
John A
Well-known member
Founding Member
I am deliberately introducing controversy on a key item of dogma, so have decided to start a new thread amplifying my point made in another thread, because there might be some interesting debate that people find helpful, if they are having a bit of a struggle.
The other thread concerned the recommendation of the author of a book I was given by my brother eight years ago (but haven't read cover to cover, not having found anything of interest to my agenda in the contents list or index - mind you, my interests are rather specialised). The book is called Accepting Voices.
The author and the HVN were actually suggesting that voice-hearers should have conversations with their voices, for pity's sake! (I've been fielding complaints today from comrades for taking along a nwe-to-the-group fellow-sufferer who did exactly that, out loud, during one of our meetings, and I could tell - because I know him, would have continued to do so if asked to stop, rebelling against the wishes of everybody else present.)
This "accept your voices and converse with them" advice is the exact opposite of what I recommend and practise. If I ever wrote a book, it's title could easily be Rejecting Voices.
I learnt - it was a slow, hard process, but well worthwhile - to reject my voices, and made the transition over a six-year period from conversing continually, to conversing only occasionally, thru replying to the voices using only a small repertiore of boring catchphrases (like "leave me alone") whatever they said, to (finally) ignoring them almost completely.
It worked wonders. The 24/7 voices are now so quiet, ten years after the abuse started, that the only effect they have on my behaviour and ideation (if any) is any effect they have subliminally, which is obviously hard for me to assess, and imnpossible for anybody else to assess, other than the perpetrators. Moreover, in my quite wide experience, the voice-hearers who cope best with their voices (using metrics such as employability, absence of negative symptoms, richness of social life, ability to sustain romantinc relationships) are typically those who have heard voices for longest, and perfected the same techniques as I use, either having reached the same conclusions as me independently, or, I'm proud to say, though in all too few cases, having learnt from my teaching.
How can Marius Romme's patients experience lead him to advocate a coping mechanism that is 180 degrees opposed to the mechanism that I and and almost everybody in my circle reports works best for them?
What do the members of this Hearing Voices forum section find works best for them, as a mechanism of keeping their heads straight when bombarded 24/7 with unwelcome voices: accepting the voices and engaging them in conversation, or rejecting the voices and treating them with contemptuous silence, refusing to be distracted by them?
Since when did rewarding distressing attention-seeking behaviour by habitually paying attention to it ameliorate the unwanted behaviour? Whatever the aetiology, whether the voices be exogenous or endogenous (I deal with alleged victims of V2K abuse, but there are obviously very few such here), common sense tells me that what I and others have proved works for us in practice ought to be more effective for anybody than the exact opposite: that ignoring voices will make them retreat into the backwater of attempted subliminal influence: that when (so-to-speak) the front doorbell isn't answered any more, the bogus caller is forced to go away, or to try to sneak in unnoticed through the back door, as I put it when describing subliminal influence by day or dream-content manipulation by night.
The other thread concerned the recommendation of the author of a book I was given by my brother eight years ago (but haven't read cover to cover, not having found anything of interest to my agenda in the contents list or index - mind you, my interests are rather specialised). The book is called Accepting Voices.
The author and the HVN were actually suggesting that voice-hearers should have conversations with their voices, for pity's sake! (I've been fielding complaints today from comrades for taking along a nwe-to-the-group fellow-sufferer who did exactly that, out loud, during one of our meetings, and I could tell - because I know him, would have continued to do so if asked to stop, rebelling against the wishes of everybody else present.)
This "accept your voices and converse with them" advice is the exact opposite of what I recommend and practise. If I ever wrote a book, it's title could easily be Rejecting Voices.
I learnt - it was a slow, hard process, but well worthwhile - to reject my voices, and made the transition over a six-year period from conversing continually, to conversing only occasionally, thru replying to the voices using only a small repertiore of boring catchphrases (like "leave me alone") whatever they said, to (finally) ignoring them almost completely.
It worked wonders. The 24/7 voices are now so quiet, ten years after the abuse started, that the only effect they have on my behaviour and ideation (if any) is any effect they have subliminally, which is obviously hard for me to assess, and imnpossible for anybody else to assess, other than the perpetrators. Moreover, in my quite wide experience, the voice-hearers who cope best with their voices (using metrics such as employability, absence of negative symptoms, richness of social life, ability to sustain romantinc relationships) are typically those who have heard voices for longest, and perfected the same techniques as I use, either having reached the same conclusions as me independently, or, I'm proud to say, though in all too few cases, having learnt from my teaching.
How can Marius Romme's patients experience lead him to advocate a coping mechanism that is 180 degrees opposed to the mechanism that I and and almost everybody in my circle reports works best for them?
What do the members of this Hearing Voices forum section find works best for them, as a mechanism of keeping their heads straight when bombarded 24/7 with unwelcome voices: accepting the voices and engaging them in conversation, or rejecting the voices and treating them with contemptuous silence, refusing to be distracted by them?
Since when did rewarding distressing attention-seeking behaviour by habitually paying attention to it ameliorate the unwanted behaviour? Whatever the aetiology, whether the voices be exogenous or endogenous (I deal with alleged victims of V2K abuse, but there are obviously very few such here), common sense tells me that what I and others have proved works for us in practice ought to be more effective for anybody than the exact opposite: that ignoring voices will make them retreat into the backwater of attempted subliminal influence: that when (so-to-speak) the front doorbell isn't answered any more, the bogus caller is forced to go away, or to try to sneak in unnoticed through the back door, as I put it when describing subliminal influence by day or dream-content manipulation by night.