Schizophrenia, the Pink Elephant and Imagination

If someone says to you “don’t think about a pink elephant”, it’s naturally difficult not to have an image of one spring into your head (unless, of course, you've never seen an elephant).

The same idea applies certainly when it comes to my experience of what some may term 'hearing voices' and maybe to the experience of others too.

However, in place of someone telling me not to think of a pink elephant (in order to conjure up the image of one), you’ll find worry there.

The worry can be about many things, but they all gravitate about the same point, which is that I am really a bad person who wants to do horrible things.

Where it gets tricky is that this worry isn’t voiced internally – so, for example, I’m not consciously going around with the thought in my head: “I don’t want to hurt him (or her)!”

The unfortunate effect of this lack of internally voiced worry is that it is me who seems to be directly generating the 'voices'. 

It seems as though my mind jumps straight in with, for example, the thought of “punch him/her!” (or the equivalent visualisation of such) in response to a situation. It does this with no apparent stimulation other than what one would naturally assume (and I have done) must be the desire to punch random men and women.

When it came along, the idea of hearing voices really appealed to me simply because it instantly absolved me of all the guilt that I had charged myself with over the years. 

I welcomed it with open arms because the content of the 'voices' didn't sit at all well with my character. By defining them as voices meant that I could separate these bad, foreign feeling thoughts from my own good thoughts.

Interestingly, although for a long time I felt as though I had no imagination, now I see that my imagination was always there, I just didn’t recognise it as what it actually was, which, as it turns out is these voices in my head.

It’s only since happening upon the idea of the pink elephant, that I have been able to reach this conclusion. The pink elephant - or rather, the general worry - stimulates my imagination into thinking of horrible things; just like how it’s difficult to stop yourself thinking of a pink elephant when you are told not to think of one.

Unfortunately the horrible things are easily misconstrued as negative due to their content - whereas in reality this is not the case at all.

I now no longer berate myself for hearing these voices. Instead I give myself a big pat on the back when they spring into my mind because they show that I am a very caring person (after all the sole reason for their existence is my desire not to think them). 

I then give myself a second pat on the back in congratulations for having an imagination which can come up with such a creative - albeit terrible - idea; and also picture it so vividly that, at one point, it proved so paralysing to my existence.

I now no longer think of myself a ‘voice hearer’ but instead I think that perhaps the description: 'voice imaginer' is more apt.

Because I had suppressed it out of fear for so many years, I am still in the process of re-engaging with my imagination. I have found that mindfulness meditation has helped, and continue to help me enormously along this path (I often take time to sit back and mindfully listen to and watch my imagination).

Since seeing the voices this way I have noticed a huge difference. It's as though, now that I have owned them using the idea of the pink elephant, they have literally given up their bombardment of my mind.