Does anybody hear voices in the rain?

[TheTwinlessTwin]

I live somewhere that doesn't get much rain but on ocasion we get a good storm. I like to sit outside my house at night, sort of post up and relax, keep an eye and ear on things. The rain is relaxing and I love it but I can't hear clearly or see as well and I start getting nervous.

My mind starts playing tricks on me and the drainage, splashing, wind, and creaking sounds like men talking in the near distance. I immediately want to hear and see what they are doing. I'm constantly trying to stay hidden in the dark, move slowly, not make sound. Inside i'm checking doors and windows in rotation nonstop unless I'm eating or sleeping.

Inside the house it's no better even though I don't hear anything. Knowing how low the visibility is and how bad the roads are I'm expecting an attack. They could creep up under cover of the clouds and rain, do their worst, and get out before police could arrive due to driving conditions being poor. Even shot tracking radar doesn't work as good in the rain.

The paranoia makes me feel like such a broken lunatic and mind my starts thinking about what would make me this way. So it all gets a bit intense. Intrusive stuff starts popping up. I get little bits of memories that I can't ignore. The shock and depression start sinking in with the hypervigilance and make it a rough night.

I was hoping to hear some of everyone elses' advice and methods for dealing with rain or late night hypervigilance. I don't want to ignore the rain but I also can't stop hearing distant voices and expecting trouble. Then the nasty stuff starts replaying in my mind.

 

[littleoc]

I have a question, if you could clarify something. When you said that you can’t hear or see clearly, do you mean that you’ve been losing vision or hearing, or do you mean that in the moment, you begin to lose them while your anxious feelings increase?

If you have been losing vision and/or hearing lately, it’s normal for the brain to try to make sense of gaps in a sense by filling them in with other information. I can explain this deeper if you’re curious, but science explanation aside, if you have a blind spot, your brain is not going to accept that it’s there and it will try to fill in the details for a full picture. It’s the same for sounds.

If that’s not what you meant, then it could be related to your hypervigilance. Because you can’t watch your back as effectively with hearing and sound being flooded with information, maybe it’s overwhelming you a little.

If that’s true, maybe a therapist or us could offer suggestions on how to feel more secure while listening to something you enjoy, or (even better) you could slowly get comfortable being out like that again. (I hope that sentence makes sense — it’s late here, sorry!)

For the time being, it might not hurt to look into a psychiatrist to see if there’s a medication that can gently reduce your anxiety — it doesn’t have to be a permanent solution. Just something to help while you’re working this out.

Other people will probably have even more helpful things to say. It’s been so long ago, but this has happened to me too. I couldn’t go hardly anywhere. It’s been seven years or so since that was a thing, though, so all I can truly say is that it isn’t permanent. You won’t have to deal with this forever. :hug:

 

[TheTwinlessTwin]

I have a question, if you could clarify something. When you said that you can’t hear or see clearly, do you mean that you’ve been losing vision or hearing, or do you mean that in the moment, you begin to lose them while your anxious feelings increase?

Because you can’t watch your back as effectively with hearing and sound being flooded with information

It's the latter, I can't physically see and hear as clearly. I watch my surroundings around me and listen for anyone approaching. With the rain I can't see or hear anything as well, then I feel like I can hear people in the distance but it's just my ears playing tricks on me from all the noise and my paranoia.

I do talk to my primary doctor about meds and some do help. I'm seeing a psychiatrist in a few weeks as well so hopefully that will help even more. We might try propranolol and ativan until therapy works more.

I do want to get more comfortable being in the rain or in other situations that mess with me. It makes sense, no worries! It's late here too so if we get mixed up it's no big deal. My therapist is going start emdr soon to help me try and lessen my responses to certain things. I'm bad around certain stuff and I'm tired of avoiding it. I want to be able to somewhat control my body and emotions in those situations without distractions, looking away, or noise canceling headphones.

I'm glad you are doing better. That gives me a lot of hope. I mostly hear about negative outcomes and it wears on me.

 

[Friday]

Finding meaningful patterns in meaningless noise is something the brain is simply wired to do. It’s fundamentally how we see & hear

((If you’ve ever taken a medication or drug -like LSD- that removes the filters the brain uses to only pay attention to the “important” bits? Or that removes the brain’s ability to fill in the gaps, so all movement has “tracers”? (Flipbooks and old style films work because we fill in the gaps when things move) You’d see we only really see/hear about 10% of what we actually see & hear.))

It’s ALSO why we see faces in nature, or shapes in clouds, virgins on toast; hear the phone ringing when using a hair dryer, voices in the rain, etc.

It takes about 3 days -max- for the brain to acclimate to ambient anything. IE learn to ignore what it doesn’t view as important. Less time if it’s something we’re exposed to, often. (And also why some people BATHE in that goddawful perfume they wear. They put it on, smell awesome, then it “fades”. It does NOT fade :shifty: They’ve simply acclimated to the smell, so are no longer noticing it. So they apply it again. Smell awesome. It fades. Again, and again, and again. And by lunchtime? Could fell an ox 3 blocks over with the stink of it. And still think it’s faded. And apply again. :banghead: )

Acclimation & Pattern Recognition are simply how we interact with the world... not seeing every dust mote on every sunbeam, whilst giving real objects hard edges.

Optical illusions play with the way our brains do that, and can be a fun way to screw with yourself :sneaky:

Unless you’re having flashbacks / your trauma was in the rain? Your brain is probably just attempting to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.

 

[TheTwinlessTwin]

@Friday I think you are right. My mind is trying to find speech patterns in the ambient noise. It's meaningless noise and I'm not used to it because it normally doesn't rain here.

I dealt with some trauma in the rain and from severe weather but it's not flashbacks. I always start to dissociate when I have flashbacks and I haven't lately.

 

[Neverthesame]

I don't know if this will be any comfort, but I want to point out that while yes the rain does impede your hearing and visibility, it does the same to any would be attackers.

 

[littleoc]

EMDR will help you tremendously! It may not feel like it at first, but over time it will help reduce many symptoms.

If you hang around these forums enough, you'll see a lot more happy endings than sad ones. That's because, with people like us who actually try as hard as we are (just by reaching out), we keep working and working toward our goals and eventually we suddenly realize that life is better now than it used to be. You'll get there, don't worry. It's not like this forever.