyond my control unfortunately). We just don't know what's going on in other people's heads, this is probably a blessing and allows us to be social and function!

I sometimes hear voices, which I suppose are auditory hallucinations. It’s always the voices of people I know well (family members) and always when I’m particularly tired or stressed. I don’t think it’s terribly unusual. They always say fairly trivial things, like asking me to turn off the light, or commenting on the weather. If I started hearing things that upset me in any way, I’d see my GP.

I have a constant internal monologue, but that’s my own voice. It’s sometimes critical of my procrastination, but I can tell it to fuck off if it crosses a line.

The blurting of untrue stuff is interesting. I don’t really have that, but I know people who do, and then they instantly correct themselves (otherwise it wouldn’t be obvious).

I don’t think you sound abnormal, but if you’re worried you should see your GP.

This is interesting. I have had the very strong internal voice for as long as I can remember. I also have 'imaginary friends' (for want of a better way of defining them) which I have had since I was a small child. They have grown up with me, and I would be a bit lost without them.

The internal voice, does occasionally become didactic, and may repeat criticisms that I have received in the past, even taking on the voice of the person who criticised or insulted me. Yet, I know the voices are not real.

All this, I regard as normal, and as a way of dealing with the world e.g. I can act as counsellor or counselled via the 'imaginary friends', and, when I am alone, I speak out loud to myself because it helps me sort out my thoughts or get through a task systematically. I would be a much less complete person without my internal world, to be honest.

My eldest son and husband have both experienced psychotic episodes, and their experiences were qualitatively different. They believed that people were saying things to them, that people were plotting against them, that things had happened, that were obviously not real. My son still hears voices, but he can cope with them. Some people in his 'hearing voices' support group say the 'voices' have become kinder to them. My son has yet to experience this.

My youngest son, often had terrible graphic images and a hyper-critical internal voice. This seems to be a manifestation of his OCD and other anxiety disorders. He knows they are not real, but they can upset him and stop him in his tracks. He also has an eating disorder and has an 'ED internal voice' which is not helpful to him at all.

So, in my experience, the human mind is fantastically complex. Our thoughts and imagination can be helpful and a huge resource for reflection and getting through daily life.

Yet, there can be times when, perhaps as a result of mental illness, we misinterpret or lose touch with reality, and at those times, we will need professional support.

There are other times when our mind's ability to imagine, play or replay scenarios, including voices, becomes unpleasant and unhelpful, even though we do not lose touch with reality. At those times, we may also need help.

It seems that your internal voices and thoughts are mostly helpful, but there are times when the boundary between reality and imagination become blurred. This is just my opinion, and it would be more helpful if you sought professional advice (especially if you feel the voices etc are affecting your life negatively).

Others have mentioned neurodivergence. My eldest son and husband are both neurodivergent. My youngest son is in the process of assessment, and I am NT (as far as I know).