MY NEW THEORY ALONG THESE LINES by John Carver
Let's be reasonable about it all for a moment if I can interject that for a moment. I heard voices. Lots of them. Mostly all singular voices sometime two or three at most. What I did was try to analyze what was wrong with my approach. Whether these voices are from real entities or not my head is my home. I literally live there. I seldom hear voices in my ears and almost all the time in my mind. But anyway I have enough company. I don't need it in my head too. So what to do?
Voices in your head are thoughts. If they are sent by someone that is clairvoyance which to me is just a trick to get someone to believe them but even if they aren't they are still thoughts. I need a clear mind to function. So since they are thoughts they are like ideas, concepts, and even doctrines. I choose to not have any of that if I am not to be running around distracted by what is going on in my head. It is rude if it is real entities talking to me. I do not have to put up with rudeness even if it is a pleasant thought it is rude to me because I don't want it. Do you see where I am going with this. I am giving myself permission to reclaim my thought life by first admitting that my thought life is not what I want it to be. Then by deciding what thoughts I want to think and what thoughts I do not want to think which is all of them or I will be too distracted to function very well. I do not multitask well enough to do what I want to do.
Therefore when a thought (voice) occurs I treat like I would any thought. What does one do when one does not want to be distracted by a thought? I can distract myself with what I am doing or want to do. Any way I can with any distraction I choose to distract myself even just the thought, 'I am distracting myself from what I want to think about the way I prefer to think about it,' helps when a thought (voice) occurs. I reject thinking about and reacting to the thought (voice) and even if I have to say something out loud to reclaim my mind and redirect my thoughts I do it. Who cares if people think I'm crazy? They are probably right. It's immaterial. This is war between me and my unwanted thoughts (voices for example) I am winning right at the moment. I don't worry about what the voices think, thoughts that think is too complex of an idea to think about. It will give you a headache and it is the same thing as worry about what people think when you speak out loud unless you greet someone, say something to someone, even just a quick hello helps. People like it. I like to do things to people they like. Everybody's happy but my unwanted thoughts (voices). It distracts me and they do not work well when I am distracted being it music, talking to someone, writing whatever. That is because unwanted thoughts (voices) are thoughts and it is very difficult to think more than one thought at a time. It can be done but if you are not good at multitasking you will pay attention to one thought at a time. Even if you are unlike me it's still a good idea. It slows things down. A lot. You brain may get confused. That's a good sign not a bad sign. It means your brain is losing its ability to track your unwanted thoughts (voices) and it give you a chance to ignore the confusion and start out fresh thinking the thoughts you want to think like, 'Should I change my underwear again today. I think I forgot to change it this morning,' or whatever. Functional things like what to say to that complete stranger coming your way. Whether to just smile and say, "How are things with you today? Things are going well with me at the moment," or just a cheery hello. Keep you brain off balance. It is the enemy. It wasn't working for you with all those unwanted thoughts (voices) and for a time this time right now at the moment it is you controlling your brain and thinking what you want to think. If another unwanted thought comes ask it a difficult question like something philosophical or even theological like "Is Jesus Lord?" If the thought wants to appear like it can indeed think which it can't right. It is just a thought. It will have to do a fair amount of thinking. That will slow it down and give you an edge because you know what you are doing even if you don't know the answer to your question but it is even better if they have left you alone and you don't have anything else to think about think about the question and at least become acquainted with what you think about when you present the question to yourself. Their reply if they have one will have to be something you might expect and if it isn't something you particularly care to think about anyway that will make it (the voice) easier to distract yourself away from the thinking of it. Do you see how it works? I did that while I was on the psyche ward just a few days ago for five long days. I have control of my mind now. The only voice I hear now is God and that is just because I gave him permission to talk to me any time he wants. If I didn't believe in God and take comfort from the idea that God talks to me I would be contented not to hear any voices at all.
You see I got the idea from a theory I came up with. I am an author of over 25 books. I started writing when I was nine. I had to slow my thoughts down a lot to write the way a nine year old writes. It was very cumbersome. I managed.
At first I wrote my thoughts word for word the way I thought them knowing almost nothing of spelling and grammar and not really caring to learn at that point. As I became better at writing I got into writing conversations. But what I wrote that I thought didn't sound very good when I read what I had written back. In fact it stunk. So I began to sound out the words in my mind at first just to make a good try at spelling them but then to help me see what they sounded like. As I got better at that I eventually could do a better job at writing conversations. Eventually I was sounding entire phrases, then more than one phrase successfully sounding them out in my mind and eventually entire sentences, then paragraphs and everything was cool and I was being praised for my writing so I persisted. Eventually I found I could sound out entire short short stories in my mind and I was comfortable hearing my own voice doing that. I was in control of it. But as the writing process became more automatic so did the my voice seem more spontaneous and by the end of that stage it was like my voice was telling me a story that I was was doing my best to write down thinking, 'This is good stuff.' Then the voice phenomenon progressed to where I could use different voices for different characters and sound them out in that voice. It got to the point it was so automatic I felt like a secretary typing dictation and my voice was clarifying what needed to be clarified for people to track the story, my characters were thinking an talking to each other but it was becoming more and more automatic until I the one doing the keyboarding was keyboarding all this stuff as some other writer was writing my material and the characters seemed more spontaneous to my readers and the explanations and descriptions done in my voice were well done but it crossed my mind from time to time I didn't know how it was all happening and what part of me was in control. The stories were well received. They should have been. They interested me and even fascinated me to the point of being rapt in the story. But I lost control of my talent. It didn't seem to be me but the voices involved in the thing that were writing the stories and even entire novels. I didn't feel comfortable doing it anymore. It was a tad bit scary but it was weird sort of too.
I had to find a way to regain control of what I was writing. I did it the same way I told you about mindfully choosing what I thought, what the description ought to be, what the characters were thinking and saying and how they were emoting. But can you guess how I did it. I quit writing for over two years. I wrote nothing, nada for over two years and I had a ball just socializing. Then in the end I went back to writing, but I wrote what I wanted to write. When it felt like I was losing control just like with the voices. I did that same procedure and slowed the thought process down, picked and chose mindfully again eventually what I wanted to write.
Do you understand what I said in this entry? My voices were the same way. It was one thing to think, it was another to verbalize in my head, it was another to entertain myself verbalizing in my mind but it was an entirely different thing when I lost control of that and unwanted thoughts (voices) came to me and it was scary as hell when I lost control of my mind to the unwanted thoughts (voices) so I did what I started out saying. I reclaimed my mind whether right or wrong by believing the voices were unwanted thoughts, thinking of them as just thoughts and dealing with them the same way I had had to feel comfortable writing. Now once again I am comfortable with with my thinking and I don't have any unwanted voices (thoughts) at all.
It worked, praise the Lord! But again I should think that you do not have to be religious to do it. Religion is all about choices whether to submit to a deity or God and whether to live my his or her or their or its rules. The beauty of this new theory of mine is it is all about choices and even choosing not to make those choices is your own choice so in a way you see I have drawn you into the theory already. Like it or not even if you choose to ignore my theory you are already participating in it.
I hope someone else on here will give it a try and give me some feedback. It is my hope that I am on to something here. Give it a try. What have you got to lose? You can't help but join in my experiment anyway no matter what you choose even if you choose not to participate for you see that is participating just not much. The beauty of it is it is mindful and it is mindfully taking back control of your brain whether diseased or chemically imbalanced like mine or not.
I hope you try it. Love each and everyone of you that are participating. John.