Back to Silence

Wow - I have literally just joined this forum, and this is the most helpful advice I have ever read about tinnitus. I'm going to start this method today.

I work as a psychologist and have faith that it will work as we use similar techniques with other persistent and distressing symptoms.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

 

Takes time but keep going, when it starts to work try not to then listen out for the tinnitus. Best wishes Phil

 

I don't visit this site much anymore. My 40 year old miserable tinnitus is totally under control. Is it loud? OH YA. Do I hear it? Nope, only when I listen for it. Very high pitched in the right ear, a little lower in the left, with swirly sounds and low hum, and crackling once in a while. Now I don't even care about loud power tools and music doesn't spike me. But I will never attend another loud concert again. I think you only get so many.

I know, hard to believe. My tinnitus will never be cured, the tiny hair cells were blasted away decades ago thanks to loud music.
I changed my responses and it changed my life. I did the method 100% correctly. No slacking off, no shortcuts, no "in combination with.." no doubts this would be my last chance for relief. I wanted relief in the worst way so I stuck to it.

It's very hard to change your way of thinking and do it over and over week after week month after month. But I wanted it and I got it.

Good luck, friends.

 

You’re a treasure

 

Thank you for this. It has served to present an option when I have felt hopeless. I’ve had sudden tinnitus for the past month and I am distressed every day. What makes it worse is all the snake oil options out there...only thing worse? The “nothing works, why try” folks...

This seems logical but I have a question for you or anyone who would like to advise...My left ear rings constantly and consistently. How to implement this practice when it is so consistent?

 

@MrsRuhe

If your tinnitus has changed over the passed month and it is causing you distress, then you should make an appointment at ENT and get this looked at.

Michael

 

THIS. I've tried too many times to get this cured only to find I wasted my money on people who really don't care. Unfortunately, it makes you so jaded that you don't want to try something that might actually help, like the method featured on this thread.

 

Agree, but at least the method on this thread is less suspicious in that it costs zero money.

 

True.

 

You can oppose snake oil 100% and still not be a radical habituationist.

 

I would like to use this technique, but I am not sure how. I have no real emotion towards my tinnitus. So when I find myself hearing it and I ask myself how I feel, I feel nothing. Am I not getting something?

 

Interesting situation. Many if not most people report negative emotions in hearing their tinnitus at least some of the time. Particularly when they first get tinnitus.

Could it be that you really don't mind hearing your tinnitus? When I hear my tinnitus these days sometimes I feel "calm" and sometimes I feel "anxious". I do still hear my tinnitus most days several times a day and usually, I am feeling anxious when I do hear it but not always. Like now as I write I hear it and I feel calm. Seems unlikely you are clam about tinnitus some of the time given you want to use this method so you don't hear it. Could it be you are not in touch with your emotions like a lot of people?

Well here is a good article online about how to get in touch with emotions: https://www.bergencounselingcenter.com/articles/how-to-get-in-touch-with-your-emotions/ and you could Google more articles on getting in touch with feelings. Hope this is helpful.

 

Thank you I will check out your links.

I don't like my tinnitus, but I am not crying about it. I am a musician and I have spent 35+ years to become an exceptional guitar player. I may never play to an audience ever again. So it does suck to be me. When I am distracted and forget about it and then hear it, I have checked with myself and I am not sad, or angry or anything. I am non emotional towards it. Whatcha gonna do? Carry on carrying on I guess.

I will say my tinnitus is not nearly as bad as others have it. It is a high pitched hiss and not that loud. It is audible all the time. It is reactive and gets louder if my environment gets louder. I also have hyperacusis, but it is getting better. I have been super vigilant about wearing earplugs, taking supplements recommended here and staying away from loud environments. (It is difficult though, it seems like I am always getting blindsided with a loud noise.) I bought a bigger LED sound meter and keep my guitar playing to between 55-70dB. I stopped using earbuds and headphones. What else can I do?

 

Carrying on regardless is the best option I figure as well. As for what else can I do? I am a member of the American Tinnitus Association and get their magazine which comes in print and digital which I have found to be helpful. The just out summer edition is focused on music, musicians, etc. They also have a lot of free things like podcasts on the site as well... one on meditation with a psychologist and one on cognitive behavioral approaches to tinnitus by another psychologist are particularly interesting. From what you describe it seems like you have reached habituation if you are not distressed. I would say I have more issues with my hyperacusis than the tinnitus now. Indeed there seems to be plenty of people with more challenging issues than mine as well. Maybe more than you wanted to know and others might benefit from this post. Hope this helps.

 

It's not radical to believe in something that works for you. I was struck down by tinnitus in 2015 (thanks, antibiotics) and thought my life was over. It took 2 years but by late 2017 I had practically forgotten I had it. I would sit in silence and only hear it when I was somehow reminded I had it.

Now I am 4+ months into a new, worse case of tinnitus (thanks again, antibiotics!) and while it's still pretty shitty, habituation has already started making it less shitty.

I'm sorry if habituation doesn't work for you, I truly am. But that doesn't mean you should discourage others from finding their peace if it works for them.

 

I'm new to the forum, this is my first post. I'm starting this method NOW.

I haven't had chance to read the whole thread, but I have watched the video.

What I want to know is what do I do when going to bed and the 'noise' is so prominent? How do I use this technique then? I'm a man who loves silence, so listening to music, white noise or the tv actually annoys me when trying to sleep, but then so do the 'noise'. Also, just as i'm waking up, or even before, I go into panic as I know the noise will be there. How do i handle this? I should say, I have OCD and am really apprehensive about ever being able to habituate as changing my way of thinking is going to be very difficult. I'm naturally an anxious person.

I have no idea if my t is loud or not. All I do know is that my life has been turned upside down by it since it started 2-3 months ago and it bothers me greatly. I feel like my life is ruined. I'm still going through the "Why me?" and "I can't go on with this" stage. I haven't smiled since it happened. I filled in an online tinnitus disablement form and my result was "Catastrophic disability". I went to my GP, but he just said "Ignore it".

I would love a reply from I Who Love Music, but as I understand it he doesn't come on much more.
If he does reply, I would love to know how he managed to live for 40 years with this and how he could continue making a living and does he have children etc? Must be tough as nails to live with this.

I'm unsure about being on a forum as I don't want to become even more obsessed by my tinnitus.

 

Hello,
I couldn't respond to ALL of my tinnitus, so when it was most intrusive or upset me the most, that's when I marked my responses. It was a hard fight at first not responding the old way but as the days and months went by, the need to respond at all just went away.

 

Tinnitus really stinks when you're a musician. I have to avoid loud concerts for the rest of my life but I'm back to playing music on non-industrial PA systems. In fact, yesterday we played for a few hundred people surrounded by monitors onstage with a lot of low and mid feedback but I'm OK today.

 

I think you're very lucky not to feel the anxiety so many folks do.
But if you want to do the method, I guess just say "I feel nothing."

 

Hi juliaFB,
It was a psychologist who explained how this works to me. Very casually he said, Oh ya, it works great for many behaviors, smoking included.
The first few days are weeks are the toughest. But it worked for me.

 

Hang in there.

 

So I am day 3 of this method and I would like to thank the member who posted the video. I’m feeling the benefits already... it’s really incredible...I don’t know why but like he says, don’t overthink it... I’ve never followed instructions so closely before and looked at his full video several times..then got out my notebook and pen and got started.. So grateful for the time he took to do that video.. Thank You!

 

This is really helpful thank you for taking the time to share it. I guess it's a way of implementing the "habituation" process in ways that can be measured, where you can see the progress you're making. I'm a relative baby in the tinnitus world compared to you - I've only had seriously bothersome tinnitus for the past 4 months - but already its getting a little bit better and I've been working on my responses to it, telling myself "it's just a noise". Focussing on feelings sounds better though. The aim being to respond most often with "I feel ok" or "I feel indifferent".

I'm going to use this Android app called:

Daylio - Diary, Journal, Mood Tracker

to track my responses. I've used it before to track my general mood, but you can add custom activities and responses so maybe others will find this helpful if they prefer an app to a pen-and-paper method:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.daylio&hl=en_GB

 

Sometimes I focus on my tinnitus for hours on end. How often to I make note of noticing it when I am constantly focusing on it?

 

I would suggest that if you do hear the tinnitus for hours on end that you pick some period of time, say every 5 or 10 minutes, and record your feeling by making a note. Thus if you picked every 5 minutes you would have 12 recordings in an hour or with 10 minutes you would have 6 recordings. Now you can watch the reduction over time of how often you make records. In other words, say the first time you make recordings of your feelings for 3 hours every 10 minutes and in a week or two, it is down to hearing the tinnitus for a duration of 1 hour at a time instead of the 3 hours. Thus you are seeing a reduction of time you hear the tinnitus in overall duration. So you are getting some measurement versus none. Hope this is helpful.

 

Hi, thanks for the method

Took me about 10 days to get full benefits, had 2 spikes since then, but I consider myself habituated. I just get back to the method anytime I "notice" my tinnitus to a point that it annoys me, and it's a matter of minutes. Anyway, noticing rarely ever bothers me anymore.

Thanks again!

 

Hey Sally,
Sounds like you're doing great. And you can tell others how NOT to tweak the method, but to simply do it and give it time to work.

 

GREAT!!!

 

Mine was very bad when I started this method so I decided to pick the times when the T really really bugged me, because after all I can't be playing with a pencil all day.

 

Yup, I agree, this is simply a way to kick start habituataion.