When Your Inner Voice Is Trying To Kill You

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Apparently Catherine

I always tell people to ‘trust their gut’ when they are making decisions, generally it is a statement I wholeheartedly agree with, but when I am unwell I can’t tell if my gut instinct is trying to keep me safe anymore, or if it is in fact, trying to kill me.

Perhaps it would be easier if I just ‘heard voices’ in the traditional way, then I could more readily define the difference between what is real and what is not, what I should believe and what I shouldn’t. Maybe if it was more of a situation where ‘Fred’ said it, then it could be potentially ignored; but this is different, it isn’t an audio hallucination, someone/thing isn’t actually ‘talking to me’ through my ears, but the words still come uncontrollably, the sentences are whispered, muttered, or even screamed at me depending on the situation, only it’s all communicated telepathically rather than audibly.

I sometimes ‘see’ these thoughts too, but as blasts of images in my mind’s eye not my actual eyes, they are not 3 dimensional and sitting on the couch, the same way as I feel the ‘voices’ rather than hear them through my ears. It can be so fucking deafening at times that you can’t think properly or concentrate on anything else.

My life is analyzed continuously, narrated by my inner demons, those who snicker and judge. The thoughts whirl around in my brain on repeat, over and over and over again.

“Intrusive thoughts” I believe is the technical term. Stupid stuff, sad stuff, weird stuff that I don’t even understand the relevance of like a narrated repetition of names or dates or random sentences.

I often see black and white photographs of people and places that I have never known or never been to, over and over like a film reel, the stuff in the pictures usually isn’t frightening in itself but it’s frightening because there is no reason for it, it doesn’t make sense. – When I first saw the television show ‘Orange Is The New Black’ I had an anxiety attack because the opening sequence with the faces is very similar to how these ‘film reels’ have always played out in my mind and with my husband sitting next to me I suddenly felt so exposed.

And then there’s the mean thoughts of course: “You are pointless”, “You don’t deserve to live”, “Kill Yourself” Only a fat pathetic piece of shit would say/do/think something like that”, “How is it possible for someone to be as dumb and hopeless as you are?” These thoughts have nothing nice to say and although I know that they are not, they feel like a separate entity within my head because they ‘speak’ to me as though I am a different person from them and refer to themselves also “I can’t believe you would be that fucking stupid!”

There are times when I walk past a knife and think nothing of it, and other times where I am overcome with the urge to grab it and stab it deep into my body, I see images of crimson blood pumping from my arteries and I feel an evil presence smile and say it will have the last laugh. “That’s what you get, bitch!”

What scares me the most though is when I realise that I don’t know if the thoughts were my own or the bad ‘Intrusive’ ones, when they ‘feel’ like they are right and I just ‘know’ them to be, but then on the other hand what they are saying seems to go against everything that the rest of the world says or believes and I know they would sound crazy to other people if I spoke them aloud.

I can’t trust my inner voice anymore.

These thoughts never really stop, at times they slow down, quieten down, become ignorable but yet I feel they are ever present, taking up realestate in my mind, whispering, waiting for their chance to take over once again.