For Those Who Succeed with Habituation

Thank you. So sad to see that people actually suffering extreme because of this shit but I dont get whats the point to making it more scary for the newbies. I would never do such thing, OF course I would scream for some support but never bring another newbie down with me, people are different and what ive been told there is people with loud T which tend to copy to it also. Oh well..

 

Yeah extreme t could be really devastating , my grandma herself had extreme t + pulsatile t , thank god she is better now , but really try to avoid clubs as much as u could even if with ear plugs damage can happen , I'm not saying don't go , but just try to avoid them and go less for you're future hearing and if you go make sure you have really good ear plugs

 

Hi Snow,
Tinnitus is not tinnitus. Therefore you will find here from mild to severe to catastrophic.
When I was in Bad Arolsen in a German clinic, one therapist told me: "T is T. It has always the same loudness."
T is just a common name for all kind of sounds you hear in your ear or head. Therefore don't judge on the people here. Everyone has different T and different ways to cope.
We also do not know what T Dr. Nagler has. We know he suffered a lot and therefore it is definitely not mild.

 

When I wrote (in post #6):

"I think that habituation will and does happen eventually for the vast majority of those who suffer from T and even H if they are not at a catastrophic level."

I was replying to Linearb's direct question to me:

"You've been dealing with this for a long time, Jim... what are your thoughts here?"

I just thought that you knew that I was NOT talking about you or the vast majority of people that suffer from Tinnitus but rather a small minority.

I don't apologize for what I believe to be an accurate statement but I am sorry if it scared you or increased your level of anxiety because of how you interpreted it.

 

The point is the OP asked for support from others who have reached a good place, let's offer her the kind of support she requested - answers to specific questions from members who have habituated. If a debate needs to be had there are other places for it.

Naddesh, you seem like a strong person and a compassionate one from what little I've read. Remember that the worst possible outcome isn't always the "realistic" one, though I see a lot of people thinking and saying that. I think you're more likely to habituate - most people do. There is absolutely hope, please do not let others pull you down. The world is full of suffering, and I have seen people live and find joy in circumstances that are so horrible I almost cry thinking about it right now, people facing T along with other challenges that are beyond my experience. There will be time later to help support those who are still hurting in whatever way they need, too. Time will change things, one way or the other, the trick making it through one day and moment at a time.

 

I don't think that loud, high pitched tinnitus is necessarily a bar to habituation. For instance, I read this on reddit just yesterday:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tinnitus/comments/3fvmtl/my_experience_of_overcoming_tinnitus/

It seems to me that some brains just seem to flip a switch at some point and find a completely different way to relate to the perceptual input -- and while oftentimes people report some kind of conscious effort finally leading to a breakthrough in this (as in the link I just posted), it's not correct to say that you can consciously force that to happen, it seems to be a time process.

It's worth remembering that every nerve in your body is constantly firing and providing perceptual input to the brain, the vast, vast majority of which is discarded before it ever becomes a conscious percept. For instance, my feet are uncomfortably cold right now, and on some level I've been aware of that all morning but it's not really "bothering" me.

Bothersome tinnitus requires a couple different glitches: first you need an audio processing problem which generates the sound in the first place, but this only causes the perception, and not the conscious thought / distress. For that, you need a glitch in the filtering which is constantly scanning percept streams at a subconscious level and discarding 99.99% of what's there.

If your brain was not still capable of filtering out a ton of garbage and noise, it would not just be tinnitus overwhelming you: the slightest change in perception, like a gentle breeze running through the room, would seem like an unbelievable overstimulation, impossible to endure. (There are people with very, very severe sensory processing issues who experience the world like that -- for instance, some people with severe autism report an inability to chuck-process visual data, so where you or I would see a boring field of grass, they see a billion individual blades of grass and find it overwhelming and distressing).

For me the bottom line is that even though my tinnitus annoys me, overall, my sensory filters work pretty damn well, and therefore the optimistic and reasonable thing to do is to assume that my brain will continue to filter the T percept better and better over time.

Of course you can find horror stories of people who just get worse and worse, but so fucking what? You can find horror stories of all kinds. It's entirely possible that in fifteen minutes your body will develop a horrid crisis which will make tinnitus seem small in comparison: you could randomly have a stroke that leaves you completely unable to communicate, or you could develop CRPS and spend the rest of your life in unbelievable physical agony, or you could get struck by lightening and become so severely brain damaged that you don't know who you are. What's the point in even thinking about such things? One day or another, you're going to develop a crippling health issue, and spending your whole life in fear of that isn't going to change it. In the bleak, Sylvia Plath view, we're all broken and hopeless. Do you find that comfortable? If not, then just reject it: we all create our own reality, in every minute of every day.

 

@erik I admire you. Thank you for the answer. I hope you always stay that strong.
@jimH I was not offended by your post. It was more those who recently got banned I was reacting to. I would like to thank you also for ur response.

 

Wait, whut? I guess it's off topic, but I didn't realize he had been banned. Are you sure? I know he butted heads with several members here, but that's to be expected when we all have varying perceptions of what we're dealing with.

All I found was this thread:

It's my understanding that Dr. Nagler had tinnitus comparable to standing next to a roaring jet engine. How he habituated is beyond me. It's also beyond me how someone can be a gifted painter while I can barely draw a stick figure. I don't think I'm deficient because I can't draw, and it wouldn't be right for someone who is gifted to consider me deficient because of my lack of ability or to think that I don't try hard enough.

 

Thank you soooooo much for your kind words.
People like you make me more strong and hopeful, I think it is a step along the way. I try to be as positive as I can. Thank you.

 

I had a lot of people who helped me along the way and had more faith in me than I had in myself. It helped me along and if I can give just a little bit of that to you or anyone than you've made my day.

 

He is... G O N E . . .

Yes... according to his own interpretation, that is. Listen... tinnitus depends on many factors - incl. the frequency, centralization in the head (as opposed to the ears), etiology (head injury vs. noise), pulsatile/non-pulsatile, as well as the psychological component.

11 dbSL isn't catastrophic tinnitus (= Dr. Nagler's tinnitus masking level). See this chart if in doubt...



a (concerned) passerby

 

hey can you concerned citizens stop completely derailing a useful conversation by ripping apart the credibility of someone who doesn't even post here anymore?

thanks!

 

@linearb
Saw your long post now. Thank you. Like your SO WHAT-attitude. That was me before T. Kind of.

 

I so want my normal life back... I used to see big things in the small but now i just feel the other way.[/QUOTE]

Yes i am as happy as before. I have habituated in one year. When i first got T i was a complete mess. Almost a year on and i barely think about my T. I'm planning on starting a thread this weekend discussing how i've coped. I haven't logged in for a while and i haven't got much time right now. But i want to share how i've habituated in the hope it may help someone else. But i have a lot to say and it's going to take some time.
PS no my T hasn't really changed since it first begun.

 

I'm not ripping apart his credibility, but it's discouraging to discover that someone who consistently recommended TRT had maskable tinnitus. Mine is not maskable. It's in my head, not my ears. If I were to raise the volume of anything sufficient to mask my T, I'd be doing serious damage to my hearing. On most days, you could run a rotary sander next to me and I would still hear it.

It's important in any discussion about habituation to have comparisons with other members, and by aids such as the chart posted by @passerby. Seeing that chart helped me to understand that my difficulty habituating isn't due to a lack of character on my part, or because I'm weak or malingering. I genuinely have severe tinnitus, as does @Telis, @dan, @snow86, @Martin69 and others.

 

There are plenty of people with unmaskable tinnitus who report being habituated. EG, maskability, while nice, is not a requirement for habituation.

I'm not suggesting that everyone is capable of habituation, and I am not suggesting that volume is not a factor. All I am saying is that at a fundamental level, habituation of constant sensory stimuli is a homeostatic process: it's something which the nervous system does on its own, constantly. Therefore, people who are for whatever reason incapable of habituation have a homeostatic problem, and not a problem of volume or maskability. The best anecdotal evidence of this is people who report blaringly loud tinnitus as measured by MML / db matching, and yet also report not thinking about it very much. I have a good friend who seems to have, relatively, the same volume and pitch of tinnitus as I do -- and cares about it almost not at all. We probably have similar audiological issues, but the rest of our anatomy and resulting psychology is completely different.

Comparing ourselves to others for pessimistic reasons is rarely useful. I have no idea what your tinnitus sounds like, and you have no idea what mine sounds like. Whether or not I am capable of habituation has no impact on whether or not you are. Whether or not Dr. Nagler's tinnitus was maskable has no bearing on the price of T in china.

I think maskability is a fickle thing, because T as an internal signal is generally always capable of being discerned if one is determined enough, regardless of external factors. Today I am not stressed, I've been doing my usual meditation and dream work, and I can't hear my T in the shower. During periods of severe stress I can hear my T screaming away like a tea kettle over the shower -- but I also do not believe that the tinnitus itself is any different at that point, the signal is constant, but my umwelt dances around it like a goldfish in a big scary pond.

 

I am happy and do all the things I did before even though I don't think you could say I have habituated but then my T is not the kind anyone else here has and habituation is not something possible in my case. But it took me a couple of years to adjust and I have days where my symptoms (which include but are not limited to T) act up so much that I can only lie down and driving or going to a movie or something are out of the question. They usually don't last long.

 

As a reminder to everyone, this is a request for support by a new user who is suffering, looking to keep positivity in her space and specifically asked for only the opinions of those who have habituated.

This is not an instance in which debate over whether or not habituation is possible for all is warranted. Let's respect this new member's needs and wishes and keep to her request.

If anyone needs to talk about how habituation isn't possible for them, or feels the need to inform others of this view point, let's start another thread.

 

I had moderate/loud T at one point, it's like that fridge in the background, it's actually easy to tune out but hard to stop thinking about. Once you wrap your head around it, accept it, you won't be bothered by it anymore, it just takes a little time and effort.

My T isn't like that anymore unfortunately but I do have the experience of what moderate T was like to deal with.

I agree with street spirit, stay out of clubs if you can, this shit can get real real, really fast. On the other hand, I know people with minor/moderate T like my gf that don't care, she won't hesitate to go dance all night without ear protection and her T stays the same.

 

for now....shasta just posted last night in chat that her t was ok to deal with for 7 years!! loud noise exposure and now she has RT.

Who knows what can happen. .but yea..some have just tonal t 40 years never changes. .odd...and lucky

 

@Naddesh,

I read through your posts in other threads tonight to learn a little more. In my opinion, while your boyfriend kissing you on your ear and the emergence of your tinnitus occurred at the same time, one did not cause the other. Fluid in the ear or an infection in the middle ear can cause tinnitus, and it is possible that when the fluid completely goes away and some time passes, the tinnitus could go away. As your doctors suggest, it is impossible to know at this time whether your tinnitus will go away or not. Hopefully, the nasal decongestant you are taking will help.

It is a good sign that you don’t notice tinnitus as much when you are at work or outside. Since you tend to notice it most when you are home, it might be helpful to put some soft, pleasant or neutral background sound in the room to give your auditory system something else to focus on. Listening for tinnitus to check if it is there is something many of us have done when tinnitus is new. The reason you hear it when you are watching TV is because your auditory system is keeping track of a threat. It isn’t that watching TV makes the tinnitus louder; it is that you are able to hear it even though the TV is on. This is absolutely normal.

As tinnitus becomes less of a threat, you will probably find yourself monitoring it less and less over time. Habituation is a process that occurs gradually. We can’t consciously make ourselves habituate any more than we can make ourselves enjoy a book or a movie, or make ourselves fall in love. Habituation occurs naturally. For me, there was something much more important than habituating tinnitus. It was the moment, long before I habituated, when I realized I was going to be OK. What I’m trying to say is to be as patient with yourself, and with the process, as you can. Remind yourself from time to time that this is a new experience that, for now, leads to many questions, uncertainties, and fears. That will almost certainly change when some time passes. You aren’t going to feel this way forever. And please, don’t believe for a minute that you are “spoiled” in some way for feeling upset.

I hope you will give yourself credit for reaching out to others for support and information. It can be hard to do that when we’re not at our best. You are doing a good job (and your English is excellent).

Most people with tinnitus are able to enjoy life fully and normally. There is every reason to believe you will be one of them. In one of your posts you asked “will this be forever?” Chances are very good that whether your tinnitus goes away over time or not, your feeling isolated, tired, and afraid will go away. One thing that will help is to keep doing activities you enjoy. Is it OK to work out? Absolutely. Is it OK to go out with your friends? Definitely. But take precautions, as you have been doing, when you are around loud sound by wearing a good set of earplugs with a noise reduction rating (NRR) of 32 or 33. A good rule to follow is that whenever you are in a setting where you really have to raise your voice for someone standing next to you to hear you, then wear hearing protection. This is as true for folks who do not have tinnitus as it is for those of us who do.

here2help

 

I agree with @here2help. He was my mentor during my darkest days. If not for him and Dr. Nagler, I don't know if I am still here. I learn from them tinnitus is not an end game. Good life can be back. I never thought it possible a few years back as I was in a mess with my T & H. But now I know it is possible and true. I am living it. I don't have normal refrigerator or fan type of tinnitus. Mine is an ultra high pitch dog whistle loud T. As I am typing now, it is screaming with its high pitch shrill resonating in my whole head. I figure its pitch is much worse than a dentist drill. Once my family asked me how high is the pitch. I played a sound clip matching my T to them. Instantly everyone screamed, covered their ears and ran away from me as fast as they could. From that, I know my T is not what a normal person can bear. I can hear it above the jet noise during the last 2 flights. I can hear it above the raging rapids of the salmon rivers I fish.

But I won't cave in to T any more. I live by positivity. I enjoyed my life abundantly. I may not like T but I accept T as part of my being. The body is now hardened to the dog whistle. It used to cave into panic attack on auto mode when the dog whistle rang. No longer. Today my T is very loud. But no negative reaction forth coming. Because the brain doesn't treat T as a threat any more, I only heard my T at times. I was fishing for the mighty king salmon of the Fraser River today. When the fish is jumping on the line, I wouldn't hear anything else. Too much fun and excitement to worry about paper-tiger T. When I heard my T I didn't give a dime. I just went about enjoying my life as before. T may not have changed. But I have changed. T is not an end game. Believe it and be positive.

 

@here2help thank you so much for your long and useful answer! I must say that my T went away after he kissed me, (4 hours maybe) but it came back when i was blow drying my hair the next day, and also my nasalspray did dry the fluid behind my eardrum but T is still there. That is what Really makes me worry about a real damage. Im going to see a specialist 18 august..

Again thank you for the answer.

 

@Naddesh I got tinnitus basically the same time as you after a friends rock gig, and thankfully I feel like I am starting to cope with it, even though it seems like it has gotten a little worse. Like you it is constantly on my mind but my anxiety towards it has definitely reduced. Personally one thing that I am trying to do is finding a positive to come from all of this. Since T, I have started planning to switch universities to a specific program that I enjoy, and I feel that if that happens T will have actually sorta helped me follow my dreams. In all I think T does change your life, but it's up to you to decide if that will be a good change or not. Hope this helps!

 

Was he banned? Wow - I didn't know. You've made my day! (I was becoming increasingly annoyed at someone repeatedly saying that TRT was the solution for everyone, tinnitus is completely and utterly about perception and implying that if the TRT didn't work then it was the individual's fault.)

 

Yes, happier.
My life is limited only by not attending concerts and most movies. That's all.
My relationships are better. Meeting people who play acoustic music MADE my life. The loud bar scene was a dead end.
My T is worse than when it started in 1974 but I've learned to ignore it.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/

 

@Naddesh

Just my two cents ... If you're worried about sound causing more damage, just take it easy for now and avoid loud situations or wear earplugs. Try and take your life back in small steps without pushing yourself, that will make things easier on you. Unless your T is very loud. you'll probably get used to it. As long as you stay on your feet, things will change with time. That's just how life works.

 

I can't mask my tinnitus. Weather on my motorbike, drilling or using my headphones, I can always hear my tinnitus. And I'd say I'm as close to habituation as you can get.

 

I am aware that Dr Nagler is a controversial figure and was both a recipient and practitioner of TRT, but in his well-known 'Letter to a Tinnitus Sufferer', considerable space is devoted to CBT as a method for achieving habituation and Tinnitus: A Self-Management Guide for the Ringing in Your Ears by Jane Henry and Peter Wilson is referenced. TRT is not even mentioned.

The Henry and Wilson book often gets recommended to those who are 'actively trying to habituate' as it contains many practical exercises to nudge this process along. I am therefore drawing attention to it as a potential resource for those reading this thread.

Please note that in doing so, I do not wish to denigrate the experiences of anyone who considers habituation to be beyond their reach for whatever reason.

Having said this, I would encourage any newbie to explore the potential of CBT, MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) and TRT as paths to meaningful habituation.