What is this coughing?

sophiemarie

I hear and see people coughing, clearing their throat, spitting and whistling when it's not actually them. It happens everyday and it's everywhere; on the tv and radio and through people both known, ie. friends and unknown, ie. shop assistant to me. It's beeen happening now for around two years. Does anybody have any idea what this could possibly be? It caused me to drop out of college and lose my boyfriend. It drives me crazy and makes daily life torture. I've had numerous suicidal impulses and suffer with depression because of it.

Aisling&M

Hello there. I can only suggest as I haven't experienced what you describe that you just sit down and try to think as logically as you can about this. I do believe in and trust in the supernatural and spiritual side of life but I weigh it carefully with logic and common sense.
You gave a few details and it sounds like it is a huge burden to you. Have you talked to anyone about this before?

If you would like a chat please feel free to PM me. I'm not sure I'll be able to offer any good advice but I will offer a gentle ear should that be something you would find helpful.

kshiel

Hello sophiemarie, I agree with Aishling and try and think about this as logically as possible. Have you seeked professional advice on dealing with this depression and suicide thoughts, from your gp, which I am positive would help. I can only imagine how difficult life has been for you but suicide is never the answer, which I am sure you already know. Remember there are always people out there who can help, all you need do is seek it out. The coughing I have never experienced myself either, but like some here I believe in the spiritual side of life also. I hope you find peace with this situatation or better yet solve it. Let us know how you are getting on.

Kim.

6th

This isnt the first time I have heard of something like this but with the person I knew of with this it was never even for a second thought to be paranormal. From anything I have seen on this there is usually something like OCD going along with it.

Best thing is to go to your GP and tell all.

Good luck with it.

Asiaprod

kshiel wrote:

I can only imagine how difficult life has been for you but suicide is never the answer, which I am sure you already know. Remember there are always people out there who can help, all you need do is seek it out.

Kim.

I would agree, life is far too precious to waste. OP do seek out some professional advice on dealing with the depression and suicide thoughts. I am confident you will find the solution. Its a new year and there is everything to look-forward to.

Steyr

Call The GhostBusters!:D


On a Serious note i agree with the Majority of people here i think you shoul go visit your GP, you may just have a simple problem with your Eardrums such as a wax build up or wax lodged in ares of the ear canal that is distorting everything you hear and thus throwing noises everywhere.

Steyr

Call The GhostBusters!


On a Serious note i agree with the Majority of people here i think you shoul go visit your GP, you may just have a simple problem with your Eardrums such as a wax build up or wax lodged in ares of the ear canal that is distorting everything you hear and thus throwing noises everywhere.

sophiemarie

Thank you peolpe for your contributions, most of all the Ghostbusters comment, least of all the earwax comment. But thank you.
All I know is what I experience. No OCDs at all. I've seen doctors and a psychiatrist. Theres nothing wrong with me mentally that would cause me to hallucinate what I'm experiencing. I was up until this a regular happy person, completing a BA in Philosophy and History. I've been objective about it. It's most peculiar.
One day I went into a history lecture and the lecturer was speaking a different language. And it wasn't french, spanish or german. I just started crying! It kept happening for days and I just gave up, I quit. I still managed to pass my exams through study.
I'm typing here now and there are numerous coughs and sometimes quite loud. It's visual too. It's not created in my head but I'm the only one who experiences it. It happens every day. It has made me paranoid but that doesn't mean that whats happening is'nt real, ie a symptom of my imagination.
I wonder why this happens and why it happens to me, out of all of the millions of people out there living their lives, why does this happen to me?
Whats the logical consideration?

SkepticOne

Sorry to hear about your problems. It may not sound helpful as you have already gone down this route but I would continue trying to get proper medical advice.

6th

If your depression is caused by a chemical imbalance then maybe there are physical causes for these phenomenon. Also the anorexia could be putting your body under such strain causing hallucinations etc?

kshiel

A logical consideration would be a medical or emontional problem or a combination of both. If you feel your current doctor is not able to help there is no law saying you cannot get a second opinion, this is what I would do.

sophiemarie

The point most people seem to be missing is that this is not a medical condition. I've read into alot of Freudian cases such as paranoia, schizophrienia, regression, and depression and how they affect the cognitive faculty, explaining how people develop OCDs and experience hallucinations. They explain how such medical conditions develop in a person overtime and how to diagnose and treat someone.
However this is different. It's not illness related. Thats why I checked into the paranormal thread because it is a paranormal experience. If I had an illness, it cold be treated by a GP, i can understand that. What I cannot understand is the issue at hand.
It's most peculiar, it's as though a person is coughing, whistling or throat-clearing even though the person is actually not. They have no idea I think this. For example, lets imagine that you and I are in the same cinema. I will hear and see you coughing, even though you actually are not. I have always been a fiesty person my whole life and I will not give up on this by saying it's medically related.

6th

But if only one medical practioner and on psychiatrist say its not a medical or mental condition then I would get at least a 2nd opinion, especially seeing as you suffer from conditions such as depression and anorexia.

Many of the posters here are speaking as people concerned about the health and wellbeing of another person. Of course as someone with a stronge interest in the paranormal I would love to be able to say that this and many other experiences are paranormal but personally I would not believe it to be the case on the little information we have.

Whatever it is that you are experiencing I hope that it gets sorted and that you can deal with all your other problems, it sounds like the type of life I would wish on no one.

6th

sophiemarie

How is it not paranormal? If there are twenty peolpe in a room and only one person sees a ghost does that person have an illness or do they have a paranormal experience?

Nevyn

sophiemarie wrote:

Whats the logical consideration?

Honestly it sounds to me like visual and aural hallucinations that would be explainible by mild schizophrienia, either that or you are haunted I suggest as this is impacting on your personal life and your education that you see a dr and a priest.

6th

sophiemarie wrote:

How is it not paranormal? If there are twenty peolpe in a room and only one person sees a ghost does that person have an illness or do they have a paranormal experience?

Normally I wouldnt necesserily suggest that it is any form of medical or psychologic episode but then again here we are given additional information - that is that you suffer from depression, have had suicidal impulses and from another thread on a different forum that you suffer from anorexia.

Now these things can cause such a strain on the body and mind to case any number of affects but thats not to say that people suffering from such conditions are incapable of having a genuinely paranormal experience but given that you have made n reference to ever having had any other sort of paranormal experience the scale , for me, is tilting towards a condition.

I have plenty of experiences that could be seen by some as paranormal but because I know I was in a questionable state at the time of some of them I can not count them as genuine experiences.

You came here asking what the logical conclusion was to what you describe and I'm afraid it is a case of you not liking what you here ... the fact is that a paranormal 'explaination' is generally not a logical explaination at all but an explaination in the absence of a logical one.

I could go further into this but I'm afraid my opinion may come across harsh and earn me a ban that wouldnt be worth it.

I of course wish you the best of luck in finding answers and I hope they are ones that satisfy you in the way you obviously need them too.

Read over this forum a bit and you'll see that the suggestion of a visit to a medical professional is not a rare or offensive occurance.

6th

Auditory Hallucinations: What's It Like Hearing Voices?

Hearing what others can’t hear
September 27, 2003

By Ralph Hoffman
Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University

You are in a crowd when you hear your name. You turn, looking for the speaker. No one meets your gaze. It dawns on you that the voice you heard must have sprung from your own mind.

This foray into the uncanny is as close as most people come to experiencing auditory hallucinations or “hearing voices,” a condition that affects 70% of patients with schizophrenia and 15% of patients with mood disorders such as mania or depression. For these individuals, instead of hearing just one’s name, voices produce a stream of speech, often vulgar or derogatory (“You are a fat whore,” “Go to hell”) or a running commentary on one’s most private thoughts.

The compelling aura of reality about these experiences often produces distress and disrupts thought and behavior. The sound of the voice is sometimes that of a family member or someone from one’s past, or is like that of no known person but has distinct and immediately recognizable features (say, a deep, growling voice). Often certain actual external sounds, such as fans or running water, become transformed into perceived speech.

One patient described the recurrence of voices as akin to being “in a constant state of mental rape.” In the worst cases, voices command the listener to undertake destructive acts such as suicide or assault. But hearing voices is not necessarily a sign of mental illness, so understanding the mechanics of auditory hallucinations is crucial to understanding schizophrenia and related disorders.

For example, your occasional illusionary perception of your name spoken in a crowd occurs because this utterance is uniquely important. Our brains are primed to register such events; so on rare occasions the brain makes a mistake and reconstructs unrelated sounds (such as people talking indistinctly) into a false perception of the spoken name.

Hallucinated voices are also known to occur during states of religious or creative inspiration. Joan of Arc described hearing the voices of saints telling her to free her country from the English. Rainer Maria Rilke heard the voice of a “terrible angel” amidst the sound of a crashing sea after living alone in a castle for two months. This experience prompted his writing the Duino Elegies.

How can we understand differences between an inspired voice, an isolated instance of hearing one’s own name, and the voices of the mentally ill? One answer is that “non-pathological” voices occur rarely or perhaps only once. Not so for the person with mental illness. Without treatment, these experiences recur relentlessly.

Brain imaging studies have found that parts of the temporal lobe activate during these hallucinations. Our research at Yale University, as well as studies conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, also detected activation in an area of the brain known as Broca’s region during production of “inner speech” or verbal thought.

One theory is that voices arise because Broca’s area “dumps” language outputs into parts of the brain that ordinarily receive speech inputs from the outside. To test this theory we are using trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to reduce the excitability of portions of the temporal lobe and Broca’s region.

So far, most patients appear to experience significant improvements from TMS directed to both brain regions, with improvements lasting from two months to over a year. These results, although preliminary, suggest an alternative treatment if validated in larger-scale studies.

What remains unaddressed is the root cause of abnormal brain activations. We are pursuing three intertwined ideas. The first is based on studies suggesting that schizophrenia patients suffer from reduced brain connectivity. As a result, certain groups of neurons, such as those responsible for producing and perceiving language, may begin to function autonomously, beyond the control or influence of other brain systems. It is as if the string section of the orchestra suddenly decided to play its own music, disregarding everyone else.

The second idea is that deprivation of social interaction—namely human conversation—makes the brain more likely to produce hallucinated conversations. Often one of the first signs of schizophrenia—occurring well before manifestations such as hearing voices—is social isolation.

Indeed, sensory deprivation can produce hallucinations in the sense mode that is deprived. An example is Charles Bonnet Syndrome, where visual impairments in the elderly can produce visions of human figures. Could the absence of actual spoken human conversation—a cornerstone of day-to-day human intellect and creativity—produce hallucinated conversations? Recall the extreme isolation that preceded the appearance of Rilke’s startling voice.

Third, heightened emotions may play a role in producing voices. Indeed, heightened emotionality prompts the brain to produce information consonant with that emotional state. For example, a low mood favors generation of thoughts that are themselves depressing. It is possible that intense states of emotion could pre-select and perhaps elicit from the brain certain verbal messages having the same emotional charge.

Verbal messages expressed by voices often are highly emotional. Moreover, when schizophrenia begins, these persons are often in states of extreme fear or elation. It could be that these powerful emotional states increase the propensity of the brain to produce corresponding verbal “messages.”

This would account for the fact that voices also emerge during states of extreme, but incidental, emotionality brought on by inspired thought, mania, depression, or ingestion of certain drugs. Here the voices disappear when the emotional states return to normal. The brains of schizophrenia sufferers may be vulnerable to becoming “stuck” in these hallucinatory states.

Our hypothesis is that voices arise from different combinations of these three factors—reduced brain integration, social isolation, and high levels of emotionality. This view has become the focus of efforts to understand and help patients with mental illness quiet their minds.

Though the above deals with voices, words and conversations sounds such as banging, knocking and smashing are not (relatively) uncommon.

6th

So to look at this any closer we are gonna have to ask questions?

What you experience these 'sounds' do you look at the people and see them making 'coughing movements'?

Have you ever asked if these people are actually coughing?

Are you on any medication which may cause visual or auditory hallucinations?

There are so many conditions which may result in the phenomenon you are describing, such as Temporal lobe epilepsy. Though you may say that you experience no siezures the thing is with TLE you dont always get them.

stevenmu

I'm sorry sophiemarie. I'm afraid I'm going to have to lock this thread for now. It's drifted way too far into the realms of medical and psychological advice, and we have to be very very carefull about such topics.

I've sent you a PM if you'd like to have a read of it.