Back to Silence

Hi Albert,

Doctor Susan Shore is running a clinical trial at the University of Michigan, for which you might be eligible. She is currently recruiting patients for a Phase 2 study. You can email her at: sushore@umich.edu

It worked well for a lot of patients in Phase 1 trials. As a person with Michigan roots I really think you could benefit from this.

 

Sorry to hear of you having tinnitus now. If you don't know the cause and it has only been a week, if you have not gone to an ENT doctor it might be a good idea to do that. Although in my experience rare, they might be able to discover a cause that can end it. Also, for example, tinnitus could be related to TMJ thus a dentist might be consulted.

But on to your questions, I will answer them more specifically with my take second below. While I am not Terry, I have posted the following in the thread and Terry liked it. Hope it helps:

Here is the “bottom line” on how to implement the Back to Silence method from researching the Back to Silence String:

The "Back to Silence" method calls for not measuring the sound(s), not to monitor the tinnitus sound(s) or focus on it, do not describe the sound(s) or compare the sound(s).

Another way to think about it is to follow the four "don'ts" of the Back to Silence method:

1 - Don't measure it
2 - Don't monitor it
3 - Don't describe it
4 - Don't compare it

Do the following:

1 - STOP talking about tinnitus, measuring it, comparing it, describing it, and thinking about it.
2 - When you hear the sound(s), tell yourself, "I hear it, I feel .........." (insert your true emotion)
3 - make a note of this incidence (just put a hash mark for instance and add them up daily) and each emotional response in a word or two on paper, review your paper weekly to see the change in your responses.

If you are in a position (like say driving a car, in meditation, in bed getting to sleep or up in the night etc.) where you can’t note down your occurrence then do it verbally and add a hash mark and note later in writing if you can recall it.

Now, to more specifically address your questions I would say if it works for you to keep your focus off the tinnitus to say every 5 seconds "I hear my tinnitus and I feel XXXX." then I would do that although it seems impractical to write it down so do it silently speaking to yourself, not written down. I personally did not do it every five seconds. I sort of considered an "incident" as when I would say it. An "incident" might be five or 10 minutes in the beginning or 3 to 5 hours as my brain got better at ignoring my tinnitus sounds (plural for me).

With respect to "when you look for your tinnitus. Well, first don't be looking for it of course. But if you do look for it and hear it well just do the statement "I hear my tinnitus and I feel XXXX." I would not be acknowledging that I was not hearing it myself. I still hear it from time to time 5 or so years after I found this method. Some days several times a day or sometimes I notice it has been all day or even several days since I last heard my tinnitus. Either way I just say the statement to myself silently these days.

Hope this hits the spot for you.

 

Dear Terry,

Congratulations. I do hope you visit here once in a while to share with us newbies.
Grateful for your time and sharing, may God bless you for doing this.

Can your Back to Silence method apply to ear congestion and fullness too? I have both tinnitus and ear congestion and fullness.

Thank you very much.

 

Of course, I am not Terry and I do follow this thread. I would say two things. I think you could focus on a different body sensation and apply the method to it and it could work. Second I would say nothing to lose in giving it a try I figure.

 

When feeling fullness in ears, should I just focus on the breathing and say I feel sad or worry and so on, and note the response down on paper?

Thank you Henry.

 

My pleasure. Hope this helps make a difference for you Just say or think to yourself:

“I am aware of my ear congestion now and I am feeling X (insert your true emotion) about it.”

Then mark it down with a hash mark and a word or two that describes your feeling state. If you can’t mark it down due to work, driving a car, middle of the night when awakened from sleep or whatever then just record it later if you can recall but if not, well OK, just keep going with the method moving forward.

No need to focus on your breathing. If you have not seen my “boil down” of how to do the method with tinnitus it is above this post about 4 posts.

Glad you are working on taking care of yourself.

 

Thank you very much for sharing. Yes the first step is the hardest, when we wake up every morning, the very first thing we look for is to "monitor" and hear our tinnitus sound. It is still there.

I think I will have to get past the first step, and learn to wake up and not monitor the tinnitus sound at anytime of the day, or the very first minute I wake up.

Thank you again for sharing,

God bless you.

 

I'd like to say that this is a game changer for the distress side of things. I did find it difficult to stop checking because once I realise I've checked for the noise I beat myself up mentally so for step 1 I allow myself to realise I checked and take my attention to my breathing and accept that I'm checking on auto pilot without adding any more stress.

Don't go looking for the noise, let it come to you instead, and when it does, just ask yourself how do you honestly feel about the noise? Sometimes I found the answer to be, I don't mind too much which was a real insight. The checking is the root cause of the suffering I think.

 

Terry and his Back to Silence mindfulness helped me learn to cope in my early days of onset of tinnitus 5 years ago. There are definitely better days ahead.

Regards,
Phil

 

Can this help someone on the severe side or is it just for mild tinnitus? I experience at least 50% ok to good periods, the rest are bad and horrific.

 

Terry's tinnitus is pretty bad as I understand. Here is his testimony and method explained:

Back to Silence

 

Terry's tinnitus was pretty severe. Mine is probably moderate to severe and it works well for me. Here is my "boil down" of how to use Terry's method taken from my review of all the posts and I applied it this way:

The "Back to Silence" method calls for not measuring the sound(s), not to monitor the Tinnitus sound(s) or focus on it, do not describe the sound(s) or compare the sound(s).

Another way to think about it is to follow the four "don'ts" of the Back to Silence method:

1 - Don't measure it
2 - Don't monitor it
3 - Don't describe it
4 - Don't compare it

Do the following:

1- STOP talking about tinnitus, measuring it, comparing it, describing it, and thinking about it.
2- When you hear the sound(s), tell yourself, "I hear it, I feel ......" (insert your true emotion)
3- Make a note of this incidence (just put a hash mark for instance and add them up daily... the total will go down over time) and each emotional response in a word or two on paper is best, review your paper weekly to see the change in your responses.

Once you get to less than 5 or 10 incidences per day, you can stop writing them down and only do it in your head since you do not have to speak it aloud to get the result.

If you don’t want to write it down then OK, give it a try just verbally and see how it goes. If you do not notice a decrease in incidences over time then begin to write them down to keep a count even it is only a hash mark to keep the count.

 

What Henry said. This can help anybody at any level, I’m sure of it.

George

 

@Henry Orlando FL, @GeorgeLG, thank you both.

 

Can Back to Silence work for intrusive tinnitus that’s up and down in intensity and volume? I ask because some days I CANNOT not think of it, while other times the buzzsaw is faint and in the background.

I guess what I meant to say, has anyone with this level of tinnitus found success with Back to Silence? Does the tinnitus disappear or do you just not react to it?

 

I certainly understand why anyone would be skeptical if the Back to Silence method would work for them. My answer would be I sure don't know if it will work for any particular person and I doubt anyone knows if it will work for any particular person. It may or may not work for you given your situation. There have been many testimonials on it working for people including people with different types of tinnitus is all I can tell you. I suggest you give it a try and see how it goes for you. There are other methods besides this one to try as well. I actually use a mixture myself and not one exclusively all the time.

Hope this is helpful to you in some way. This tinnitus stuff is a bit of a conundrum... sort of a difficult and confusing thing to manage has been my experience and I have managed to habituation twice. Once when it was mild and once again when it became moderate to severe. I will say it has never disappeared 100% for me and it is not in my consciousness maybe 80 to 90% of the time. The other 10 or 20% is not bothersome.

I wish you well.

 

I will clarify my answer somewhat which will be similar to some of Henry's points.

I think that anyone can get some measure of relief with this and/or related techniques. Everyone is different and I think there would be a spectrum of results from slightly better to you don't hear it anymore. For most I think you will hear it sometimes but you just don't care about it hardly ever. Do I know this with 100% certainty. No I can't know that for sure but I believe it to be true in my heart. These techniques have been around for a while, some or all in the field of chronic pain management. If it goes away completely, fantastic. If you hear it but you don't care, it does not impact the quality of your life that's great. Don't have a fear based, perfectionist, all or nothing total cure model. Its just the human condition, we get injured or we have wear out mechanisms and then we compensate/accommodate and move on. My Audiologist looked at my audiogram and said there's your tinnitus, it's old age degenerative high frequency hearing loss and your brain is trying to fill in the 3 kHz+ void.

It's probably easier for me because I have been through so much crap, multiple cancers, wife died young, all my friends died or are dying of cancer, both parents... This is serious but relative to those things, tinnitus can kiss my ass, it will not take any of my limited remaining good days from me. If you're younger and this is your first rodeo it's probably harder or if you can't stand anything to be out of place or demand a perfect cure it may be harder. I have also used these techniques to relief suffering from two problems in the 80's and 90's - lower back pain and anxiety/panic attacks (both of which were devastating) so I know they work. When my wife was in horrible pain dying in the ICU sometimes the maximum amount of injected Fentanyl could nor relieve her pain so I would do the techniques with her and put her to sleep. The nurses would stare with tears in their eyes and I would just hear "wow" behind me.

I don't normally quantify or monitor mine anymore because it's part of the process not to but in the spirit of helping the people here asking questions I will for 15 minutes right now. I hear mine throughout the day and it's louder than at the beginning of this 6 months ago. I have routine spikes all day, different noises and tones, and back to baseline. A few times a week it disappears completely. I find myself going many hours during the day and realize I have not thought about tinnitus for most of the day. Sometimes it comes to my attention when I eat a food trigger and then I hear it but I know that 2 hours from now it's back to baseline. I recently finished 3 weeks of antibiotics and my ears were friggin' screaming for a few days. No big deal, it will go away. It did. It almost never bothers me, never keeps me from sleeping and does not impact my quality of life. I limit triggers and stay away/protect from loud sounds and drugs at the top of the ototoxic lists. I can live with it the way it is now, forever. I don't care if it's "cured". While I am typing this I hear it now and it's loud as hell. After I send this and go back to ignoring it and accepting it, I won't be bothered by it. Focusing on it, measuring it, talking about it is the only time it bothers me.

It's a hard concept to accept because we stigmatize our mind and emotions role in illness. "Snake oil, touchy feely bullshit, hypochondria, mental illness, it's not a cure, this does not apply to me, I had a perfect childhood". Years ago I said or thought most of these things until a gifted natural healer changed my life and my perception of how things work. It's not the symptom/test/drug model so it's bullshit. My mother in law was a pediatric RN at a NY hospital in the 50's and she said they taught this in school, an entire class on this. It's not new. Voo Doo is the process in reverse and a talented witch doctor can kill someone with the implanted fear. A respected local heart surgeon told me the same thing. Why can't it work in reverse? It does and has for me more than once. Its not that it's not real, we are not making this up. We are not weak or crazy. As a matter of fact strong driven personalities can be more prone. Our neurological system/brains have created a sound that is not there and that system is plastic and affected by our conscience thoughts and emotions. It's all the same brain. That what the placebo process is. Real suffering is really relived with simply the belief that it is will get better. There are absolutely fascinating studies on the placebo effect. A sugar pill can't fix everything but in suffering where our emotions make it worse it sure can. Someone once said this was Voo Doo. Ya, sort of. In reverse. I like however to think of it as a gift.

All the best,
George

 

Thank you very much. I had an awful night 3 days ago in which I stayed awake the whole time but I at least didn’t panic. I do have enjoyable good days like the past 2, so I’m hoping to build on it and go further.

I will give it a go

 

Thanks for the post George. Some great perspectives. No question there is plenty of suffering in the world and almost always, if not always, at least someone, and usually legions of people, who have it much worse than you do out in the world. The human mind is indeed a fascinating thing with the whole placebo and nocebo effect. Here is a good article on it with a scientific perspective:

https://www.healthline.com/health/placebo-effect

I also remind myself regularly what is known as the Serenity Prayer with tinnitus and other things in life:

“God (or maybe “My Unconscious”, or “Universe” if God does not work for you), grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Tinnitus is definitely something I can't control among many other things in life. Paradoxically using this form of CBT if you will and saying that to myself at times gives me power over something I can't control. Pretty amazing when one thinks about it. Using this strategy has helped my develop acceptance and serenity in life not just with my tinnitus.

Another saying from one of the most renown psychologists of the 20th Century Carl Jung goes like this:

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”

You can read about this CBT approach here:

https://medium.com/@weirdfulstar/what-we-resist-persists-embrace-it-will-dissolve-4c415bdca33e

The Back to Silence method encompasses the above two strategies within it. That I think is at least part of what makes it work for many people.

 

You are welcome Wrfortiscue. You don't have much to lose that is for sure in giving it a shot. I am optimistic for you in the matter from your post. Indeed not panicking is a good sign you are getting better. Use the method as one more tool in the tool box I figure. On your "awful night" reminds me I also used the amino acid L-Theanine to help with sleep and anxiety during spikes so you might give that a look and try it if you have not already discovered that tool.

Let us know how it goes.

 

Good luck, I hope you get relief soon.

George

 

I just had 3 more questions:

1. At night my tinnitus sometimes turns into a loud buzzsaw and keeps me awake. Do I just keep writing my response to it?

2. I plug up a bit which brings my tinnitus more to attention, do I keep logging those as well?

3. Should I also not write down ear pain or fullness, or whatever?

Thanks again.

 

I love your posts.

Please, stay around even if you get better.

 

My answer for #1 = I only recorded what I called "episodes" if you will. If I noticed my brain focusing on the tinnitus sounds I have I would record it with my feeling at the time. If that went on for 5 minutes or 50 minutes I did not keep recording it over and over like every minute. I recorded "episodes" regardless of how much time it lasted. Thus in a situation like you talk about going to bed and hearing it when I got into bed (which still happens many nights even now when I go to bed and I silently in my head note it and my feeling at the time) I would only count that as one even if it lasted the whole night. With respect to when I was in bed, well like most people say over 40, I wake up to go urinate (often if not most times even today I hear the tinnitus by the way when that happens and do the silent verbal thing) I did not write it down either since that would only wake me up more impeding my ability to get back to sleep. If I was driving my car I would not stop the car and write things down... I would do that when I got to where I was going and count it as a one. Bottom line, make your own rules that make sense around when to mark it down with the feeling at the time or do it later. My "rule" was count what I called episodes.

#2 = I get it if by "plug up" you mean sinus stuff. I have sinus type stuff and yes I tend to hear the tinnitus more when I have plugged sinuses. Just handle it the same way you do when you don't have sinus stuff going on.

#3 = I presume you saw this earlier but in case I will put it here again below... see "Do the following #2"... it calls for your true emotion about the sound or sounds... pain is both physical and emotional so I think you can record pain as one or more of the emotions you record.

Here is my "boil down" of how to use Terry's method taken from my review of all the posts and I applied it this way:

The "Back to Silence" method calls for not measuring the sound(s), not to monitor the Tinnitus sound(s) or focus on it, do not describe the sound(s) or compare the sound(s).

Another way to think about it is to follow the four "don'ts" of the Back to Silence method:

1 - Don't measure it
2 - Don't monitor it
3 - Don't describe it
4 - Don't compare it

Do the following:

1- STOP talking about tinnitus, measuring it, comparing it, describing it, and thinking about it.
2- When you hear the sound(s), tell yourself, "I hear it, I feel ..." (insert your true emotion)
3- Make a note of this incidence (just put a hash mark for instance and add them up daily... the total will go down over time) and each emotional response in a word or two on paper is best, review your paper weekly to see the change in your responses.

Once you get to less than 5 or 10 incidences per day, you can stop writing them down and only do it in your head since you do not have to speak it aloud to get the result.

If you don’t want to write it down then OK, give it a try just verbally and see how it goes. If you do not notice a decrease in incidences over time then begin to write them down to keep a count even it is only a hash mark to keep the count.

OK, I do hope this hits the spot. All fine questions. Ask away if there are more as you go along.

 

Thank you. By plug up I meant using earplugs.

 

Thank you, glad my writing is useful for you.

BTW, my new medical oncologist at Mayo is from Romania. I just met her Friday. Small world indeed.

George

 

Ah, I understand. If you hear your tinnitus in what I would call a new episode then indeed it would be recorded plugging up or not would be my take.

 

I read all of this. Every post.

Just started. It’s been two hours and I have 11 entries. This is really hard. Had to skip when driving home. It’s literally every second.

 

How would you modify this method for a significant case of hyperacusis which is a symptom that is not necessarily subject to habituation?

I have a strong response (ears respond with a crunchy/popping sound and sensation and a general level of discomfort) to floors squeaking, paper bags crinkling, water running in faucet, talking on the phone, the sound of my own voice, the voices of others, etc.).

 

Ooooo a really good question. I presume you have looked over these threads:

Can You Habituate to Hyperacusis?

Hyperacusis, as I See It

The Complexities of Tinnitus and Hyperacusis

Tinnitus, a Personal View

What Is Severe, Debilitating Tinnitus?

I did find this older article very helpful in my understanding hyperacusis versus tinnitus and how the two intermix:

Help for Hyperacusis - Treatments Turn Down Discomfort

And this one is of some value as well:

Hyperacusis: Causes and Treatments

Well to the heart of your question, I don't think it can be modified to be useful with hyperacusis. Why? Here is my summation of how to apply the method to tinnitus with some notes in italics with respect to hyperacusis:

The "Back to Silence" method calls for not measuring the sound(s), not to monitor the tinnitus sound(s) or focus on it, do not describe the sound(s) or compare the sound(s).

You can't measure hyperacusis that I know about although I understand an audiologist has ways to do that. In terms of how loud something is one can measure decibels but that won't help with applying the method.

I don't see how one can "monitor" hyperacusis since with tinnitus one is counting how many times the brain attends to the tinnitus sound(s). With hyperacusis one is reacting to something happening in the environment so the brain is not causing the occurrence. With a sound in the environment one not, not hear it really unless it is some low decibel item like the sound of a running refrigerator or maybe a fan in your desktop computer which are quieter sounds as opposed to louder sounds like a smoke alarm going off. Now, maybe, just maybe one can count the number of times one reacts to low decibel sounds that are not really damaging which is generally defined as under 70 decibels. I have had to deal with hyperacusis myself that is really associated with my tinnitus. One of ways I have done that is to use my decibel meter on my cell phone to measure what I would define as "loud sounds" over 70. I would indeed react to sounds in the 50 to 70 range with an element of anxiety/fear that really was not warranted but was really a fear of louder sounds in the environment might make my tinnitus worse. That really was what I would call an "irrational fear" as it was not going to cause my tinnitus to increase. There as also the "annoyance" factor to some sounds but that really was not going to cause my tinnitus to increase. Well, long way to say I don't think counting would be possible certainly with moderate to severe hyperacusis. I don't see how comparing works for hyperacusis either.

Another way to think about it is to follow the four "don'ts" of the Back to Silence method:

1 - Don't measure it
2 - Don't monitor it
3 - Don't describe it
4 - Don't compare it

Do the following:

1- STOP talking about tinnitus, measuring it, comparing it, describing it, and thinking about it.
2- When you hear the sound(s), tell yourself, "I hear it, I feel ..." (insert your true emotion)
3- Make a note of this incidence (just put a hash mark for instance and add them up daily... the total will go down over time) and each emotional response in a word or two on paper is best, review your paper weekly to see the change in your responses.

Looking at the above part I do think one can stop describing hyperacusis and thinking about hyperacusis other than when a sound event happens one does not need to be thinking about it all the time. One can get into acceptance about hyperacusis and stop resisting it which might help reduce the amount of pain/suffering around hyperacusis. See more on acceptance/resisting below.

Once you get to less than 5 or 10 incidences per day, you can stop writing them down and only do it in your head since you do not have to speak it aloud to get the result.

If you don’t want to write it down then OK, give it a try just verbally and see how it goes. If you do not notice a decrease in incidences over time then begin to write them down to keep a count even it is only a hash mark to keep the count.

Nothing in the above that I think applies to hyperacusis.

Now for the "acceptance/resisting part here is the stuff I had in mind:

“God (or maybe “My Unconscious”, or “Universe” if God does not work for you), grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Also dive into this one a bit:

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” —Carl Jung

Read up about this one here:

‘’What we resist, persists, embrace it & will dissolve’’

Well enough already. Probably more than you wanted to know then maybe it will also be useful to others.