Auditory Hallucination?

[angel2write]

I wanted to ask if anyone has had something like this, and if so, how did you get rid of it?

Sometimes I hear someone screaming in the background of my mind. I know I'm not hearing it with my ears- it's more like I'm remembering it. Only I can't make it stop. The sound just keeps going on, sometimes for three or four hours, sometimes it fades in and out for a couple of days. It's kind of like hearing someone scream in terror from about three blocks away for hours.

It makes me really short-tempered because hearing the scream is like fingernails on a chalkboard. It is very irritating. It takes a lot of my concentration just to cope with hearing the sound, and it's hard for me to pay attention to conversations that are going on around me. It's very intrusive.

This is one of the things that makes me feel like I'm crazy. Is this just a symptom or something? I haven't seen anyone else talking about something like this.

 

[Don]

I know I'm not hearing it with my ears- it's more like I'm remembering it.

I heard phantom "phone ringing" for a week or so, more than fifteen years ago (I was in sales, the phone ringing was part of my trade). I'd earlier become anxious which led to sleeplessness over a prolonged period and had become pretty severely sleep deprived. I thought of the phone ringing as my experiencing auditory hallucinations.

I'd chalk up your 'screaming' as an auditory hallucination. Perhaps stress/sleeplessness is inducing it. If it recurred with me these days, I'd first work on lifestyle changes to reduce my stress levels and improve my sleep. Back then it was combined with depression and anxiety (so, my doctor put me on Prozac for six months).

Don

 

[allitherapy]

This doesn't make you crazy. It also might not be a true hallucination, rather a form of flashback. A hallucination is when you are experiencing something that is not there and never was. A flashback is the re-experiencing of something that happened to you. I sometimes "hear" something one of my abusers said to me. This is a flashback. If I were to "hear" gunshots, it would be a hallucination because I never experienced anything like that. Either way, you are not crazy for having this happen to you, but it may be helpful to try to figure out why it is.

 

[angel2write]

This doesn't make you crazy. It also might not be a true hallucination, rather a form of flashback. A hallucination is when you are experiencing something that is not there and never was. A flashback is the re-experiencing of something that happened to you.

I didn't know you could have a flashback that was only auditory. Two of my traumas involved listening to a young girl screaming for a long period of time, and I've often wondered if that was related. But I didn't know you could have any kind of a flashback that wasn't like, a full sensory experience. Or at least seeing something.

 

[angel2write]

Perhaps stress/sleeplessness is inducing it. If it recurred with me these days, I'd first work on lifestyle changes to reduce my stress levels and improve my sleep. Back then it was combined with depression and anxiety (so, my doctor put me on Prozac for six months).

It does seem to come on when I'm under stress, or when I've been out in public too much.

I guess I have had actual hallucinations a couple of times, though. Once, when my boyfriend was yelling at me about something, my body froze. I felt like I rolled off my bed and saw my body still laying there. I heard my stuffed animals talking to me and I slid downstairs without my body. So that would be a hallucination, right?

 

[allitherapy]

Hearing your stuffed animals talking would be considered more of a hallucination. If your trauma involved hearing a girl screaming and this is what you hear, it is probably a flashback. Flashbacks can involve any of the senses, you don't necessarily have to see anything for it to be a flashback. I sometimes feel hands all over my body; this is a flashback, but I don't see anything when it happens.

 

[just me here]

I awake regularly to the sound of ripping and tearing metal like in a car crash. It is not part of any dream I remember, I don't hear it after I am awake, but I hear it for absolute sure. I used to feel like I needed to make sure my house hadn't been run into or that there wasn't a wreck on the street, but I have been rolling over and going back to sleep for years now and I didn't even think about it being a flashback until I was diagnosed. Thats what it is, and I hear it as sure as anything. It is real, it is a flashback and that is a reality.

 

[seedling]

When I'm doing my relaxation technique I frequently hear the sound of footsteps crunching over snow. It's me walking toward the Lifeflight helicopter. There are always nine steps, once I hear one set I start the same set over again. I see only blackness (no vision really) but I can feel my legs swinging. This is a part of that night that I have no other memory of - a gap in time.
While I'm in the deep relaxation state I can experience this and explore it without feeling tense and anxious.

 

[SonjaMichelle]

I too hear screaming. In fact I've named mine the "screaming bastard". When "he" first manifested it was a disembodied face that would haunt me at night just inches from my face screaming at me. The "screaming bastard" usually comes during high stress periods.

On the lighter side of the aural side, I usually hear locusts/cicada (loud shrill buzzing, almost like electric arching) most of the time. I notice that they get louder as my anxiety ratchets up.

As far as getting rid of it. I usually try to drown them out with louder noise, music, etc.

 

[Don]

I heard my stuffed animals talking to me and I slid downstairs without my body. So that would be a hallucination, right?

My view is that that's somewhat beyond a hallucination but would be classed as a brief psychotic break, "a distorted or nonexistent sense of objective reality" (one of the dictionary definitions). Certainly, extreme stress will lead to that sort of thing for me (my perception of reality becoming distorted).

Don

 

[Sethe]

Yes. Just a few weeks ago I was at a park and immediately thought I heard a waterfall.

This park had no waterfall, but I heard it in my mind.

I was still in my car (had just pulled up) and I was whisked back to a point in time when I was on one of my ex husband's 'trips.' I would have sworn that I was there, even though the place was hundreds of miles away and happened over 5 years ago.

I called my bf and he helped bring me back to the present.

I have other thoughts/flashbacks that I hear, but right now I'm not ready to address them all.

 

[Reclusive]

I've had a hallucination my entire life. It's like someone has a TV or a radio on on the other side of the wall from me. I can hear tones, but not any clear words. When I was little, my mom told me that I was hearing the echoes of conversations that happened during the day. My fiance believes I'm hearing the neighbors talking. As a result, I always slept with a fan or something on to drown out the noise. But for some reason, now that I'm on meds, I don't hear them unless I'm really stressed out. Huh. :P