FILTERING THE VOICES

It can be useful for some people to distinguish between voices which say more positive things, and those that say more negative things, and to try and seek out the positive or constructive ones. This could mean asking the positive voices for help with dealing with the more challenging voices, or trying to pay more attention to, or build a stronger relationship with the positive ones.

Find out more

Read

Ron Ungar (2018). More on seeking out positive and constructive voices while tuning out voices that tend to be negative. Recoveryfromschizophrenia.org.

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Seeking out positive and constructive voices while tuning out voices that tend to be negative

An excerpt from Ron Ungar’s ‘Some ideas about how to cope with voices'

This involves, first, making an effort to distinguish which voices are really offering something constructive versus those that are just causing trouble. Then, for example, when you hear a negative voice, you can instead seek out the company of one of your more positive voices. (One way of calling it up might be just being curious about what the positive voice might say, or imagining what it would say, or remembering the kinds of things your positive voice said in the past.) You might even try asking the positive voice for advice on how to deal with the negative voices.

If you tell someone, “don’t think about elephants,” it’s elephants that they’ll think about. So don’t worry about trying to “not hear” destructive voices; instead just focus on paying attention to constructive ones.

Any focus on something constructive, that makes you feel good about yourself and what you are doing in the world, can help create good feelings that protect you from the voices.

Remember that to really make the constructive things you are doing count, you have to give yourself credit for them. One way of doing this is to write each day in your journal about what you did that day that was constructive, and perhaps what you plan to do in the next day.