Aural hallucinations? Driving me mad/increasing my insanity?

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Whenever I go out for eg going to my mum's or out for a walk, if I come across a group of people they seem to be laughing.

I'm not sure if everyone in the world is laughing at me - my logical brain tells me this is unlikely - or if I'm suffering from aural hallucinations like when I was first diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder.

It makes me feel really self conscious & wonder what exactly it is about me which warrants their laughter.

Sometimes they whisper in a really scratchy whisper which I can't make out or can only make out a few words from, too.

Honestly it's kind of driving me to misanthropy as a defense mechanism.

I just wish people would be quiet when I pass them. And wouldn't laugh over us when we're trying to have a conversation.

When we hear them coming we shut up.

If mum doesn't then even though I have good hearing, I can't hear a single thing she says and retain it. This scares me a lot.

I want to be in control of my mind but I'm not. My mind is ill.

You make a lot of misinterpretations of your lived experience. I suspect that the people you pass are merely chatting among themselves or chuckling in the way friends often do in a light conversation. I suspect that your past experiences, when maybe people WERE laughing at you, makes you interpret this as the same thing. It's a kind of PTSD. But I would be surprised if this really was hallucinations.

Of course, I'm not trying to put down your feelings. I'm trying to suggest a way this could be understood that doesn't mean you're crazy.

I know I'm crazy (or whatever the more politically correct language is) because I'm diagnosed mentally ill.

Mum says it's aural hallucinations.

When I feel like it's actual laughter and being laughed at.

Maybe it's chuckling among themselves but why do so many people laugh and whisper?

I rarely laugh at irl stuff. It doesn't warrant it for me. It's not well scripted comedy.

Heck a lot of my favourite sitcoms I don't even find funny, I go for the sit rather than the com I guess.

Reading stuff like this (or at least the abstracts) makes me know that there's a possibility someone with my disorder would have hallucinations. At least the kinds I'm talking about which is 'just' aural.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4710580/

Actually, that article is just what I'm talking about. PTSD, an anxiety disorder, can result in "flashbacks" which are very real-seeming relivings of earlier abuse. It's a different situation than when you hallucinate on LSD, or if a person is schizophrenic and has command hallucinations telling them their mother is the devil and they need to kill her. (hopefully, you aren't hearing that!)

The author says that your thoughts - anticipation - shape the sense of perception. Situations in the past had maybe kids making fun of you or otherwise bullying you, and people laughed and whispered. Now you pass a group of people and anticipate "what if they make fun of me?" and it stimulates your brain to think they really did. Now maybe they do whisper and laugh - but it has nothing to do with you, it's just something normies do.

Anyway, it doesn't mean you're insane, so please don't talk about yourself that way. Lots of people have milder mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety that, although they interfere with living, don't constitute insanity. Don't amplify your problems, which could actually make them worse.

And take a deep breath, and have a pleasant day!

Thanks.

I think that's the case, not just with kids but when I was doing my old job which was where I got ill, people were genuinely nasty to people (not just to me but I felt scared at how human interaction worked there & was desparate not to be the victim of their gossiping and none of the social 'norms' I'd learned before worked there for eg I would say my mum was in hospital with a broken back and they would say 'that's a waste of NHS resources' ).

I have an all or nothing part of my mind which idk if it's autism or SAD or both or just a personality flaw. When I like an aspect of myself it sometimes sounds narcissistic or like I'm putting down people who aren't like me and when I dislike an aspect of myself it can sound like/lead to self-loathing. I find it really hard to get the balance right.

I really need to work on that.

I find that it is often times the kids who bullied me at school that the NTs I'm most cautious of remind me of. Today I came across 3 lots of it. 2 lots kind of bothered me but not as much and the third really did remind me of the bullies at school: equally loud, dressed similar, young women etc. I think that triggered something for me more than the guy on a bike with a cheesy grin on his face did?

Although part of that reaction could be because we were talking about aspie type things - things I like but aren't 'socially normal'. Me and mum were talking about making dungarees for my toy rabbit. Although they were across the street and could not logically have known that and her name is a regular human child name rather than for eg Bunny, I was worried they were laughing at that.

I want to have the freedom to be able to talk about whatever I want and feel comfortable. I live in a quirky enough town/neighbourhood, heck there's grown men who ride tricycles round here and cis men with beards who wear long peasant dresses. It's not the old village by any stretch

My anxiety was bad today cos I thought I heard bang bang bang on the wall when my music was at medium level.

Instead of turning it down so I couldn't hear it, I decided to continue listening.

They were doing DIY and weren't aware of my presence.

Couldn't tell this with the hammer but could tell this as soon as they got the screw driver out

The mind is a mysterious thing. Aural hallucinations! I noticed something very similar in my mother when she was in her 80s. She would often tell me very strange and off-the-wall stories involving people's conversations. Some might call it the onset of Alzheimer' disease or dementia. But that doesn't sum up the condition.

As a person gets old, their senses begin to fade. They lose their hearing. Their eyesight fades. In this state, they catch a word here and there and their mind tries and makes sense of it. It is a little like "fill in the blanks", except most of the conversation is blanks. This leads to strange stories which are elaborate creations of the mind. The mind has to make sense of the world and within a lack of inputs will fabricate the "rest of the story".

That's really sad, I'm sorry she went through that.

For me it's the opposite but it's having a similar effect (so, probably not hallucinations? probably just interpreting stuff as for me when they think it's silent to me hence how much noise they make?).

I was tested by a dr and apart from one area of high pitched noise, my hearing is better than the average population. However, I find it really hard to tune out sound. Probably an autistic thing.

I'm only 32.

I've been able to eavesdrop/unable to stop eavesdropping all my life. It makes it hard to go to a restaurant or crowded street as I can't tune out irrelevant noise in order to have a conversation with someone I actually want to have a conversation with.

It's especially hard when their conversation seems to flow into ours. And it happens from time to time. Logically I know this is a coincidence but it's quite scary. It feels like people are butting into our conversations.

It's definitely a coincidence cos my mum noticed it as a child with TV shows: sometimes she'd turn on the BBC and hear one sentence then switch to ITV and hear a sentence which could logically flow from it - despite it being an entirely different conversation

It wasn't a major problem til I got social anxiety disorder. It was just part of life. Trouble is, it feels more deliberate now and like they know I can hear them.

OK really freaky one today.

Two chav men yelling at each other...

We don't know them.

"[My Mum's Name] did..."
"Oh [My Mum's Name]?!"
"Yes [My Mum's Name]"

Freaky af.

Mum said "It's ok they're not talking about me, if it was your cousin it would be different but I have a really common first name"

I'm sorry you're experiencing this. I have something similar but only when I'm between sleep and wakefulness, either nodding off or when I'm waking up. I was diagnosed by a sleep disorder clinic as having Hypnagogia and Hypnopompia, which are parasomnias.

I hear / invent entire scripts of familiar TV dialogue, I hear doorbells or people having random conversations which I can often transcribe. Only once have I had a visual hallucination when this was happening, but that would also be considered a sleep disorder.