'Hearing voices': how to stop them — The REAL self-help way!

Introduction

The purpose of this page is to function as a summary 'starter' guide to give a helpful focus for those who are wanting to start addressing issues of 'hearing voices' or experiencing other forms of communication from a non-physical source, such as by intruded / compulsive thoughts, tactile sensations, visual effects such as 'yes'/'no' flashes, particular smells or non-vocal sounds. So, having landed on this page, you can then get yourself pointed to the relevant other parts of this site for the necessary explanations and genuine healing strategy and range of methods for addressing your issue, which inevitably would be much more than just 'hearing voices' even if you were not aware of anything else untoward in your life.

The problem that people with 'voices' and related issues almost universally run into when they get seeking advice or 'help' is that whatever advice or supposed 'help' they do find doesn't genuinely improve their situation (i.e., apart, sometimes, from a short-term very superficial appearance of improvement), and, at least as often as not, exacerbates it, whether by aggravating the 'voices' issue or/and by bringing on or aggravating further issues.

If you point yourself in a 'medical', including psychiatric, direction, you're immediately stigmatized by the most unfortunate 'hearing voices' diagnosis, which, to the majority of people implies serious mental disorder and indeed schizophrenia — though again, just as with the 'hearing voices' label, my own deep and careful research has shown the 'schizophrenia' diagnosis to be just as harmfully useless as the 'hearing voices' one.

Having been supposedly 'diagnosed' (i.e., having had a label put on one, effectively as a 'fig leaf' to cover up what's really going on), you then get 'treated' for that supposed 'condition' — which means that (all very harmful) drugs or ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) are used in order to damage your brain function and indeed in many cases the brain itself in an attempt to hide the manifestations of the problem, with absolutely nothing being done towards actually recognising the real issue and resolving it.

Then, if you (advisedly) turn away from the medical route, what are you faced with? — Healers? Psychics? Mystics? Witches? Witch-doctors? New-Age gurus? Religion? Self-proclaimed wonder therapies with strings of glowing testimonials* (and usually a price tag of at least an arm and a leg)? …The list goes on and… — Yes, you're stuck in a sort-of 'Which doctor or witch doctor?' situation! I deeply empathize!

Statistically, it's more than very likely you've already taken at least one of those routes, and, whatever route(s) you did choose, somehow you're still seeking a genuinely effective answer, and indeed maybe you're now on the point of giving up, so your landing here is something of a disconsolate final fling, perhaps before considering some juicy little suicide! Not altogether joking there, either, for I'm well aware that a significant proportion of people arriving at this site are at that very point, and — click! — they, or at least some of them, suddenly wake up to the fact that this site is something completely different, at last with real answers for them!

Cutting the 'voices' down to size…

Cultivate the most helpful and indeed rational basic mindset!
I have a powerful pair of guiding axioms, used on many pages on this site, to point you in that direction:

Frequently come back to these, each time making sure that you fully understand them, until that view on every aspect of your life experience and indeed 'reality' is a clear part of your everyday perceptions and so genuinely needs no further reminders from those particular words.

Note that the first axiom does NOT mean that it's wrong or bad to change anything that's causing pain and disharmony, but the practical point is that if you're wanting to change something you need to do it for the right (i.e., most healthy) reasons and on the basis of a proper understanding, not what you simply believe or feel is 'right' or 'wrong'.

'Hearing voices' — throw out that loaded term!
The very term 'hearing voices' is in practice a grievous misnomer, because of the way it's almost universally misused. Look, every day I myself hear voices. I hear voices when I go out shopping, for example. I do so because people are talking. In the supermarket, frequently I hear a funny woman's voice saying Unexpected item in bagging area. Remove the item before continuing.. Now, am I really therefore disordered, and is it really a sensible thing for me then to ignore that voice and take a dose of Haloperidol or other choice yum-yum antipsychotic?

— No? You mean that even if it's only a confounded machine talking to me, the real need is to recognise what's communicating and why, and thus to respond appropriately? Surely so?! — Yet when it comes to communications that one is getting that are apparently from a non-physical source, we fall off our respective trolleys with merry abandon — the medical and mental healthcare professionals especially so! The simple reality is that you appear, for whatever reason, to be getting communications that are apparently from a non-physical source.

Nothing bizarre, weird or scary about that — it's a simple, straightforward observation. Things are simply as they are — NOT how anyone believes or 'thinks' they are, or indeed is terrified that they might be! (Remember?)

What's more, masses of people have such phenomena — one or more voices, 'thought-voices', or intruded thoughts — without ever recognising it as anything untoward! However, that doesn't mean that you yourself don't really have an issue to resolve, because actually the aforementioned masses of people themselves do have an issue that needs resolving, even though they're unaware that it's an issue for them!

Throw out all notions of 'mental illness'!
You're not going to resolve any issue or problem if you don't get clear about what's really going on and causing you that situation, and if you don't use methods that are soundly based upon that proper understanding. Just to say it's a 'mental illness' is a complete and desperately harmful cop-out from ever seeking that essential proper understanding, so one essential thing we need to do right at the outset is to let go of both the term and the whole concept of 'mental illness', and start looking at what's really there and really happening.

That's not the dauntingly difficult matter that you may well be currently thinking, so please be encouraged, for the fundamental understandings and related methods are amazingly simple, and they cut through all the confusions and convolutions of weird experiences and 'story' that you may have got landed with, and similarly cut straight through all the religious / spiritual / New Age beliefs on the subject.

'Normal' or 'abnormal'? — Throw out the very notion, and the associated 'sheep' mentality!

Often figures are quoted to help us convince ourselves that it's actually relatively normal to 'hear voices' in some manner or other, and therefore to experience them is really okay unless the 'voices' are proving overtly troublesome. That's an extremely harmful way of looking at the situation, because it's based on the, yes, extremely harmful fallacy, that what's experienced by the majority is okay and what's experienced by a minority — particularly a small minority — isn't okay.

The reality is that virtually everyone on the planet, even including those who are widely regarded as being in great shape, 'well-adjusted' and 'doing fine', are operating on, at best, only a modest proportion of their potentiality of mental function — in particular, being free from patterns and beliefs / illusory realities, which all block their ability for awareness and genuinely rational thinking and functioning.

A genuinely well-functioning person, therefore, is, statistically, extremely abnormal, and anyone who is in the slightest 'normal' in terms of their mental functioning is actually highly dysfunctional — even though a psychiatric or 'mental health' worker would 'pass' most such people with flying colours!

So, do you want to be 'normal' (and indeed a 'sheep'), or do you want to be functioning better, and free from the 'voices' (etc.), and effectively thus more of a fully functional human)? You can't be both!

'Real' or 'imaginary'? — Throw that question out!
Okay, so now we've thrown the whole extremely unhelpful concept of 'mental illness' out of the window so that we can begin understanding what's really there. You're getting what appear to be communications of some sort from a source that's non-physical.

It's important not to buy the normal belief of medics and scientists that what isn't physical is 'just imagination', for that explains nothing, and in no way helps toward any genuine solution. Those professionals are virtually totally lacking in genuine understanding of the true nature of 'the mind' and what they're so arrogantly pronouncing to be 'just imagination'.

Actually in a sense most of the apparent invisibly-sourced communications are indeed 'imagination', in the sense that they're illusory manifestations, but if you stop there, at 'just imagination' as your supposed explanation, you're really just taking on board the 'mental illness' concept again, under a different description, and you're getting nowhere fast. After all, the 'voices' or related phenomena are real enough that you keep experiencing them! They are whatever they are, and we can't know more than that!

What is the source / cause of the communications? — Throw out all beliefs and 'received wisdoms'!
So, regardless of whether the communications you're getting are supposedly 'imaginary' or 'real', the crucially important next consideration is, pretty obviously, what is causing or giving you those apparent communications. Now, actually this is where it really starts to get amazingly simple.

Just think of all the masses of beliefs about what that cause supposedly is — but actually NONE of them is based on hard observations and aware clear-minded interpretation of those observations, nor indeed is verifiable at all — and ALL of them fail completely on one fundamental point: they each are based on belief or some sort of 'received wisdom', and are completely unverifiable, yet they claim that they're correct, fact, or truth.

Yet the simple underlying 'fact' is that we can't objectively, categorically, know anything — particularly with regard to what is non-physical! Therefore any belief or 'received wisdom' at all needs to be thrown right out of the window.

Throw out all given identities, descriptions, or received 'story'!
Are you beginning to see, now, that things are getting simpler and simpler, because we're discarding all the complicating and obfuscational factors? You're getting what appear to be communications of some sort, which may or may not be causing you a lot of obvious trouble, but which you do need to stop coming to you whether or not you recognise that — and, simply, we don't and can't know what's happening to cause them!

You may have thought you knew what the source is, because they or some apparently different non-physical source told you (or maybe told a medium who then told you) what's communicating with you — perhaps claiming it's a guide, a spirit, 'Archangel Michael', Jesus, astral beings, or a demon, or indeed a little green humanoid in the Pleiadean star system telepathizing with you. But actually, no matter what you may have been told, from 'within' or by somebody, that's simply unverifiable 'story' you've been given, and the wonderful, liberating truth is that you're still actually none the wiser in real terms as to who or what the communications are really from!

Is it from one's own mind or an external agency? — Throw that question out too!
A medic or psychiatrist might pretend to sound rational by answering that question by saying that your own (implicitly 'ill') mind is the source of the communications (a sort of dysfunctional mental talking to oneself) — but that then begs the question of what would be causing your mind to make those communications to itself, in a manner as though they are from somebody or something that isn't you!

So, all input from those ignorant and unaware, belief-driven professionals very definitely needs to be completely discarded if you're to get in touch with the underlying relatively simple and addressable reality of your situation.

…Now, having discarded layer after layer of confusions and obfuscations, we're getting down to the necessary 'blank slate', free from all the bullshit on the subject that's floating around in 'Humanity' at large, and can instead start applying to the situation a practical working model (as distinct from a belief system), in order then to be able to implement an appropriate set of methods to address the situation.

Now for that practical working model…

First the apparent Bad News. Suppose you now take up some working model to apply to your situation. In fact, never mind how attractive and enticing it may appear, it would be bound to be no better than one of the belief systems that you've hopefully discarded — UNLESS it's founded upon a large body of rigorously and carefully observed relevant data, examined and interpreted with great mental clarity and focus and not a wisp of belief in sight, and thoroughly tested to see to what extent it enables at least some people to resolve their situation. Because of the parlous state of human mental clarity and intelligence generally, that looks to be a tall order indeed!

Now the Good News. As far as I can tell so far, it happens that you've come to a very good place here, because an example of the type of working model that we need is right here on this very site. This is NOT because I think it's a nice, attractive or 'cool' working model, or that I reckon I myself am the greatest thing since wrapped sliced white bread came onto the market (yuck!), but because I myself built it up — indeed I had to do so for my own very survival! — on the basis of what was actually enabling me to progressively get clear of a massive destruction campaign from what many people would call 'forces of darkness' — what I, for good reason, nowadays call 'the garbage' instead. I'm sharing it with other people precisely because it's really worked for me, grand style — not because I want anyone to take up a belief system!

My own experience in a nutshell

During the garbage's campaign to destroy me (particularly from October 2003 to early 2007), it was disruptively impinging upon me as quite a range of what I now understand to be illusory manifestations, including purported 'ascended masters', guides, angels, archangels, 'Divine Consciousness', my own purported 'higher consciousness', 'astral beings', and 'Hathors'.

Actually I never had any worthwhile evidence that they were different types of manifestation at all, because I didn't see any representations of them, so their respective identities at any particular time were just a matter of what it or they told me who or what they were — not a good formula for understanding what was really going on!

So, actually that was a really significant observation of mine — that really the purported identities were simply bits of the 'story' that I was being given. Thus those identities were all totally unverifiable and hadn't been worth any of my mental activity in paying them any attention! Indeed, even if I'd supposedly seen them, all I'd really have seen would have been representational illusions given to me by the garbage, so actually they'd have been no more informative than the identities given by 'voices' or communications through dowsing.

In my case the communications were in various forms but only very, very rarely as an actual 'heard' voice; I give further details of that in The 'forces of darkness' ('astral beings') — My own tough experiences .

In 2007 the penny finally dropped for me and I got building up a working model of what had been going on for me, on the basis that the purported non-physical beings and 'entities' were not at all what they were claiming or claimed to be, but were illusory manifestations created actually by one's own mind under hijack-control* from just one troublesome influence — the garbage, which itself is nothing more than a complex of thought forms, not an actually conscious being or 'presence'.

Further to that, I came to the recognition that we can't ever actually know of the existence of any non-physical beings or presences at all outside or beyond human consciousness itself (apart from the garbage, of course), so only trouble and mischief could result from our ever interpreting some apparent communication from a supposedly genuine non-physical being as 'real' and therefore to be listened to, for it would undoubtedly be the garbage itself telling us that it's a 'real Sirian' or 'the real Creator', Attila the Hun, your long-deceased grandmother, or whatever.

The immediate easily observed effect of my taking on board that part of the working model that I was building up was that at once the 'entity' intrusions that had been disrupting my life experience for a few years by then, were much less intrusive, and indeed, with fluctuations, progressively faded over a few years, having progressively less intrusive effect on my life experience. Another side of that process was that I was becoming increasingly better grounded, with increasingly consistent focus in the physical aspects of the life experience, while not at all shutting down my deeper awareness.

I was, however, becoming increasingly able to keep my attention focus out of the astral non-reality, where all the problems stem from, even though if I really wanted (not a good idea!) I could look into all that and 'see' all manner of convoluted garbage that some very misguided people would actually find alluring.

So, if you already have a name for any voices or type of voice that you hear, or are wondering what to call them, the actual need is to NOT call it or them anything at all, and to stop thinking or acting or speaking in any way that implies that the 'voices' are coming from real conscious beings at all.

No miraculous instant or total fix

Let me be clear about this — I myself still do get garbage interferences and attempts at communications (dark 'no' flashes and pseudo-thoughts intruded into my mindspace), and indeed attacks — but apart from a few very isolated episodes (which occurred as a result of a specific type of circumstance that I've worked out how to avoid in future), these are faint and unobtrusive now, and still becoming increasingly so, and so are more and more easy to disregard.

Any attack could build up over time (each attack is a sort of feedback loop), but I have a simple procedure in my methodology for nipping those in the bud and further immunizing myself. So, we need to have realistic expectations and to let go of the notion that we would necessarily soon have no garbage interferences (including communications) at all.

The important thing is that very quickly the worst and most intrusive manifestations would become relatively insignificant, and, provided you keep to the clearance strategy and are consistent in using the methods, that diminution would continue down to a very low level over the months and, very likely, years — but it had begun to look to me as though there was a certain base level of generally ineffective attempts by the garbage to interfere, which doesn't decrease further.

In case the above paragraph sounds rather discouraging, however, I'd point out that the whole self-actualization process brought about by my set of methods means that any residual slight 'voices' issue would be greatly dwarfed in significance by all the other improvements you'd be getting in your life experience, as I myself both expected and found actually to be the case.

It's no coincidence that on one occasion at one of my regular eating-out places, staffed by Asian and Far Eastern individuals, two of the latter independently plucked up courage and asked me how it was that (a) I was always so happy when they see me and (b) how it was that I seemed to be consistently more like a boy despite my appearing physically also to be fairly 'old' (actually 73 at that point). When you're no longer weighed down with (largely hidden) emotional issues and limiting self-beliefs and patterns, you're clear of a whole pile of stuff that brings about an exaggerated, false 'ageing' process.

Our bodies, including the brain, do age, yes, but normal, dysfunctional, 'ageing' is actually a whole mess of consequences of poor lifestyles and unhealthy choices and all manner of harmful effects that unawareness and garbage interferences brings with it. My working model and self-actualization methods have taken me right out of that, so I can actually be myself! You can do likewise, provided you have the motivation to do so.

"This all seems to be too much — all I want to do is to stop the voices; I'm okay otherwise!"

Sorry, hard cheese! 'Voices' and related phenomena are ALWAYS just an aspect of the broader issue of getting interferences from the garbage, so you do need a comprehensive, balanced self-actualization process as my methods achieve when properly applied, to progressively clear out your garbage interferences, including those of which you're not currently aware.

No comprehensive self-actualization — little or no garbage clearance;
no garbage clearance — no 'voices' clearance!
Simple as that!

"I've been using your methods for a while and the entities are still speaking to me!"

Sure they are! You'll get nowhere fast if you cling to that misunderstanding of the true nature of those manifestations. It's essential that you completely drop thinking of any communications at all that appear to be coming from non-physical sources as coming from actual beings or 'entities', and likewise essential that you don't interact with those apparent communications in any way at all.

The presentation of my working model on this site goes to considerable lengths to explain that any apparent non-physical beings or 'entities' that communicate with one in any way need to be understood to be illusory manifestations caused by the garbage, which itself is just a mass of rogue programming in 'thought energy' — in many ways resembling a computer virus. Similarly, your clearance process will be blocked as long as you think in terms of sending the source of the communications away, because you'd be barking up the wrong tree.

You can't send it away because it's not there in the first place! Instead, your intent needs to be focused on dissolving the illusions that the garbage is creating and cultivating in your mindspace, and progressively immunizing yourself against the intruded creation of such illusions. That can't happen until you stop regarding the illusions as 'real' beings / 'entities' and fully recognise them as illusory manifestations, so that you're absolutely clear that there's nothing there for you to interact with.

Children 'hearing voices'

Because children, especially younger ones, are still relatively weakly grounded, they're particularly liable to 'hear voices' or get other types of communication apparently from non-physical sources. In many cases they may regard a particular voice speaking to them as 'okay' or even 'friendly'. However, the phenomenon is basically just the same as for adults, apart from often being more vividly perceived because of their weaker grounding — and so all the same considerations apply.

Just how a parent could best assist their child in getting clear of such communications is always a challenge, requiring much thought and deep understanding. The most effective parents in that task would be ones who are, or have been, successfully clearing their own issues of interferences and communications from apparent non-physical sources (i.e., really always the garbage).

Hearing voices while going to sleep or just dozing off

It's a very common and indeed normal phenomenon, to hear one or more quiet inner voices while dozing off, whether or not in the process of fully going to sleep. This is actually a completely different phenomenon, and is nothing untoward at all. In this case the voices have a different character, being completely detached and not seeking to interact with you at all. Instead they're simply part of the normal healthy dreaming process, so that they have the feeling of somehow being part of an ongoing thought process. What such voices say often seems nonsensical in retrospect, though usually seems to have some sort of meaning in the context of the thought processes occurring as part of the dreaming process at that time.

For some people — primarily no-soul people — such voices may be heard occasionally in moments of repose when not obviously dozing or going to sleep. That reflects the very useful ability of such people to have a certain level of re-evaluation process kick in during moments of repose without having to enter the sleep condition — though they still need their sleep too.

The important thing in recognising what is or isn't garbage interference is, to see if it seems to be speaking to you. If it's not, you can safely ignore it. If it's apparently speaking to you, it's part of your garbage issue, and very definitely needs to be disregarded, though still maintaining awareness that such attempts are being made — and of course the broader issue of your garbage interference would need to be addressed.

One final point about the benign voices that aren't trying to engage you. Just the same as with dream content generally, it's always unhelpful and indeed harmful to get involving yourself with them — getting fascinated with some story or supposed 'meaning' that you or somebody else can pick out of them. They're really just artefacts arising from a deeper-level subconscious data-sorting and assessment process, and the latter gets obstructed if you go involving yourself consciously with those artefacts.

Related phenomenon — Hearing strange or 'phantom' sounds when dozing off or waking up

This phenomenon is closely related to that of the voices commented on just above. The sounds may be 'phantom' real everyday sounds, such as one's bedside alarm going off when it hasn't done so, but they can be strange and beautiful or truly bizarre and jarring sounds that one has probably never heard in waking life. In my own experience, in some weird way those sounds have seemed, like those voices, to be tied up in some inner thinking or 'working-out' process, but not to be a genuine part of it but rather, something extraneous that has somehow found a connection with some detail of it.

My own inner inquiry supports the hypothesis that in that particular context such sounds are nothing to be bothered about if they don't happen disruptively often, and for the most part (for once!) are minimally or not at all garbage interference. However, apparently they are still theoretically untoward because they're of astral origin — being little bits of 'crosstalk' coming through from the notionally healthy aspect of functioning of that aspect of consciousness that we call 'the astral '. In other words, one is hearing little scraps from the deep-level operation of one's creative processes attempting to run despite the universal corruption problem there — and really that needs not to be happening.

They usually sound weird because the whole 'astral' phenomenon represents a misconfiguration in consciousness at a universal level, as a result of which our ordinary, conscious 'minds' are able to 'see' and sometimes 'hear' bits and pieces going on within it. The problem is that that aspect of consciousness is in functional terms a 'system-reserved' area, analogous to the system-reserved partition(s) on a computer system drive, and so it's necessary that only very deep levels of consciousness (i.e., well down in the 'subconscious') be able to see, read or access its contents.

Because we do in various degree see into it and indeed 'write' into it all sorts of stuff from our ordinary 'minds', its contents are corrupted (the presence of the garbage being a flagship indicator of that corruption!), so in functional terms we are all in some degree corrupted. Hence Humanity's virtually universal irrationality and general mental dysfunction.

For completeness, let's add that if you briefly see really weird things when dozing off or occasionally while waking up, which aren't actual hell or 'hell periphery' visuals, normally that would be just the visual aspect of the same phenomenon that gives rise to the weird sounds.

In any case, for your own mental well-being it's important not to pay attention to those weird sights or sounds and get fascinated by them, because then you'd be increasing your openness and vulnerability to all sorts of issues residing in that actually corrupted aspect of consciousness — of course not least, the garbage. Without getting anxious or paranoid about it, you need to keep your conscious awareness as closed-off as possible from what, as I say, is meant to be a purely subconscious area of our whole being.

Does hearing voices mean you have schizophrenia?

Many people believe 'hearing voices' does indeed mean that one has 'schizophrenia'. However, that's a result of a bit of inverted logic. 'Hearing voices' is pretty normal for anyone who gets diagnosed as having 'schizophrenia', yes, but that doesn't at all mean that everyone 'hearing voices' has 'schizophrenia'. Masses of people in various ways 'hear voices' without ever being diagnosed as having that supposed 'condition'. Just as murderers are people, I'm a person, therefore I'm a murderer! Straightforward logic, surely! Get me locked up in prison or a secure psycho unit, double-quick!

So, the short answer to the headline question is, definitely not — but with the proviso that it would be one of the manifestations or 'symptoms' that a psychiatric worker would be liable to put together with others to label them as having 'schizophrenia'. A prime indicator would be whether or not the person is (at least normally) able to distinguish properly between things going on in their mind and those going on in the physical 'reality'. If you normally have a good grasp of that distinction it shouldn't happen at all that you'd get diagnosed as having 'schizophrenia', at least by any reputable psychiatric worker.

Is hearing voices a mental illness?

There's nothing intrinsic in anything that makes it 'mental illness'. The latter is just a label stuck upon various quirks and glitches in our functioning that psychiatric workers have deemed, in their supreme ignorance, to be 'illness' — and indeed a label that many people stick upon others (very much including me!) just to discredit them for some pretty poor reason.

Indeed, because 'hearing voices' is always a clear indication of an issue that you need to resolve, you can indeed label and regard that as 'mental illness'…

But what would be the result of that? — The logical consequence would be that you'd then be 'treated' for a supposed 'illness' — i.e., a physical condition. That can do nothing but harm. All it would achieve, which superficially looks positive, is that it would (probably only partially, if at all) suppress your ability to experience those 'voices'. But that would be just trying to hide the problem instead of resolving it, and in the long term it would most likely actually compound the 'voices' issue as well as bringing in additional manifestations of the problem.

Basically, the only way you could deal constructively with your situation is to not regard your situation as an 'illness' and to get understanding what's really going on, as I've indicated further above (i.e., illusory manifestations caused by the garbage). Otherwise you might as well regard (for example) your having troublesome neighbours as being simply your own 'mental illness', and drug yourself instead of taking measures to address the real physical situation!

Is hearing voices a delusion or hallucination?

The term 'delusion' means an illusion that's firmly and persistently believed to be 'real' despite clear physical evidence to the contrary. 'Hallucination' refers to experiences that the affected person recognises to a reasonable extent to be non-real. So, your 'voices' could be labelled as either delusion or hallucination, depending on whether you persistently regard those 'voices' as being 'real' in the face of clear indications to the contrary or recognise them generally as at least more or less non-real (illusory) — i.e., in relation to the physical 'reality'.

Getting rid of those voices — Now, your practical healing stuff!

This is where I direct you to your next page, for starting to lay down your strategy for your new clearance / healing / self-actualization process, with links to other pages giving you both the methods to use and the fuller understanding of the working model of ourselves and 'reality' that's the basis of the use of the particular methods.

Yes, you'll find it a hell of a lot of reading to do, but there's really no short-cut about that, for the methods work for you to the extent that you have a proper understanding of what you're doing and the extent to which your intent is correctly and strongly aligned and focused during use of each method. Sadly, the majority of people are too impatient and can never get the best out of the methods, because they don't want the task of reading the relevant mostly long pages on this site with care, and really thinking about what they're reading.

In any case, I'd gently point out that most people who really do get reading the pages properly actually enjoy doing so, because this bad boy here has incorporated a light-hearted, humorous touch into his writings, especially those writings whose subject matter would be regarded by many as 'heavy' or potentially 'scary'. The point is, I've set out, among other things, to show how un-scary and un-troublesome it really is to get a proper understanding of our garbage shenanigans and do something effective about it all.

Your starting point, then — at least, the one that I strongly recommend — is Crisis emergency self-help — Life upturn the SMART way.

Please don't be put off by that title. It makes no difference whether or not you consider or feel yourself to be in or near a crisis state. That's the page that concisely sets out the really effective strategy for turning your situation right around, complete with all the further links and pointers you'd need at that stage to get started using the relevant methods.

By taking on board the strategy set out there, you're being one of the real smart people, making a healthy breakaway from the 'sheep' who are forever wanting to follow and be helped by others — which inevitably gets them sweet nowhere genuinely helpful! I wish you a great time in starting to turn your own life around!