1. Introduction to the Hearing Voices Movement
What are the new understandings of hearing voices,
and how can hearing voices groups help?

2. How Did it Start? Began 26 years ago, in Holland
One voice hearer really pushed her psychiatrist (Marius Romme) to help her discover,
What can people do when/if the medications aren’t a real solution?
Sandra, the wife of Marius, thought reaching out on TV made sense
700 wrote or called in
And the movement began
Others thought Marius mad to do this

3. What Does the Hearing Voices Movement Involve?
People meeting in groups to share experiences and ideas
New ideas about how to cope with voices
A challenge to existing ideas about what it means to hear voices
Voice hearing is seen as just a normal variation among people, like being left handed or gay
It is not knowing how to handle them that is the problem

4. New Perspective onHearing Voices
Prevalence 4 – 10 % of the population
Normal phenomenon
A minority gets a psychiatric diagnosis
Hearing voices is usually not a sign of illness but just a sign of life problems
And a possible cause of more problems, depending on whether or not the person can handle them successfully!
Slide partly produced by Dick Corstens

5. Construct
Deconstructing symptoms and complaints to real persons and conflicts
Not based on any “diagnosis”
Relating voices to individual solvable problems
These data can direct a recovery plan
Slide partly produced by Dick Corstens

6. Construct what data do we need
Construct what data do we need? Romme and Escher 2000 – The Maastricht Hearing Voices Interview
Identity
Characteristics and content
Triggers
History of the voices
History before voice hearing/youth/ vulnerability
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

7. Key Questions WHO or What do the voices represent?
What problems do the voices represent?
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

8. Ideas You can talk about life history with voice hearers
It is possible to deconstruct the psychiatric label
Often you can identify circumstances and people that triggered the emergence of voices
Underlying problems can be a focus for a recovery plan
Recovery from problems is easier than curing from a ‘brain disease’
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

9. Living With Voices Our ‘Evidence’
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

10. Living with Voices: Key Themes Voices are a survival strategy:
Point at real life problems in the past and the present
Use metaphorical language that can be translated into real life challenges
Are split off feelings - feelings that are unbearable
Are awful messages about terrifying past experiences
Slide produced by Dick Corstens 10

11. Causes of Hearing Voices: (as reported by the 50 voice hearers in the book)
Endorsement
Percentage
Sexual abuse 18
36 %
Emotional neglect 11
22 %
Adolescent problems 6
12 %
High stress 4
8 %
Being bullied 2
4 %
Physical abuse
Not clear 7
14 %
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

12. Living with Voices: Key Themes ‘Recovery’ is not about getting rid of
voices but about:
The person understanding their voices in relation to their life experiences
The person changing their relationship with their voices so that the voices become harmless and/or helpful.
Slide produced by Dick Corstens 12

13. Stress
Sense of threat and negative mood leads to hypervigilance for more input from voices (listening harder for them)
Hearing a voice
Interpret voice as a threat
Perception of threat increases negative mood

14. Stress
Accepting the voices and taking action to reduce stress results in less stress over time, & less preoccupation with voices
Hearing a voice
Interpret voice as an effect of stress
Accept the voice as a signal of stress, take action to reduce the stress

15. Introducing Jacqui Dillon
Voice hearer, and
National Chair of the Hearing Voices Network in England ,and
a Board member of Intervoice – the International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices
More about Jacqui at

16. Recovery is often only possible outside of traditional, biological psychiatry, because of the following problems:
Equating hearing voices with the diagnosis of schizophrenia
‘Schizophrenia’ is a lifelong label
The ‘no hope’ and ‘lifelong illness’ approach
The passive victim of pathology approach – not encouraged to help oneself
The dominance of the diagnosis of schizophrenia – disregarding all other problems
Difficulties in social acceptance arising from the diagnosis of schizophrenia
The negative effects of psychiatric hospital admission
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

17. Problems with Biopsychiatric Approach, continued:
When medication doesn’t have the desired effect, no alternatives are suggested
Medication leading to social breakdown
Inability to accept people’s experiences
Neither interest in the voices nor in what underlies the experience
The disease concept destroying the relationship and possibility of a therapeutic alliance between the voice hearer and professionals
Promoting a belief in society that hearing voices is a sign of madness
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

18. Avoiding exposure to voice content can lead to prolonged vulnerability
Fore example, when critical remarks are avoided, it is difficult to put them into perspective
Most common coping tools: medications & distraction
Both involve avoidance of voice content
People in the mental health system are often afraid of talking about voices for fear of making them seem more “real”
But they already are a real experience
And not talking about them increases isolation by making the person alone in their experience
And removes the chance to talk about the best ways to cope

19. Ron Coleman & Paul Baker
Ron Coleman is a voice hearer, and international trainer – more at or at
Paul Baker, coordinator of Intervoice, the International Community for Hearing Voices
Ron and Paul spoke at the Lila Peer Club a few years ago, catch it on youtube starting at tation-by-ron-coleman-and-paul-baker/

20. Living with Voices: Key Themes
Important steps in recovering from the distress
associated with hearing voices:
Meeting someone who takes an interest in the voice hearer as a person
Giving hope by normalising the experience and showing that there is a way out
Meeting people who accept the voices as real; being accepted as a voice hearer by others, but also by oneself
Becoming actively interested in the hearing voices experience
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

21. Living with Voices Eleanor says:
“I went back to Bradford and my new psychiatrist was Pat Bracken and that was a massive help. The very first time I met him he said to me: ‘Hi Eleanor, nice to meet you. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?’ So I just looked at him and said, ‘I’m Eleanor and I'm a schizophrenic.’ and in his quiet, Irish voice he said something very powerful; ‘I don’t want to know what other people have told you about yourself, I want to know about you.’”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

22. Eleanor Longden Voice Hearer and now a psychologist
She tells her story in detail on the DVD “Knowing You, Knowing You” which is in the NAMI library
Her Ted Talk has received millions of views, see es_in_my_head?language=en

23. Living with Voices: Key Themes
Important steps in recovering from the distress
associated with hearing voices:
Recognising the voices as personal and becoming the owner of your voices
Changing the power structure between you and your voices
Making choices
Changing the relationship with your voices
Recognising ones own emotions, accepting them and expressing them
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

24. Voice Hearing Groups
Ethos of self help, of mutual respect, support and empathy
No assumption of illness, freedom to interpret experiences in any way
No one expert; All are experts
Group is a community to which people belong  
No referral needed, members join for as long as it suits them  

25. Eugene Hearing Voices Where: at LILA, 20 E. 13th, Eugene
When: Every first Thursday, 1:00-2:30 PM
Cost: Free!
Who can come: Anyone who hears voices , sees visions, experiences “extreme states” and/or has “unusual beliefs”
Facilitators are people who have experiences with hearing voices and/or other “extreme states”

26. Talking to Voices
The next clip features Rufus May, speaking about how he helped a voice hearer change her relationship with a voice by talking to the voice directly
This is called “Voice Dialogue”
Sometimes done by professionals, sometimes by peers
Rufus is
A psychologist
A person formerly diagnosed with schizophrenia
More on Rufus & his ideas at

27. Problematic ways of coping with voices:
Flight: Relying on avoidance and distraction
Issues aren’t dealt with, person feels too weak to face the voice
Fight: Arguing with the voice, trying to change it’s mind
Fighting with the voice can aggravate conflict and be a distraction from life
Submission: Giving in to the voice
Even if voice demands are not harmful, personal power is diminished

28. Better way of coping with voices:
Alternating between attending to, and ignoring, the voices
Can choose the best method for the occasion, or set “appointments” with them
Be both assertive and friendly with the voices
Able to resist pressure from voices and to not necessarily take them literally, while seeing them as clues regarding issues that may need attended to

29. Living with Voices Andreas says:
“I realised that the continuous chain of hatred in the relationship between me and my voices needed a breakthrough. Only when I acknowledged that many things the voices were telling me were true did I become able to forgive them. Only when I asked the angry voices to forgive me did I become less depressed. “
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

30. Living with Voices Antje says:
“A shaman taught me to talk friendly and slowly to my voices, and ask them to go to the place they belong. After three or four weeks, talking three or four time a day to the voices in this friendly, slow way, they slowed down and became quieter. This made is possible to let the voices I’d heard for so many years vanish.”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

31. Living with Voices Ami says:
“My relationship with my voices changed when I learned to see them as a signal of my problems, when I learned to react positively to them. When they said to me, ‘Look at her, what a disaster’, I looked in the mirror and thought ‘They are right, I should dress properly’. From a negative influence they became a stimulus.”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

32. Living with Voices Audrey says:
“One of the things I did was to support Aud junior (child's voice) to confront the blue voice (voice of abuser). It took quite a lot, supporting her to stand up to him and to tell him what he did was wrong. He did back off and she became stronger. That was a really big breakthrough and took a huge amount of power away from that blue voice.”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

33. Living with Voices Debra says:
“I also began exploring other areas of my life and discovered what role the voices played in my life: the need to feel connected to someone, a need for a friend, a need to belong. The voices kept me so busy I had no time for any other relationship, and they also spared me the pain and hurt I had experienced by numerous rejections from people in the past. At least they didn’t desert me. I decided I needed to take the risk of inviting real people into my world, and cautiously and clumsily this became my new quest.”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

34. Living with Voices Rufus says:
“I believe that, if we can educate people to respect voice hearing and other unusual experiences, there will be a big pressure on psychiatry to change; to stop just trying to repress these experiences, rather than understanding them and helping people to live with them and get on with their lives.”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

35. Living with Voices
Eleanor says:
“I have had to look down into that black hole and my mind has taken me to some of the worst places that a human mind can go to, but I got through that and I am still here and I am still a voice hearer…It is an incredibly special and unique experience. I am so glad that I have been given the opportunity to see it that way because recovery is a fundamental human right and I shouldn’t be the exception, I should be the rule. That is why I want to be part of this movement to change the way we relate to human experience and diversity.
Your soul can’t breathe when your mind has been colonised.”
Slide produced by Dick Corstens

36. Eugene Hearing Voices Where: at LILA, 20 E. 13th, Eugene
When: Every first Thursday, 1:00-2:30 PM
Cost: Free!
Who can come: Anyone who hears voices , sees visions, experiences “extreme states” and/or has “unusual beliefs”
Facilitators are people who have experiences with hearing voices and/or other “extreme states”

37. Linehan’s STATES OF MIND applied to experiences outside of consensual reality
Slide by Isabel Clarke and Donna Rutherford