Good Days Bad Days

Question to those who have habituated to T. I have had T now for 8 months and feel like my worse days are behind me but I still have days when my T just kicks the crap out me .......my question is to those who have completely habituated do you still have difficult days dealing with T ?

 

First off, congrats Carlos that you have gone through the dark days. I don't have difficult days with T even though it just blasts away most mornings to tell me it is there. I just don't care about it any more. The same sound used to cause my brain into relentless panic attacks. Now the brain is hardened to the sound and doesn't give a dime. Is it lower now? Not really. I still remember I could hear my T even during my last flight to Toronto with the jet engines so loud. I just don't react to T and my brain somehow caught up with me and my will power. Accepting T being there, and focusing on the rest of my life and enjoying it abundantly by minimizing T, that is what I am doing. By following the principles of CBT and guarding the trap of distorted thoughts (cognitive distortions), I have been able to put T at bay. Don't ask me how it happens. It just did slowly over time. Make sure you stick to a good approach/strategy/treatment which helps you. The rest is just up to mother time.

 

After one year I am not completely habituated, but my bottomless pit of despair has turned into shitty hours here & there. It is an issue still, but I do not feel the hurry to adjust any more. It is a matter of time. Billie's posts have helped me greatly in my darkest times, thank you Billie!

 

Thanx Billie

 

Thank you for the kind words. That is great to know you have been helped at the darkest time, whether by my posts or by the great posts of the caring members here. The collective wisdom of the members here can help most struggling T sufferers. I have a lot to learn from some of the T veterans and their in depth knowledge on the subject of T.

 

Hi Billie- did you go to CBT? Or you naturally habituated ?
More power

hi

 

Carlos I think what happens to most people is they have less and less bad days as time goes on and eventually none. My bad days at this point are few and far in between. Keep your head up focus on the progress you've made. You are obviously dping something right.

 

Carlos, I no longer have a difficult time with tinnitus. I used to. I was able to turn things around because I had help from an expert.

Like me, you also have access to an expert. You are the expert.

When I was having a terrible time with tinnitus, I realized that it was my own thinking, rather than tinnitus per se, that was kicking the crap out of me. That realization, more than anything anyone told me and more than anything I read, helped me get on top of things. It helped me to put my focus where it needed to be, and where I could make some changes. We can't do anything about tinnitus, but we don't have to. We can still feel better, feel genuinely happy, productive, and engaged with life. And so can you. We can still reach the point billie48 has, and the majority of people with tinnitus have, so that tinnitus no longer has an impact on us.

What did I mean when I wrote it was my thinking, rather than tinnitus, that caused me to feel miserable? How is it possible that our thoughts can impact our feelings? Do thoughts have that much power? And if they do, is it possible we can distinguish between thoughts that are helpful to us and thoughts that are less helpful and, by doing so, slowly get on top of tinnitus, even though our tinnitus is unchanged?

My suggestion is on a day when tinnitus is kicking the crap out of you, pay attention to what you are thinking about. Shine a light on your thoughts and see what comes up for you. You have gotten yourself this far over eight months. Over the next few months, you may be able to take yourself the rest of the way if you hire your inner expert.

here2help

 

6 1/2 months living with T now. Had a good Easter weekend with my family. Now, sitting at my desk (have not much to do) and being full of anxiety again and depressed. I don't know if it is my thinking, but the sound really, really annoys me and makes me anxious.

Carlos, good that you made such progress. Wish I would be there, too.
I need giving it more time.

@billie48 and @here2help:
You guys are really a great help. I hope I will be there one day, too.

 

I didn't use a CBT therapist. I wasn't aware there is a certified one in Vancouver 5 years ago. But Dr. Nagler and Here2help were God-sent in the nick of time for me. I happened to bump into a former support forum anchored by them. They were great mentors to me and still are. They are truly experts on tinnitus and hyperacusis.

Here2help has amazing ability to communicate with us newbies in our language and he has uncanny ability to put us at ease. He also has tremendous sense of humor which was very important to us newbies, knowing someone can still laugh at things after suffering T & H is quite an assurance to our fragile condition. He also had H besides T so I could truly relate to his experiences.

Dr. Nagler's 'Letter to a Tinnitus Sufferer' showed me the way to the beginning of recovery. It pointed me to the right direction - reaction, reaction, and reaction. It switched my attention then to the reaction, not the volume of ringing, to how I was under the spell of cognitive distortions and not thinking realistically. As he challenges us newbies to write down our distorted thoughts and to counter those with more realistic/positive ones, I began the journey of doing some sort of CBT myself if not a full blown program by a therapist. I then bought an inexpensive paper-back book called 'Feeling Good' by Dr. Burns and read it thoroughly many times. It is a great CBT book.

The most important thing is not about learning these excellent concepts only, but to actually 'just do it'. I wrote up WORD documents after documents of my worries, fears, catastrophic thoughts about the future, and challenged each of them and replaced them with more realistic/positive ones. I put these documents up at the desktop of my work PC and home PC and glanced over them all the time. These repetitions are positive affirmations to the brain, and given time and enough repetitions, that stupid brain of mine just had no chance but to give up the distorted thoughts and to catch up with my will power to be more positive and realistic in my thought process. It is like a daily boost of brain vitamins and given time the turnaround is a fore-gone conclusion. Of course being a Christian, I put in my own spin there by also using Biblical verses in those documents to motivate myself.

I also read up on Eckart Tolle's the Power of Now. It taught me the importance of being present by focusing on NOW, the very current moment which you can feel and touch. Not the past which is history already, nor the future which is not yet a reality. But the very present moment which is real and controllable. By focusing on the very moment in front of me and making a conscious decision to make it the best moment, I have managed to gradually turn around my life and my sufferings. It is not an overnight miracle of course, but it is a bit of habit forming thingie that eventually it becomes natural.

I hope those of you who don't have access to certified CBT therapists will not give up or side step CBT. Besides what I mention above, there is also that excellent CBT book specifically for tinnitus by Henry & Wilson which you can get a copy from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0205315372/?tag=tinntalk-20

 

Hey Billie. Thanks for your response.
I have "Power of Now" and the Henry&Wilson book here.
Will put on my IPAD and go through them again.
But I don't know if the problems are my thoughts or just the sound in my head driving me crazy.
But I need to survive. Have kids and wife. They need me.
Best regards,
Martin

 

Thanx CB ...I have periocal bouts of Depresiion and I think that when I percieve my T to be louder when I'm happy and doing my thing T is a diatant member but when D hits me so does T. I somehow have to break this cycle I'm trying not to take any AD meds and handle D naturally but its tough sometimes.

Thanks for the kind words CB

 

H2H you hit the nail on the head. When the crappy days come its because my mind is not focusing on the happy things in my life and I start to get a little Depressed and from there the T perception gets louder and in turn it gets me even more down until I kick my self in the a$$ and snap out of it. Just wish I could break this cycle.

Thanks for the words H2H

 

Hey Martin, great to hear you are reaching out to learn some excellent concepts & methodologies on managing our emotional health. A big part of T suffering is mental. Negative reactions to T can amplify its ringing and add more intrusiveness. So to win this mental game with T, we may need to add more arsenals or new life's skills, and these books are great assets to help enrich our arsenals. The Power of Now also has a section about Acceptance, Surrendering, Flowing which are very essential to help me cope with my T. Like I often advocate, 'Be firm as the Mountain in our resolve in the battle with T, yet be willing to Flow like Water in accepting life's challenges'. Accepting the reality of T in our life instead of fighting it and exhausting ourselves emotionally & physically is a key concept in my own recovery. After that, I just focus on the beauty of life, anything not tinnitus. My motto now is living life abundantly, enjoying it to the fullest and finding joy amid the pain, and making each present moment a good moment as much as possible. Hope you will slowly learn to minimize the T ringing and maximize the rest of your life. If you can, seek out a treatment program like TRT or CBT. Each person will have to find what works for him/her and stick with it. And then just be patient & leave it to mother time to do its miracle of healing.