After 11 Years Tinnitus Almost Gone

How re: remission

T is related to a tic disorder. I hear noise and sometimes experience eye blinking. I practiced TM ...mediation. I sat with the tinnitus until there was a lull; no tinnnitus and embraced that feeling. I learned this from neurofeedback but for the first time I did it myself. It was tough but I decided to keep doing it every day for 2 months. It worked but I am having a hard time living in silence. I know people would be happy but I am having trouble adjusting

 

@SeekIngAlpha Never thought in a million years I would hear someone say that they can't adjust after been healed from T.... and here you are. Maybe because you had it for 11 years???? Try playing some background soft music and enjoy the peace. Keep yourself busy and soon you won't even remember T!! It is fantastic that you have been "released" from this nightmare! Be well.

 

How loud was it duing that 11 years please? Can you describe and did it go down slowly or all at once suddenly. What does ''tic disorder'' mean please? thanks

 

One part of me understand you. The other is terribly jealous

 

I too wonder what it would be like , the best time I get is early in the morning when my T is often pretty quiet but too have that all the time would be fantastic .Doubt it would take long to get used to it

 

Do tell us more. you cant just drop that in and go

 

I got the tinnitus down to zero level through mindfullness meditation. You sit in a quiet room no disturbances and practice learning what silence feels like. Whenever you don't detect the tinnitus you embrace that sensation. Do it everyday. I sat with the noise and silence everyday for a week for at least an hour each day. When you are not alone practice it all day anyway even if there is ambiant noise. Its tough it took to 2 and half months. P.S: I went for neurofeedback a few years back and it helped only for the time I went about 3 months. I used techniques I learned there on my own. Never tried on my own because I never thought I could do it without a machine.

 

gosh that sounds quite hard, especially finding the silence to embrace. i have on occasion used hypnosis at home to turn down the volume, but I cant do it every time I try, plus it always goes back up the next day.
I cant imagine sitting for an hour though. how do you embrace the silence when there is ambient noise

 

Can you say more about your experience with neurofeedback?

 

Neurofeedback done @ tinnitus clinic. Embracing the silence is not easy you have to practice.

 

@SeekIngAlpha

How do you mean "practice learning what silence feels like". Please describe this for me a bit. Thank you.

 

I mean -- there's always ambient noise. You can go to some ancient monastery way out in the hills, and it'll seem dead silent, but if you sit there and start doing the mindfulness practice, you'll become aware of environmental sounds, etc. If someone goes and sits in a completely soundproof chamber and does the same thing, even if they do not have tinnitus, after a while they will start perceiving various high-pitched noises, because such are always present in the nervous system (this has been demonstrated in several studies).

I think tinnitus for a lot of people represents some broken machinery in the various processors and filters in the brain -- so what would usually be a nearly inaudible signal becomes clearly audible. The devil of it is, once you start noticing it, you're subconsciously programming your mind to pick up on that signal (I think this is why many people including myself note an actual volume spike in terms of MML during times of acute stress -- stress hormones increase perceptual processing across the board, and the same heightened senses that make it easier to see a bear moving in the underbrush, also make it easier to perceive tinnitus -- then you focus on it even more, and the feedback loop just goes bonkers, making it louder and louder, and over a period of time this causes increased cortical connectivity).

This is why I don't find it particularly surprising to be hear reading a thread where someone says that contemplative practices over a really extended period have reduced their perception of T: all of this plasticity and rewiring is happening every moment all day, no matter what you do -- it's just a question of whether you're pushing things in the "right" direction or the "wrong" one. I'm using quotes there because it's obvious that anyone who is distressed by tinnitus would think that having things get quieter is moving things in a correct direction, but from the point of view of the brain as a signal processor, there is no morality to it, it's just a question of what signals are being amplified vs suppressed.

I don't think meditation did anything useful for me until I learned how to distance myself from judgement, even for very very short periods of time. If you're sitting there thinking "ahh, my tinnitus is awful and oppressive and I hate it" for hours at a time, day after day, you're not doing yourself any favors.

 

I have been doing this , fact is , as much as T can overtake your perception it is still surrounded by 97% silence.
I take time out to focus on that part , I can do this when my T is lower than normal.

 

Seekingalpha,

Hi. I am thinking about trying neurofeedback so I am interested in more information if you have it. I'd be interested in as much detail as you have. There are a couple of papers that lay out protocols. for example, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17956812
I understand neurofeeback was only a component in your remission, but I would like to know more in the event that I go down that path.

 

Hello. Im also looking at neurofeedback to help. Does anyone know the side effect concerning neurofeedback. They are altering of brainwave which is potentially dangerous right.

 

I first noticed my noise sounded like an off station TV while trying to meditate!! Figured i was doing it wrong ..lol I never herd of Tinnitus at that time. Busy with life couple yrs later Noise back loud All the time. It never stops But i do get surprised by added noise. pressure changes in the atmosphere I can hear . one day the normal noise changed as i got up from my couch. So i sat back down. noise change back. weird.. So there i was trying to get a direction bearing using my head as a detector... I only noticed change in that one spot . That one time. Lifes little surprises. All you can do is Go with the Flow. You can't fight it. The fight makes life hard . And look for home remedies.

 

You can not adapt silence after all of those years suffering from T?

If I could cured from this hell, I would even let the silence f*ck the shit out of me.

Btw, I want to add that this mindfullness and other spiritual things sound so skeptical for me. And bear in mind that just because people kept habituating to their T is one of the reasons why we have no treatment or cure yet. The more we habituate to out Ts, the less scientists try to resolve it.

 

Beste You have a good point there. Let's keep pushing for cures, rather than 'just try to get used to it."

 

Yeah right, guys stop getting better please, you have to suffer, we need a pill, now ! C'mon
Bad point there, meditation is far from being anything spiritual, it depends on you, it can be spiritual (which is still important, we are not animals) but it can be purely scientific, since it makes changes in your brain. Same for habituation, it's completely different to "get used to", it means your brain react to a stimuli with a total different circuit, which in some case like mine, lowers T volume itself (got it from emotional distress).
So I would suggest that these "spiritual" things, as Beste likes to call them, could be another hint scientists should use to find a cure for those who still suffer. Also, this is human life, we will face fears and illness all along the path, mastering the "habituation" and acceptance is vital. But you know what ? We want an happiness pill to take that fixes everything. Don't get me wrong, we need cures and it is our right to push for them, but we cannot cure everything, there will always be something that distress us. So, untill that cure comes, get stronger, most of us if not everyone will still face huge fears and scary illness in our life. And no, research won't stop just because, finally, someone lives again.

 

Shit, there's no silence. I hear T all the time lol.
But, mindful meditation.. I really need to attend a class sometime to learn how to do that. I, for some reason, can't let my mind just drift when I'm trying these youtube meditation videos. Help?

 

I had the same problem and for me the most useful thing was sticking with daily guided body scan meditations for a period of time, before branching back out into basic breath work.

I've sort of slacked on that a lot lately, but still try to get at least several minutes of "metta" practice in: http://www.buddhanet.net/metta_in.htm

 

Neurofeedback seems like the only therapy worth a grain of salt. Im doing it now my anxiety is less but for how long and its very expensive.

 

Body scan meditation.. I'll have to find some videos on that.

 

10 Minute Guided Body Scan Meditation from The...

- 10 mins.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Body Scan

- 30 mins, and guided by Jon Kabat-Zinn who's written books about clinical research he's performed using mindfulness practices.

 

Nice. Thanks.