New Online Hearing Voices Group Set to Begin!

Hearing Voices Network-USA is pleased to announce a new ONLINE opportunity to connect, share experiences, and find mutual support!

WHEN: First and Third Wednesday of every month starting December 7th

7PM Eastern / 4PM Pacific

HOW: The group will use the ZOOM meeting platform which is free to download on computers and Smartphones. Call-in option is also available.

WHO: This group is for those with personal lived experience with hearing voices, seeing visions, and/or negotiating alternative realities.

With further questions and for details on how to access the group please email Caroline at [email protected].

Consider donating to Hearing Voices USA this holiday season! Here’s the website.

HVN USA is part of an international collaboration between voice hearers, family members, professionals, and other allies toward developing an alternative approach to coping with emotional and mental distress that is empowering and useful to people, and does not start from the assumption that they have a chronic illness.
Although originating around the phenomenon of hearing voices, HVN USA also welcomes and includes people who see visions, or have other unusual experiences.
The Hearing Voices movement, and all that it entails (groups, events, training, etc.), has changed many lives and supported hundreds of thousands of people to make meaning of their experiences and begin to integrate them into full lives.

Specifically, HVN USA is charged with developing national standards for Hearing Voices groups, offering resources both on-line and in person, and increasing access to Hearing Voices-related supports, information and training.

We are also super excited to share that we will be hosting the next World Hearing Voices Congress in Boston, Massachusetts in August of 2017.

Raising funds to host this conference is our main focus for fundraising at this time.
HVN USA operates primarily as a volunteer organization.  It is guided largely by an active Board of Directors made up of a mix of voice hearers, allies, family members and providers (alongside two European consultants who share the wisdom of their experience doing similar work in the United Kingdom).  The Board includes representatives from 11 different states across the country.

Your help (in giving and/or sharing!) is invaluable toward ensuring that HVN USA is able to reach across our country, share information, and create opportunities for everyone to get involved.

All gifts are fully tax deductible!

Come join us at Community Access  Located at 2 Washington Street 9th Floor Conference Room for a workshop with Tami Gatta. The presentation will be about using the creative arts when talk doesn’t seem to capture the experiences of voices, visions and other extreme or unusual experiences. Tami will discuss her own reasonings for eschewing classic “talk therapy” methods, and will speak about using the arts to externalize and concretize the voice hearing experience. The workshop will be experimental and will be an opportunity for people to try out techniques for themselves.

December 8th at 6pm

ALL WELCOME. FREE!

Questions? Contact us.

Hearing Voices Network NYC is proud to announce a new Hearing Voices Support Group on the Upper West Side/Morningside Heights. The group is led by a voice-hearer and will meet at 7pm twice per month. The dates for November are 11/16 & 11/30. The meetings will be held in the back room at Max Caffe located at 1262 Amsterdam Ave (b/w 122nd & 123rd Streets). For more information e-mail Peri: perizarrella [at] gmail [dot] com

Hearing Voices NYC is moving towards having once-monthly general interest/collective meetings where people interested in the movement can share their experiences, projects, and collaborate. Our next meeting is November 3rd 2016 at Jefferson Market Library 6-8pm. ALL ARE WELCOME.

This meeting will be led by Karlijn Roex and will be about stigma before talking about general updates to our community (new groups & ideas that are forming). Plus HVN NYC now has bracelets! Come get one!

Karlijn Roex is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (Germany), currently visiting at Columbia University, and a human rights activist. Before, she has studied at the University of Oxford. Since April 2016, she is a member of MindFreedom International, advocating for the rights of people with extreme mental states/ distress. Besides her dissertation on the social causes of suicide, she currently works on a project studying the precarious freedoms of people with extreme mental states/ distress. 

The most frustrating thing about the hearing voices experience (all hallucinations) is the difficulty in describing it and talking about it pragmatically. The experience is confusing and not shared by others who struggle to relate. The associated stigma does not encourage dialogue or seeking help. Relationships suffer, progress in life becomes difficult and independence is lost impacting the voice hearer and friends and family alike.

Come and learn about:

• What the experience is like for the hearer – how anomalous inputs lead to unhelpful beliefs
• Language and a framework for dialogue
• Showing empathy and creating hope in a brighter future

DATE AND TIME

Mon, October 17, 2016

6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

LOCATION

NYC Seminar and Conference Center

71 West 23rd Street

#515 Seminar A

New York, NY 10010

COST

$20-35– Buy tickets here

 Gregory Shankland is a voice-hearer with over 30,000 hours of lived experience. 

Hearing Voices NYC is moving towards having once-monthly general interest/collective meetings where people interested in the movement can share their experiences, projects, and collaborate. Our next meeting is November 3rd 2016 at Jefferson Market Library 6-8pm. ALL ARE WELCOME.

When: Thursday, October 6th 2016, 6-8pm

Where: Jefferson Market Library (10th Street & 6th Ave), Willa Cather Room

What: A general interest meeting for all people interested in promoting the Hearing Voices Movement in NYC.

Some topics to be discussed are:

1. How to start our own trainings
2. Starting a Hearing Voices Cafe in NYC
3.  The Hearing Schreber’s Voices Event
4. Talking about another screening or follow-up to Healing Voices
5. Anything related to strengthening our community!

Clara Strauss and Mark Hayward
Voices Clinic, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust & University of Sussex, UK

Choosing How to Respond to Voices:
An Experiential Workshop of Mindfulness-Based Therapy for Distressing Voices and Relating Therapy

September 28, 9am – 4pm

 University of Illinois Medical Campus, Chicago

Background
Distressing voices often leave people feeling overwhelmed and disempowered – feeling they have little or no control in their own lives – that voices have all the power and control. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can be helpful, but it may only help to a small extent and not everyone benefits.  In our work we have built on the early work of CBT – developing and evaluating novel ways of responding differently to distressing voices. We hope that this may help to increase feelings of empowerment, personal control and personal choice – ultimately reducing the distress and personal impact that voices can have.

Mindfulness-Based Therapy (Morning Session)
Inspired by and working with Paul Chadwick (Institute of Psychiatry, London), a pioneer of mindfulness-based therapies, we have evaluated a mindfulness-based intervention for 108 people distressed by hearing voices in a randomised controlled trial. We will tell you a little about the promising outcomes from this study, but the workshop will focus on teaching the therapy skills and giving opportunities to practice these skills and to reflect on our learning.

Relating Therapy (Afternoon Session)
Relating Therapy highlights the parallels between people’s relationship with voices and with people in their social worlds. It uses extensive experiential role plays to change people’s relationship with voices by enhancing assertive responding skills – learning to respond assertively to voices and people. There are encouraging findings from our recent pilot randomised controlled trial that we will present, with the remainder of the workshop giving the opportunity to observe, practice and discuss the core Relating Therapy skills.

Learn more here

Hearing Schreber’s Voices: A Celebration of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.

Call for Participants

What: Written in the late 1800s, Daniel Paul Schreber’s book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness is perhaps the most well-known first person account of what is commonly termed “madness.” We are currently in the process of developing an immersive, multi-media, 2-hour event inspired by the book. We are looking for people interested in reading sections of the book or performing poetry, dance, music, art, etc. inspired by the book. We would love people with lived experience, voice-hearers, clinicians, theorists, family-members, friends, poets, writers, arts, musicians, dancers, videographers, anyone inspired by the memoir to participate.

When: May 20th 2017, 6-8pm

Where: Jefferson Market Library 

425 Ave of the Americas at 10th Street

New York City

We will be using all the rooms of this library/repurposed 1800s courthouse. As Schreber’s memoir was not only a memoir, but also a judicial document in support of his freedom from the asylum, we hope the environment will stimulate creative expression.

Contact: Evan Malater: emalater [at] gmail [dot] com

Marie Hansen: mariehansen188 [at] gmail [dot] com

This event is cosponsored by Das Unbehagen, the International Society for the Psychological & Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS-US), and Hearing Voices Network NYC.