Talk about your experience with hearing voices or sounds or music, or your lack of hearing such things.
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
Ahh.. The voices. This is an interesting thing for me. I have a hearing disability which makes the “voices” question an interesting one.
I don’t hear voices. Not even the voices of real-world people that speak to me. Instead I rely on lipreading and internally process what the person is saying. So the same process applies to both external and internal voices, making it harder to distinguish between the two different categories.
I also learned that “I” do not think in a language. I think in somewhat raw thoughts. So the way I distinguish my own thoughts and inner voice from the voices of others inside is this: If I am thinking in English or any perceptible language the thoughts are NOT mine. Even if I agree with the thoughts that I’m having.
It’s an odd experience, actually.
Music.. Yes. I hear music. I hear people yelling my name, telling me to shut up, telling each other to shut up, etc. But I perceive these things as thoughts and not sounds.
I think that this is what kept me from believing that I had DID for a long while. Because what I perceived was multiple levels of “self”. I thought I was conflicted. I thought that my brain was short-wiring and spazzing out and throwing random thoughts at me. I knew that I had a lot of knowledge that I had no memory of obtaining.. I knew that I lost time, but thought it was common because everyone always said “Where did time go?” and made it seem like it was common. People always talked about holding conversations with themselves… So when I would think in arguments.. often passionate arguments.. I just thought that I was holding a conversation with myself. You know,perfectly normal-like?
Hah.