All kinds of people all over the world hear all kinds of voices, and see all kinds of things, think all kinds of things that others don’t.

In this culture we’ve come to believe an orthodoxy that whatever you hear see, think or feel is not also heard seen or thought re we’ve come to believe that if whatever you hear is not also heard by a “mental health professional” then its “not real”.
Well that’s just bollox from the top draw of the special chest of drawers reserved for storing the most special very bestest bollox ever.

And it leaves people trapped, trying to figure just what it is they do experience, what words to use to describe it to others, and it leaves those trying to support them trapped in endless loops arguing about what is real and what is not. “Real” – and “reality” is just a word and will never be a big enough idea to capture the entirety and the variety of what it is we can experience as humans in the world..

And it leaves those who struggle in pain in an endless search of seeking finding the right expert to give them the right diagnosis and prescribe just the right amount of just the right the right drug(s) to fix them.

When we limit ou r understanding of human struggle to a problem of brain chemicals we limit our approach to supporting them to fiddling with chemicals.

Whether or not drugs help an individual, they can never be a simple fix, can never be teh onlyt thing a person might do to find a way – their way- to live in a world that invalidates their experience, invalidates their struggle, invalidates them.

What if, rather than engage in e for instance endless, futile, debates and arguments about what, for instance a “voice” is , whether it quali9fies as “real” if only heard by one person, we instead accept that hearing that voice it is real for the person hearing it and instead ask questions like:

What does the voice say ?
What does that mean for me?
What might it mean ?
What relationship does it have with my life experiences?
What relationship does it have with the way we feel about our life in this world?
What clues might it offer that can help me figure out what needs to change?

Many cultures see value in experiences that – in this culture – we dismiss as “abnormal”, “unacceptable”, “extreme”, “symptoms” of a disordered brain.

This, even when three-in-four of us will, at some point, experience hearing a voice that no one else hears. Over eighty percent of people in long term relationships will hear, see, or otherwise feel the presence of their lost partner after they have passed away. A small study in Spain showed that even 55% of doctors report hearing a voice no one else heard..

What if everything you think you know about people hearing voices is wrong?
or, if not wrong necessarily then a least a but more utter bollox than you thought.

Welcome to the Hearing Voices Cafe.

We invite you to a different kind of conversation about what it means to live as a human being in a world made unfit by humans for humans to live it.

Hearing Voices Cafe
Monday 12th September 2022
4pm to 6pm

72 Howard Park Avenue
Roncesvalles
Toronto