Interesting TED talk on schizophrenia as a TMS equivalent

So I just came across this new TED talk, by a woman who heard voices:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eleanor_longden_the_voices_in_my_head.html

It's really interesting. She said the voices were a 'sane response to insane circumstances', and that her condition got worse when she sought medical attention (sound familiar?). The key to her getting better was to finally realise that the voices were a response to emotional childhood trauma. She never mentions TMS but the parallels are striking, right down to her thanking the voices when they got bad for telling her something was up emotionally.

I think it's an interesting manifestation of a mindbody syndrome, because in her case her unconscious was directly talking to her conscious mind. Of course, it's still cryptic and it's not straightforward to work out what the unconscious is saying, in the same way that it talks to us through pain symptoms.

Like many of us, she was severely let down and hurt by many people she encountered in the medical establishment. She managed to find her way out and recover, but it makes me sad to think of how many other people with similar conditions who have had their lives ruined.

 

I think we often hear voices in our head in a normal way.
They tell us normal everyday things like "you need to leave now or you will be late" or "do you really need to have another cookie." Because these messages are in agreement with our conscious thoughts we do not perceive them as coming from an outside source. It is just another way of thinking.
But I think that people can have thoughts that are so violent or disturbing [i.e. repressed thoughts] that they are unable to think of the thoughts as coming from them. So the voice is perceived as coming from an outside source.

 

I enjoyed this very much. Thanks for posting it, Moose.

 

No problem!

 

An Interesting documentary on how childhood trauma can be the root cause of hallucinations and hearing voices etc

Click here to view this on Vimeo

Documentary: Why Did I Go Mad? 2017

For hundreds of years, psychiatry has treated voices and hallucinations as an enemy – regarding them as ‘insanity’ or ‘madness’ and seeing them as something to be quashed and even frightened of. But today, new scientific and psychological insights into how the brain works are leading to a radical rethink on what such experiences are – and how they should be treated.

Horizon follows three people living with voices, hallucinations and paranoia, to explore what causes this kind of phenomena. Providing a rare first-hand insight into these experiences, they reveal just what it is like to live with them day to day. They examine the impact of social, biological and environmental influences on conditions traditionally associated with insanity, such as schizophrenia and psychosis, and within the film they look at how new ways of understanding the brain are leading to a dramatic change in treatments and approaches, and examine whether targeting the root causes of psychosis can lead to recovery.