Christs, Dinosaurs, and Xanax
What won't we do to feel better
Okay, so the next post is definitely on overcoming depression one of the ideas I’m implementing, cross my heart 🫰
Yet for now, let’s focus on weird things we do or experience to feel better. Say, VOICES.
Has it got supporting voices in its nasty heads?
The voices in psychosis and schizophrenia (present in 60-80% cases) are not always bad. Sometimes, they tell you to…do the dishes?
Coaching voices
Some people’s voices are stern but helping - acting as coaches, telling them to do chores and not procrastinate. Would a pomodoro session with such a voice count as body doubling? Bodyless doubling?…
Sometimes it’s dinosaurs 🦕🦖 who are helping, as per a Reddit comment:
They were EVERYWHERE. They would praise me. I was their god. It was comforting.
And even better helpers - woman named Kirsty had a voice remind her to take her pills, for instance!
In India, more than half trial participants had their voices command to do tasks. They are less threatening, than, say, US voices. I’m still waiting for cases of San Francisco voices helping someone raise a VC round.
Me, I’d love a CBT voice…
So, why do we hear voices at all?
Why the voices?
Margaret didn’t believe voices were coming from ‘inside her head’ as they sounded too realistic
So, why do people experience auditory hallucinations? Two factors are thought to contribute:
increased activity in brain’s sensory areas ➡️ in complex terms, the depolarization thresholds in visual, auditory etc. parts of brain are lower. Recent studies have shown that brain fails to suppress own self-generated speech, and exhibits increased aberrant connectivity between sensory and language zones.
worse ability to distinguish own speech from external ones (i.e. failure to attribute, say, a sentence to oneself or the ‘environment’)
In 100% neurocognitive terms those are Efference Copy (EC) and Corollary Discharge (CD), respectively:
A simple analogy that’s often used is tickling:
you can’t tickle yourself as you know it’s coming
schizophrenic patients sometimes can - prediction’s broken, as with the inner voice
Okay, we now know of coaching voices and where do they come from. It’s all flowers and fairies when the voice is benign, but what can be done about an abusive or aggressive voice? Well, modern shamans (cognitive scientists, psychotherapists) have thought of a thing!
James Cameron’s…Avatar therapy
What if you could finally talk back to that mofo voice in your head?
Patients create a digital avatar - a face and voice, sometimes VR. Then, in a controlled session, they confront it. A therapist, using voice modulation software, plays the role of the hostile voice, and over time, the patient learns to dominate the conversation. The avatar, once all-powerful and menacing, begins to back down, eventually becoming supportive (as long as your therapist continues receiving checks).
Akin to a rubber hand illusion (yes, the image was intentionally chosen for us to suffer):
Not always you can come at terms with the voice. Or when you’re a personification of a god, or a God. Religious voices and delusions appear in 16-50% (in different trials) of cases. So, let me tell you the Ypsilanti Christs story (and a couple of others) - it’s both hilarious and cautionary in the “don’t play an omniscient or it may bite you back”.
Three Jesuses walk into a ward
Milton Rokeach, a renowned psychologist, heard about two women who believed themselves to be Virgin Maries at a ward. As there could only be one Mary - the other returned from her delusion after a talk (an argument)?
Milton thought that the same could work with the figure of Savior (Jesus). He placed three men (Joseph Cassel, Clyde Benson, and Leon Gabor) with the corresponding beliefs into Ypsilanti hospital, introducing them on July 1, 1959.
Instead of two of them being healed, as Rokeach believed (hehe) - they first argued for weeks (sometimes fighting - not something the son of God would do..), then formed friendships, humored each other’s beliefs. Even hiring a cute research assistant to flirt with Leon didn’t help!
The fun thing - later, in 1984, Milton wrote in a memoire:
“…while I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing mine-of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives within the framework of a ‘total institution’.”
This case, ever so popular, resulted in a movie being shot - Three Christs (2017).
Not only Jesuses, though - some have delusions of being Zeus’ sons (not an isolated case!). Some are considering themselves Napoleon.
From internal voices and delusions helping we’re off to external things and behaviors. Do you feel safe?
Has it got Xanax in its anxious little pocketses?
Can having a pill in the pocket help anxiety?
I’ve long pondered, “Can just having an item at hand help anxiety?”. Especially after watching Inception with its idea of reality-checking ‘totem’ items - I don’t know why, they’re almost non-relating.
But still - say, imagine having a pack of anxiety pills in one’s pocket before the performance, and getting that “I’ll ALWAYS be able to use it” type of confidence - will it have effect on actual anxiety levels?
Turns out, it can - it’s a well-known phenomenon called a safety behavior.
Yes, they help us feel better - but are they actually helping long-term? The overall consensus says ‘not quite’.
While they can mitigate acute anxiety, they can:
become self-fulfilling prophecies
avert us from exposing to our fears, and
increase our self-obsessed focus (the one thing metacognitive therapy tries to dismantle)
If nothing else helps, one can always imagine a piece of paper has LSD on it and benefit from the psychedelic placebo effect (tried and tested), or if life continues sucking - suck on a pacifier (a growing trend, but yeah), preferably dipped in lavender (will help even more).
Conclusions
Feel good, don’t fear the voices (and the Reaper!), dream on and don’t suck anything ‘lest it’s lavender-based!
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