[Throwaway account for posting]
Hiiii, I have been hearing voices for almost four years now. There are five of them (two male, three female). I can communicate with them both in my head and when speaking out loud, and they are capable of responding to me in perfectly logical, on-topic (but usually unkind) sentences…as if I were talking to any real person outside my head. They can also chat amongst themselves. Capable of claiming to be real people, acknowledging their own “existences”, and referring to themselves/answering by names/nicknames.
The first year or two, things were really hectic. Constant ear-splitting screaming, nonstop ridicule and bullying, and me getting swept away in their elaborate lies and scenarios that severely warped my self perception and my reality. And because I thought it was all happening outside of my head/was a part of reality, I sorta just “ran with it all” and never explained to anyone that I was hearing voices. Said some really out of pocket shit every once in a while, and ofc wasn't acting nearly normal enough to not get thrown into psych wards (albeit, most times were due to suicide attempts related to dealing with this), but I managed to maintain a semi-normal enough composure to not raise any significant alarm bells while being there. I really wish I had said something in those instances, though.
Anyways, once I was able to pick apart their lies and realized that none of what the voices were saying was remotely possible within my reality, nor were any of their threats happening (AND also finally realized that everything I was hearing was literally just inside my head), anything you would classify as possible paranoia or a delusion of sort just went away soon after. And over time, the voices went from trying to manipulate me/my reality with their bullshit and holding days long arguments with me to mostly just annoyingly repeating a few harsh phrases now…almost like they’ve given up on harassing me bc it just doesn’t work lol. Life is still rough and exhausting, but it's tolerable enough for now.
And sidenote: Bless Abilify for significantly toning down their volume. Granted, I still have to sleep with earbuds/youtube videos because their collective rambling and screaming is still very much present and very obnoxious at night.
SOOO my point of posting this: I guess I’m ultimately just sharing parts of my experiences here, but I also want to know how common my particular experience is and find others who have voices like this, or sorta just dealt with their voices this way. Also wanna know how common it is to be hearing things without having other symptoms linked to psychosis.