Bad Experience with Julian Cowan Hill

Hi everyone,

I had a really bad counselling experience with Julian Cowan Hill and thought I am going to share it here.

Hill has a big presence on YouTube where he has posted hundreds of videos about tinnitus and treats people with craniol sacral body work, tinnitus counselling and psychotherapy. He emphasises bodywork and relaxation and as I am a yoga teacher I thought I was on a wave length with him. But I have come away from 2 sessions of counselling with a very bad feeling. Talk about adding insult to injury!

Here is what happened:

- Hill asked virtually no questions as to the onset, development and coping strategies of my tinnitus, so I told him how I had used the relaxation exercises that I know from yoga. Not even 5 minutes into the session he declared that what I considered states of relaxation were actually states of stress. He repeated that throughout the two sessions that I had on several occasions.
- He insisted repeatedly that I had to be "settled" by a professional body worker and that I could not do this alone (despite the fact that I am yoga teacher for 30 years and have helped countless people into deep states of relaxation, myself included)
- When I said that I was cautious about hands-on healing and that I had bad experiences with that he declared that I "had issues with trusting people and needed to learn to trust more". Remember, he did not know me at all, he just blurted these things out without looking for any evidence in my behaviour or what I had told him about my general psychological make up (almost nothing).
- In no way did he try to look for my strengths in order to advise me how to use them to cope with my tinnitus but, to the contrary, he demolished what I thought were my strengths by pathologising them, which left me weakened in confidence and hurt.
- He did not give me one piece of tailor-made advice that I could not have found in his videos. Instead, he simply droned on just repeating the same stuff that he says in his videos. I had to really interrupt him a number of times to try to get the conversation back to my individual situation but that often resulted in him criticising and pathologising me without any real evidence because he was not interested in my personal story at all.
- He made dodgy comments like: tinnitus produces a "buzzy charge" in the head and that he had the capacity to remove this charge through his hands on healing.
- When I asked him how I should mask (a very important aspect for coping with tinnitus which I struggled with) he simply said, listen to music when you feel like it but not when you want to mask the tinnitus. As if this was possible when you feel tormented by a screeching sound in your head. His lack of empathy was staggering.
- When I asked him what kind of recovery time I could expect he boastfully declared that you could be cured of tinnitus in 10 minutes if you knew what you were doing.

All in all, I came away from the two sessions bruised and being exploited by a real snake oil seller. I have never experienced anything like that in my life and I have seen a number of healing practitioners over the years.

Please let me know if anybody had similar experiences with Hill, so that other people are hopefully warned.

Regarding my tinnitus, I found much improvement with searching for triggers and eliminating them, acupuncture and in recent times with the principles TRT.

 

I don't have much to add except that I used to think of JCH as a genuinely good person who really knew what he was doing. Some recent conversations and this post has opened my eyes to the fact that he may be a genuine quack instead.

 

Really sorry to hear! He has literally said in one of his videos that tinnitus is a "temporary condition". Personally, I don't care how many people he has helped with his videos - he's spreading harmful misinformation that will ultimately harm tinnitus sufferers, such as everyone being able to tune out or actually reduce their tinnitus. He's convinced to have found all the right answers regarding tinnitus, everyone who disagrees is just a non-believer. If he was a truly genuine person, he'd take the criticism to heart and change the way he words his advice - he could help just as many people without spreading falsehoods and misconceptions but he doesn't care.

But people on here still defend him.

 

Hi @Corinna

I am sorry to hear of your experiences with JCH and it has confirmed all along what I have thought about this person. He is a good orator, well educated and able to draw people in who are desperate and in need of help. He is very convincing and I do believe he has overcome his tinnitus and habituated an that is wonderful. However, going into practice and claiming you can help people with tinnitus in the way he says, may help some people with the condition but I don't think it will be so successful to those that have "Noise induced" tinnitus which is severe. It is true NIT can and does improve naturally for many people over time to the point they successfully habituate.

However, many members at Tinnitus Talk have noise induced tinnitus with hyperacusis and I'm afraid, JCH tinnitus was caused by anxiety and stress. Therefore, this man knows absolutely nothing about noise induced tinnitus. It can be a very complex condition when it is severe and cannot be treated by hands-on-healing. This idea is total nonsense. NIT when severe needs to be properly treated with: counselling, sound therapy and medication if required. These treatments can either be used separately or in combination.

JCH maybe able to help some people with other types of tinnitus which isn't noise induced, but the exorbitant prices for his services and taking into account tinnitus can be a long term problem for some people, they will need to have very deep pockets. Anyone with tinnitus for a year or more, I advise to be tested at ENT to see if there's an underlying medical problem within the auditory system that is causing the tinnitus. If there is then hopefully it can be treated medically or surgically by an ENT doctor because this is their area of expertise.

When there is no underlying medical problem causing the tinnitus, it usually means it's noise induced. Therefore, the correct health professionals to see are: Hearing Therapist or Audiologist that specialises in tinnitus and hyperacusis management and not JCH, because he knows nothing about Noise induced tinnitus.

Michael

 

To Corinna:

Thanks very much for this report.

JCH from your commentary turned out to be even more obnoxious with such egregious quackery than he has previously displayed.

I am suggesting that you file a report on him to whatever Consumer Fraud Department, Regulatory Agency, or our equivalent of the Better Business Bureau that exists in your area.

 

When I first got tinnitus I emailed Julian Cowan Hill directly explaining the history of my condition and asked him if a recovery was possible. He ignored almost everything I said and tried to promote a Skype session for 50 pounds and when I told him I was a broke college student he stopped corresponding with me. The guy might be able to help if your tinnitus is caused by anxiety or stress but for most of us who got it from noise exposure. "Calming the nervous system" through cranial sacral therapy that he so advocates for will do absolutely nothing.

He's also known for censoring comments that aren't even negative but personal testimonials on how his advice doesn't work for them.

 

I am pleased that you have seen the light @Allan Mcmillan. Noise induced tinnitus which often hyperacusis is present, is a completely differently kettle of fish to what JCH understands about tinnitus.

Hope you are able to get some help.
Michael

 

Wow, that is disgusting.

 

He's such a visible scam artist it's not even funny.

The above excerpt is the only part I agree with. You want masking to be very limited. It took me a year and a half to finally realize that, and once I did I immediately lowered all my masking noises to make my tinnitus audible but not overwhelming.

 

Thanks guys, for all your supporting comments. It`s good to hear.

As to masking: Hill never got into the finer points about how much to mask etc. as TRT does. He simply discouraged me to mask (or use sound enrichment) at all. He had zero empathy that this could be very distressing to me and also, according to TRT, detrimental (they say avoid complete silence).

I still struggle at times a lot with having tinnitus and that gets mixed up with my anger about Hill who has taken a lot of money from me and delivered such a bad and damaging service. It is really strange because in his videos he comes across as quite genuine and kind????

Unfortunately, what are the alternatives? TRT is so outrageously overpriced that I could never bring myself to pay that amount of money. There do not seem decent priced tinnitus counselors around. I wonder why?

 

There is no cure for tinnitus or hyperacusis, nobody knows for sure how to cure this, there is no treatment. Taking that into account, anyone who presents himself as able to cure this, or solve the reaction to the problem, is probably a scam.

TRT is a big scam, and I am still surprised that some people may consider following this "treatment". A long time ago there wasn't so much info about tinnitus and hyperacusis on the Internet, but nowadays everyone knows that TRT does not work, that it only made its founding fathers rich, and patients felt ripped off.

Some people do not have any ethics and will take your money away even if you are suffering from a debilitating condition they cannot cure.

 

Download the FREE Quiten App by JCH from the Apple Store or Google Play.

 

People are even defending him and his app even though he clearly claims to be able to reduce or teach you how to tune out your tinnitus without any exceptions. Also, calling someone out is not the same as wanting to deplatform them though JCH absolutely deserves to get deplatformed. Do you see ME patients being nice to people that say their symptoms are purely psychosomatic or they're able to cure anyone with ME? Nope. But people with tinnitus will defend people like JCH because "his videos have helped some people".

 

If he claims that, he deserves to be sued.

 

Hi @Corinna

TRT is not a scam. I have had the treatment twice and had good results and therefore know what is involved . It is expensive but this is not unusual especially when it involves anything to do with medicine or when you are calling upon a professional person that is skilled in a particular practice. Success rates will vary between people and there's no guarantee that it will work for ever person. It is important that the treatment is administered correctly by following the Tinnitus retraining therapy protocol, otherwise the treatment will not work.

Some people believe TRT and CBT must do all the work but it requires more than that. For these treatments to be successful they must be backed-up with some effort by the patient. This means: Reinforcing Positive Mental Thinking, which I mentioned in many of the posts and articles that I have written in this forum. It is not just a matter of attending an appointment with your Tinnitus Therapist and having 1 hour consultation (for example) then leaving and wearing white noise generators for 8 hrs a day until your next appointment. Anyone that has this attitude is not likely to see very good results. Please click on the links below if you want to learn more about what TRT entails.

I fully understand how disgruntled and upset you must be feeling about your experience with JCH. My advice to you is try and put it behind you and in time you will move on. Please don't think about taking this matter further. By this I mean, to involving lawyers and trying to prove that JCH is a fraud, because I think this will be very difficult for you to do. He has published books on tinnitus even though I don't think he knows anything about noise induced tinnitus. All you will end up doing is throwing away your money to greedy lawyers who will encourage you to part with more and more money until you are broke. In addition to this you could end up sued, so please be careful.

Someone I used to counsel with tinnitus tried suing his dentist. It was his belief that his tinnitus became worse after have root canal work and other dental treatment. He got lawyers involved and ended up giving them £10,000 to fight his case. When he couldn't afford anymore money because he was broke the case was dropped. He ended up feeling worse due to the stress. My late father advised me from a very young age: Keep away from Lawyers and Court house, because they will take away all your money.

All the best
Michael

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/what-is-trt-and-when-should-it-be-started.19024/
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/what-happens-in-trt-sessions.18195/
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/can-tinnitus-counselling-help.22366/
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/trt-as-i-see-it.19555/

 

Yeah he says some sensible things-E.g. telling people with new onset tinnitus that it can go away sometimes which doctors won’t usually tell people, and getting people to calm their nervous system the hell down which will help some people. But not everybody.

There have always been snake oil salesman as long as there have been intractable medical conditions. Some are even doctors.

 

I thought it cost a cup of coffee/month for his monthly subscription?

 

Thanks for the info. It’s really too bad. I would watch some of his videos on bad tinnitus days and they would give me a bit of hope. Oh well!

Perhaps like Michael said, he more than likely didn’t have noise induced tinnitus, which is why his went away.

 

Riiiiiight...

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...rapy-is-ineffective-latest-study-finds.35055/

Enough said.

 

You are entitled to believe in whatever you wish even when it's wrong.
Enough said and I wish you well.

Michael

 

Hi Michael,

I do not have to believe anything (or feel entitled to) when an actual scientific study (sadly one that had to be funded, likely using yet again taxpayers' money) totally debunked it, even worse, this study is a RCT, it doesn't get any better when it comes to the hierarchy of scientific evidence.

Then again, I am not here to shatter your conceptions or opinions of TRT, merely to expose facts.

I wish you the best.

Mathieu

 

That is your first big mistake, believing science has anything to do with tinnitus.

Goodbye and I wish you well.
Michael

 

Bless you for taking the time to share this! This man should be locked in prison for taking advantage of people with health problems. It is obvious that he is a scammer and he's full of mambo-jumbo crap!

I have also encountered this Joey Remenyi:

How to Heal Tinnitus: Use Neuroplasticity

Who also "heals" tinnitus by private counselling:

https://www.seekingbalance.com.au/beautiful-balance/

Check out her videos. She has turned-off YouTube video commenting (we can all guess why).

To hell with them!

 

@JohnAdams

I have amended your quote as I believe you made a slight error and hope you don't mind.

Science has it's place in tinnitus particularly when it is caused by an underlying medical condition within the auditory system or elsewhere in the body. Therefore, doctors will try to treat the underlying problem medically or surgically. Examples of this are Menier's, Otoscelrosis, ETD, Acoustic Neuroma and many more. Science has also helped people to cope better with tinnitus when it is noise induced. Examples of this is medication which we are all familiar with and devices such as white noise generators and hearing aids.

Noise induced tinnitus which is what I am familiar with, is something that can only be learnt through personal experience if the purpose is to have an in-depth knowledge of it. The reason being it is a mental and emotional experience. One can read books on noise induced tinnitus, collect data from websites, written by medical professionals that have never experienced it and if they have, it's likely to be mild. However, much of this data is conjecture, supposition and when required, the use of medical terms to confuse and bamboozle those that are not medically qualified. One example in my opinion, is endorsing treatments for the condition called Reactive Tinnitus, of which there is no such thing. A term made up in tinnitus forums around 10 years ago, and now used by some in the medical field, that say it is a condition that should be treated first and hyperacusis second. Total nonsense RT is hyperacusis.

These people are believed because they are medically qualified and are given a sentimental reverence by some that they do not deserve, because they have no experience of tinnitus and therefore, no nothing about it. I am referring to the way it can affect a person's mental and emotional wellbeing and how it impacts on a person's daily life. I am talking about noise induced tinnitus and not tinnitus caused by an underlying medical condition. I give respect to doctors that are able to treat underlying medical conditions associated with the auditory system causing tinnitus and medications to help people cope better with it. However, to fully understand noise induced tinnitus one has to experience it. Please see the text below that I wrote on another thread.

Michael

Some people believe one has to be medically qualified to know about tinnitus and the habituation process. This is incorrect. Everything these people are told by doctors and the medical reports and studies they read is sacrosanct to them and nothing else will change their mind. My advice to you is not to get swept along with this belief. Medicine and being medically qualified has it's place in tinnitus, mostly when the cause of it is due to an underlying medical problem within the auditory system or elsewhere in the body. However, being medically qualified and having a PhD does not make you a tinnitus specialist especially when it is Noise Induced.

To fully understand noise induced tinnitus and how it affects a person's mental and emotional wellbeing, it is my belief one has to have the condition for at least 5 years preferably longer. In addition to this, they should have personal experience of living with variable tinnitus: mild, moderate and severe, then they will have some idea, knowledge if you like of what other people endure living with this condition. Please also be aware of what I have said in my post: The habituation process: Not everyone is able to habituate for various reasons.

 

This was more or less the opposite of my experience with Hill, though my reasons for wanting to talk to him may have been substantially different, and likewise my expectations and therefore my interpretation. I also saw it as money I was lighting on fire and that didn't bother me.

In general we should always be wary of uncredentialed people offering paid skype help, for sure.

There's reasonable evidence that hands-on body work does some things that you just can't do yourself, because there are hormonal responses from human touch that are pretty equivocally demonstrated. I certainly think that, especially for people who are compatible with it and with a practitioner, there can be a lot of relaxation and even release of deeply held traumas and stuff, which can be useful, but the idea that will "cure" run of the mill tinnitus is silly.

This is my take on Julian: I think he believes what he says, and I believe that his narrative of his own experience is also something he deeply believes. Further, I found some subset of his ideas thought-provoking, and some set of those genuinely useful -- but, even if I accept that he had this relatively unusual experience of tinnitus where he was able to actually eradicate it through cognitive work, that does not mean most people will be able to, and his insistence that they can is the main issue I have with him.

The flip side of it is that even if those techniques don't eradicate tinnitus, for people who don't have a 30-year background in yoga or meditation or some other thing -- those techniques can be quite life changing, even for otherwise healthy people with no ailments.

If people deserved to be sued for making factually insane statements on the internet, I would never not be suing people from this forum and basically everywhere else I go online. I'd probably have to sue myself several times.

Freedom of speech means you can express your dumb, unscientific ideas. You can even set up a monetized YouTube channel to do so. I think the alternatives are worse.

Anyone with a medical background of any kind is more qualified to speak on these issues than a condescending person who constantly copy/pastes the same tired, unscientific ideas and thinks that headphones have magic beans in them that alter the properties of sound. I honestly think that the average heavy metal singer probably has more realistic ideas about noise induced hearing loss than you do.

It's too bad Australia is already occupied, else we could just send you and Julian and Joey and all these other people there to explore your unconventional ideas in the outback. The British had the right idea with that.

Have a good day, sir

 

Likewise...

 

@linearb is SO RIGHT. No way around it, Michael Leigh is a waste of space on the internet. Repeating the same misconceptions over and over and over and over and over again. But if Julian Cowan Hill has his audience, maybe Michael Leigh has some fans too... but so did Jim Jones.

It's scary some people are unable to grow and absorb feedback. Is it arrogance, narcissism or what is it? I don't know...

Barb runs away now from this thread.

 

The kool aid tastes worse here but it doesn't actually kill you.

My wife is always saying I should be a cult leader, but I don't want the responsibility.