I'm Not Letting Schizoaffective Voices Rule My Life

As I’ve confided before, one of the most debilitating symptoms of my schizoaffective disorder is that I hear voices. I’ve been hearing schizoaffective voices a lot more often lately. I’ve been hearing them so often that I called my psychopharmacologist to raise the dosage of my antipsychotic medication. That helped a little bit, but I’m still hearing them more often than I’d like to. Here’s how I’m dealing with these schizoaffective voices.

I Don’t Want the Schizoaffective Voices to Rule My Life

I used to stop whatever I was doing and go home the minute I started hearing the schizoaffective “voices,” the auditory hallucinations of schizoaffective disorder. But lately, I’ve been sticking it out. I’m usually out with my husband Tom or my parents anyway, so I’m with safe people. I don’t want the voices to rule my life.

This is not to say that it’s easy to be out in public while hearing voices. It’s not—especially when the voices feed on the drone of chatter often heard in, say, a noisy restaurant.

But do you know what else the voices feed on? Fear. So by giving in to my voices and saying, “I can’t be here” when they come on, I’m feeding them. And that’s what I’ve been doing with them for the last 20 years. So now I’m developing new ways to cope with schizoaffective voices.

New Ways to Cope with Schizoaffective Voices

I’m privileged in that I can be out in public while hearing voices and cope with them. I don’t talk back to them, and I don’t do anything they might tell me to do, though sometimes they are little more than a buzz. I don’t even really act differently when I’m hearing voices.

As hard as I try not to let them scare me, they can be scary, though. Recently, Tom and I were at our favorite restaurant while I was hearing them. I had ordered sushi. I remember staring at a roll of sushi as a way to ground myself within the sea of bits of conversation that I felt drowning me. Luckily the antianxiety medication—prescribed by my doctor to take as needed—kicked in and I started to feel more stable.

I’ve even started keeping a list of situations I’ve gotten through while hearing schizoaffective voices. I look at the list often. I’m taking a class right now, and I’ve heard voices while at the class. I don’t have Tom or either of my parents at the class. I use the class to distract myself when I’m hearing voices.

So now, when I’m hearing schizoaffective voices away from home, I do my very best not to fear them and I distract myself from them. And my life is a lot fuller from not rushing home the instant voices come to call.