Negative and Abusive Power as a Major Cause of Negative Hearing Voices

And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
By Bob Dylan

Having false models of predicting a persons emotions, thoughts, and behaviours can be a cause of negative hearing voices. This may be due to bad parenting, and/or due to the way we have been treated by social or mental health workers. Having negative and abusive power forced upon us is a major cause of negative hearing voices.

Hearing voices, and being able to predict what they are saying, gives the voice hearer some magical and psychological status and prestige, in much the same way that it gives social and mental health workers some magical and psychological status and prestige to try and predict our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

If we don't conform to abusive and false models of predicting our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, instead of just acknowledging that we have freedom of thought and action, we can be labelled as irrational, uncooperative, and psychotic. Unless a person is psychic though, they cannot know or predict what a client is thinking, although abusers like to cause suffering and pain to try and predict and control thoughts and emotions by the threat of violence and coercion and/or indoctrination. Abusive power tries to do much the same thing when it creates negative hearing voices.

It's interesting that if I predict what my voices are saying, then they say that I am blocking them off, much like the way that a social or mental health worker would respond. It's OK for social and mental health workers to try and predict our behaviours, and have false models of this imposed upon us by negative power and coercion, but if we start doing this back to
them and predicting their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours, then they don't like it and accuse us of being uncooperative or blocking them off.

I thought it necessary to explain a bit about predicting the content of hearing voices, as this is a complex process. A prediction of what a voice will say may come either before or after hearing it. My voices usually start off as a conscious thought, then the thought becomes an audible voice, and then the voice can become autonomous from my conscious thoughts and
thinking.

If I think something and then hear it, then this is a way of predicting what the voices will say to me. Sometimes I predict a voice that comes from a conscious thought, and other times I predict an audible voice. Sometimes I predict an audible voice before it actually says something and when it is autonomous, often by guessing or assuming what the context of the word, sentence, or phrase will be in the line of conversation.

Voices that are predicted from conscious thoughts are caused by the way that social or mental health workers try to impose their thoughts and values onto us, and voices that are predicted from autonomous audible voices are caused by social or mental health workers trying to control and suppress our emotions, thoughts, and behaviours. All in all, it is oppression that causes negative hearing voices, and not least because a voice can be a suppressed emotion, or a suppressed wilful effort to initiate a thought or action.

I once slowed down my hearing voices by drinking alcohol. I suppose in this way I was medicating myself. When the voice slowed down I could feel a voice as a need or urge to do something. In this way voices are suppressed thoughts, emotions, and actions, and largely to do with coercion and oppression upon us by others.

In order to eliminate oppression we need to give young people more human rights in society and which are equal to the rest of adult society, and to make the psychiatric, social, and mental health system much more democratic so there isn't as much of a power imbalance. There is a trend to say that responsibilities must come before rights, but I believe that some basic
human rights are primary, such as the right to be free from torture and violence, and free from the threat of coercion and violence.

In order to liberate ourselves, I think that it is necessary to write and publish about our experiences and think for ourselves. In that way ourselves individually and collectively, along with our allies in the system, can change things and come up with better individual and social
models of recovery.