I think you are having a hard time really believing that people "hear" the hallucinations.
When they started for me it wasn't voices, but telephone's ringing. I never thought, "is that telephone really ringing or am I just thinking of a telephone ringing?" I never considered the sound was generated internally.
I just went and answered the phone. It was months of what I thought were random hangups before I realized that I was the only one who could hear these calls.
Would a reasonable analogy be to phantom phone vibrations? I know a lot of people have those and if it’s similar it might be a good analogy to hearing things. Aka just like feeling your phone vibrate but it didn’t.
That's really interesting, did you used to hear it in 3D? Were the sounds coming from a certain position and then increasing volume as you approached that position? or was it just plain?
That's a great question. It mostly happened when I was a good distance from the phone. So I would be running to pick it up before the caller hung up or it went to the answering machine. (Early 90's).
I do think the ringing would get louder as I got closer to the phone, but it never actually went off that I remember in my hand or even when I was within 5 feet of it. Really close, the sound would have been much different. Also the phone should have actually vibrated in my hand which never happened.
I always thought that meant I had 'just missed' the person who was calling. But it may have just been the limit of what the hallucination was able to produce.
When they started for me it wasn't voices, but telephone's ringing. I never thought, "is that telephone really ringing or am I just thinking of a telephone ringing?" I never considered the sound was generated internally.
I just went and answered the phone. It was months of what I thought were random hangups before I realized that I was the only one who could hear these calls.