Hard of Hearing and Hallucinating
Being hard of hearing can be a blessing when you have audio hallucinations.
I’ve always been hard of hearing, with about 60% hearing loss. On top of that, when I was in my early 20’s someone threw a big firecracker at my head and blew out my left eardrum (I’m just glad it wasn’t my left eye). I’ve been deaf in my left ear ever since. So basically I get by with 40% hearing in my right ear.
I’m also schizoaffective bipolar, and before I got on my current meds, I had a lot of audio hallucinations. I would often hear voices, screams, footsteps, doors opening and closing, mice scratching in the walls, and even things like gunshots.
I thought a lot of these sounds were real and I got to the point where I often thought that someone was invading my home, coming to attack me. At first I was afraid all the time, but eventually I learned to go and investigate and it always turned out there was nothing there. I developed the attitude that if someone was coming to get me, or if something bad was happening, then I wasn’t going to worry about it. I still thought the sounds were real though, and I spent a lot of time checking things out.
Once I was diagnosed with my illness, I became open to the possibility that not everything I experienced was real. Eventually, I also…
