“Hearing voices” – and hearing voices that others don’t- is not just describing a wide range of human experiences that has been mystified and made taboo but which is remarkably common.

In fact, hearing voices regularly is about as common as left handedness – and its not that long ago people who were left-handed were told they were evil,  had hands strapped down, broken were hit in school and worse to “normalise” their deviance.

Perhaps one illustrative difference between left-handedness and hearing voices might be that that not many of us experience being left-handed for a period, whereas 75%, three-in-four, of us will experience an episode where we will hear a voice, or voices, that no one else does.

“Hearing voices” also refers to an approach – and a broad one- in which we accept hearing voices as part of human experience – one that might be difficult but that has some meaning, and might even offer us clues and insights to finding our way through life’s [even] larger difficulties.


No one but you can own your experience.

In a hearing voices approach it is a key value and a basic practice that we do not tell others what [we think] their voices are.

We might – perhaps  inevitably will – have our own ideas and theories, explanations but we don’t seek to impose our own ideas or theories or explanations on you about what you experience.

Partly because we don’t know – because nobody does know or can know what another person is experiencing unless we ask – and listen really hard…

But mostly out of basic, simple respect.