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5. USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ® 71 5.3.3. The role of the self-help group During the process of learning to handle the voices, self-help groups play a significant role. In the self-help groups, participants received guidance for and explanation of their condition, which is a great crutch in the learning process: »the real breakthrough is the (Awakenings) group: they interpreted differently than the doctors ... and here at the voice hearing group I come closer to what is this originating from. Let it be a symptom, for me this word is enough and also if it’s an altered state or it is caused by different troubles ... this part of it began to set here. I think since I’m here at the Foundation, somehow this consciousness of the disorder, which was only depressing, it’s starting to fade away.’ (Veronika) In the self-help group, the participants recognised that other people also live with this condition and the group was the place where they first experienced the acceptance which helped them overcome the anxiety caused by stigma related to their condition. Other recovered peers stood as examples and as experts by experience, providing success stories and sources of joy, making activities and suffering more meaningful. 5.3.4. The role of the voice hearing method The participants noted in the interviews that the voice hearing method is the most important tool in making the shift from a passive sufferer, enabling them to initiate contact with the voices and begin communicating with them. If the method helps the person to challenge the voices and begin communicating, the anxiety often declines, and the relationship between the self and the voice will change. In the process, the intention of the voice is reframed, the hearer’s own experience and the relationship to the self and the positive intentions are getting attention; thus, the persons regain their agency and they become able to integrate the message of the voices as a personal psychic state, emotion, thought and meaning. The aim of the voice hearing method is to help the voice hearer learn to live with the voices. When participants recounted reconciling with the voices, subthemes emerged: building relationships with the outside world and reconciling with the outside world. The voice hearing method not only helped to control or master the voices, but also allowed some participants to live with the voices integrated into a full life. But the voice hearing also had a negative effect on some relationships with the outside world noted in one participants narrative:
