This three-part webinar series creates a space where mental health professionals, families, and peer supporters can learn together — building a more compassionate, practical, and human approach to psychosis care.
Weekly In-Person Hearing Voices Group Coming to Berkeley
The Bay Area Hearing Voices Network (BAHVN) is excited to announce a new weekly, in-person adult Hearing Voices group beginning this September in Berkeley.
📍 North Berkeley Senior Center
📅 Every Thursday
🕕 **6:00–7:**30 PM
📌 Corner of Hearst Ave & MLK Jr. Way, Berkeley
The group will be facilitated by BAHVN facilitators Kenneth “Kozi” Arrington and Giselle Kurdi.
“We are excited about being able to once again meet in person with hearing voices group members,” says Kozi Arrington, in-person HV group facilitator. “There is something special about being able to have in person contact with folks that also helps us build community and compassion with group members. I look forward to it.”
Whether you’re new to the Hearing Voices approach or have been part of a group before, all adults with lived experience of hearing voices or other unusual experiences are welcome.
Come connect, share experiences, and learn from one another in a supportive, non-judgmental environment.
More details coming soon. Please share with anyone who may benefit from this group.
#BayAreaHearingVoicesNetwork #BAHVN #HearingVoices #Berkeley #PeerSupport #MentalHealth #HearingVoicesMovement
#MentalHealth #HearingVoicesMovement
Pinched is a beautifully strange 11-minute animation about a man who hears voices and has become remarkably functional while stricken by a profoundly dysfunctional relationship with them. Jack moves through an underground city as a gifted pickpocket, accompanied by entities that cajole, insult, command, and seemingly possess considerably more confidence about the direction of his life than he does. I can certainly relate to much of this and am sure many here can too.
Then something unexpected interrupts the arrangement: human connection.
A stolen object reconnects Jack with a woman from his past, and suddenly the unquestioned authority of his voices isn't so unquestioned anymore. The story becomes less about whether the voices are "real" and more about who gets to decide what Jack does next.
That distinction is probably the reason I'd recommend this to voice-hearers. The film gives the experience form without spending eleven minutes litigating its ontology. Jack's world is simply presented as Jack experiences it.
I do have one substantial HVN-ish criticism of it: the official synopsis ultimately frames love as defeating the voices and even as a "cure" for Jack's sickness. That's a fairly conventional psychiatric/redemption ending grafted onto a film that, for most of its runtime, is doing something much more interesting.
I'd rather read the ending as agency instead of cure.
Jack doesn't triumph because someone proves his voices aren't real. He discovers that their instructions aren't sovereign. There are other relationships, other motivations, and other possible ways of being in the world.
For an 11-minute cartoon, that's an unusually rich depiction of voice-hearing.
And visually it's fantastic, angular, grimy, exaggerated, vaguely noir, with Jack's internal experience bleeding naturally into the physical environment. It feels much closer to somebody attempting to show you what an experience feels like from inside it than making a clinical illustration of schizophrenia.
I suspect given the tone and candor of this short film that it was directed/made by people who've walked a very similar path to all of us here. In many ways this film proves and I hope shows you how surmountable this hellish affliction is.
Thank you for believing in yourself, love to see your thoughts!
Hey everybody, I hope you all have a fantastic week! Feel free to share down below how you’re doing!
Comment here (or make your own post if you have more to say) links or images of experiencing art. You're welcome to post anything that's related to hearing voices or other unique states of consciousness. "Experiencing Media" can be an illustration/painting made by you or anyone else (contemporary or classical), a song from one of your favorite artists mentioning hearing voices, a documentary, or even a recent episode of your favorite show; any art surrounding the lived experience of voice hearers and their unusual states of mind.
The idea is to share as much culture surrounding our lived experience as we can. Please share about the creators, the name of the artist, the title of the work, and what you personally identify with.
