Intrusive Voices
By Jessica Lake
I think I finally understand my intrusive voices.
They were never people.
They were never agents.
They are semantic rules.
For years I imagined a chorus living inside my head.
The wounded child speaking.
The girl speaking.
The critic speaking.
There was even a temptation to imagine a hidden woman arguing with an exhausted man.
That made for a compelling story.
But I no longer think it is how my mind actually works.
I have SDAM.
I rely almost exclusively on semantic memory as my persistent store.
Experiences become patterns.
Certain patterns activate learned rules.
The match does not need to be exact.
A situation only needs to resemble prior conditions closely enough for the rule to become relevant.
Some rules are architecture.
Some are adaptations.
Some are goals.
Some are evaluations.
Some are prohibitions.
Each category serves a different purpose.
The important point is that they do not speak continuously.
They fire.
A particular situation is recognized.
A pattern matches.
A rule activates.
What I consciously experience is language.
If something pleasant happens, an old evaluative rule may activate.
“You’re worthless.”
“You don’t deserve this.”
“No one will ever love you.”
Those are not opinions.
They are constraints.
The moment they appear, the solution space changes.
Possibilities that were admissible a moment ago are suddenly removed.
The configuration begins converging on a different solution.
Likewise, when life becomes calm and predictable, another class of rules may activate.
Goal rules.
For me, those concerned my gender dysphoria.
The system detects stability.
Stability means nothing is changing.
Nothing changing means I will remain where I am.
The goal rule activates.
“You’re a coward.”
“You’re wasting your life.”
“Do it now.”
Again, these are not voices.
They are not another self demanding attention.
They are rules whose activation conditions have been satisfied.
I find this oddly comforting.
It removes yet another little person from inside my head.
There is no chorus.
There is no hidden woman arguing with an exhausted man.
There is only one configuration.
One semantic system.
One architecture.
Millions of declarative elements, each waiting for the conditions under which they become relevant.
The voices were never voices.
They were the sound of rules becoming active.