Making Tinnitus Your Best Friend

I wonder what kind of insane amount of self control and discipline would be needed to decide to love T?
Could it be done ? Without taking LSD or having a lobotomy ?
After all , this life is just a ride , why so serious ?

I imagine you would be a seriously strong person after achieving that .

Sorry if you read this post thinking I had any advice as to how to do that

 

I am sure it can be done. It's not going to be easy, but sulf suggestion is possible and the human mind is a powerful thing!

 

Yeah, not easy indeed . Probably easier than suffering though ?
I am a fan of unintuitive solutions to problems. Has served me well.

"Kill it with kindness and love"

 

I feel I could do that ... If I didnt have this annoying T bothering me all the time

 

Maybe by hypnosis.
Another approach is connecting your T to something you like.
But I have problems to connect a dog whistle or dentist drill with something I like.
Suggestions welcome.

 

Hey Martin, that's like saying, oh got a toothache make it your friend???? oh you have a terminal illness, well firstly make it your friend, oh live next door to a mass murderer,make him your friend ... i say to all the above you have to be killed off, you are not wanted in my life !!! T is the same it must be killed off...

 

I have a far better chance of winning the lottery 3 times in a row as of ever becoming friends with my tinnitus.

 

There is a slight amount of offensiveness to this post, especially because some members of this forum have tinnitus extremely bad.

But I think, if someone can, they should perhaps try to think tinnitus if not as a "friend", then not as an enemy either. The alternative is just to become depressed and stressed out about it. My Grandpa said when you have an uncurable disease, you have to accept it and not stress about it because the stress alone will kill you.

My tinnitus is made up of two main sounds. A hiss and a tone. As far as the hiss goes at least, I've often said to myself, "this is like the sound of a waterfall or something, and that isn't so bad. A lot of people would love to live right by a waterfall." This is the kind of attitude I think we have to take. Of course we all want to be rid of our tinnitus but until a cure is found this is what we have to do.

 

I don't find this post offensive in the least, I have tried to take this approach many times. Saying things like...it means you are alive, and functioning, when you stop hearing it you are dead, this is the signal like a heart rate monitor that tells you that you have life. I see where RaZaH is coming from here. I also think from RaZaH's posts( that I have read anyway) he is quite seriously affected by T and is doing what he can to cope and help others (including this post)

I have serious intrusive tinnitus that that really toppled my life, sometimes having a different way to wrap your mind around this nightmare is the way to go.

 

No offence intended, i certainly don't want anyone to become depressed and stressed, the fact is ... it is not an incurable disease, it's a life of pure hell, if i was told Carol you have this disease and there is nothing we can do for you, but the good news is you won't have to listen to this screaming for the rest of your life as after 1 2 3 years it will end your life, i would be so much happier, and try to enjoy the few years i had left knowing that this torture will be over. OH NO !!! i'm told you will have this for the rest of your life, and it will drive you insane, and it will control everything that you do, and the only time it will ever leave you alone is when you're dead ... don't try and be normal and live a normal life because guess what??? it won't let you ... go to a party, it won't let you go to a wedding, it won't let you go to restaurant unless you're the only one in it, NO!!! you can't even go to a funeral if there's a loud church organ playing, and don't even think about attending your sons wedding as it will be full of people laughing and shouting, little children screaming and crying OUCH!!! are you sure this is not a terminal illness ? i'd rather be dead, not always because i'm trying to hold on and stay strong for all my loved ones and myself, but i will tell you this ... if i ever find a lump that might be suspicious i will never ever tell a soul, i will let it take it's course and pray it will take me,at least i won't have the stigma of OH !!! she killed herself, how selfish was she ? she only had a noise in her ears ... if only it was that simple just a noise ...

 

You may think this is crazy but after I have been able to go to a Maroon 5 concert last month and have an amazing evening out, even with T, I stopped fighting it. (I was wearing earplugs of course!)

Making peace with my new louder T was an excellent move on my part. Since that day, my habituation process has been going faster and the times I spend not caring and not listening to it have been longer and longer. In the meantime, since then, my T has been slowly decreasing in volume (but not in pitch!). Anyway, I have decided not to care

In my case, I assume that there is a strong psychological relation between my T and the intrusiveness of it in my life. Before, I was in a negative loop and now in a positive one.

 

@carol kane
You must be reading my mind!
I feel exactly like you, word for word!

Unless I somehow can fall in love with this noise and keep imagining that I live, not next, but inside a generator 24/7, maybe there is a chance for me.

I doubt!!!!

 

@carol kane this is the choice you make!! if you decide not to go to a wedding or to a restaurant and live a normal life, then T has gotten the best of you. Why can't you do all these things?? Because when you go, all you will think about is the T? But WHY? This is something you have to do by yourself: allow you to have an evening out or whatever and pay as little attention to T as possible.

You are a strong person! You can do it.

I don't LOVE my T of course and I'd rather be without it... but I can't change the fact that it's there and permanent. At onset, the day I stopped fighting T, it faded into the background. Now my 2014 T is louder and the same thing happened: the day I stopped fighting it, it started fading in the background and became less of an issue. I still hear it but I am able to focus on something else...

In 2007 and now again in 2014, I have made the decision that I would NOT let my T rule my life. That is NOT the life I want to have, feeling depressed, stressed and miserable. This was a conscious process... If I had not decided to change my whole outlook on this T issue, I would probably be dead!!

Hope you can reach that stage too, eventually...

 

Carol I was referring to the original post, not your reply to it which I agree with.

 

RaZaH wrote:
I wonder what kind of insane amount of self control and discipline would be needed to decide to love T?
Could it be done ? Without taking LSD or having a lobotomy ?
After all , this life is just a ride , why so serious ?

I imagine you would be a seriously strong person after achieving that .

Sorry if you read this post thinking I had any advice as to how to do that


According to Hazell you can view your tinnitus as a friend which in my opinion is absolute bs:

With tinnitus this means that it is no longer heard, or only on a very occasional basis. The important difference is that even when it is heard, it no longer produces any unpleasant feelings. However, maintaining tinnitus habituation is easier if tinnitus IS heard from time to time. This enables you to renew your beliefs that tinnitus is ‘your friend’, and guards against relapse.

Oh yeah I should point out his claim prior to the "making it your friend" one:

The final stage of habituation is when the signal is no longer detected, and cortical neurones are unresponsive.

I view my tinnitus as a nothing and therefore I have no attachment to it. In my opinion that is the best option by a country mile. And of interest the cortical neurons being unresponsive means you don't have tinnitus!

http://www.tinnitus.org/tinnitus.html

 

I felt this was a worthwhile thought experiment and in fact it seems to work for a lot of people to have no reaction to their T , maybe training yourself to have a positive reaction to it could work.

I can see how this can be slightly offensive, sorry for that.

 

I have a friend (19) who has had tinnitus since he was about 13. He doesn't give a damn about it anymore. It used to keep him awake at night but he just sleeps with ambient music now. He doesn't even hear it during the day anymore. Even in a quiet room. He has learned to train his mind to not hear the sound anymore, unless he actually listens for it. He and I went for a walk at about 12am one night, and I said something like "my T is so loud right now". I asked him how his was and he replied "I don't know, I don't pay attention to it." That really struck me, he didn't know how his tinnitus was? How? A few minutes later he says to me "Oh, I think I hear it, but I'm not sure, maybe I'm hearing it because I'm trying to hear it". His mother also has had tinnitus from a very young age, she's almost 50. Her tinnitus doesn't bother her at all anymore. It's because they don't think about it. I think that not making "friends" with your T, but just accepting it is the way to get passed it.

 

Thank you so much for your reply ampumpkin, what you say makes a lot of sense, and sometimes i tell myself i can do this ... it is so so hard but for now i'll keep pushing on and pray for habituation, i'm glad that you can beat this awful awful condition, thanks again.

 

@carol kane ...hey I tried to give you an "agree totally" and "hug" at the same time re your post, but used up my quota with just one.
Yeah, I have had a lot of suffering for a lot of years (not just T and H, but they are the primary things now) and it has taken vast amounts of time, energy, self discipline, hopes, dashed hopes, trashed hopes, stomped on hopes, and endless "pick myself up by my own bootstraps's" getting to here, today.
Hell's bells, I was a big time "lifer", go for it, human back-hoe, non cave dweller, etc. up until my early 40's...then this last 20 years. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeesh!!! No thanks. Too hard. But I'm still here and still giving the Gremlins and Gods some heavy push-back. Ha, ha...Not sure why sometimes. Though for sure, if I got a known incurable disease, or even heavy duty disease that needs big time drugs or chemo, or whatever...NOPE! Time out, just morphine please. I've had enough of this shit for one go around.

Incidentally, not sure if you have these in soggy ol' England (yeah I spent many years there waiting for just a peek of blue sky)...but we have what is called a POLST form here in USA. (Google it). It's really catching on. It's like an Advanced Medical Directive but sort of better. Very specific. Like I have: "NO IV FLUIDS!" for one box. Just "Comfort Care", even if I'm on the side of the road from a car wreck, they have to really consider if I should be put in an ambulance. Seriously, it's a a huge relief for the paramedics and docs who have to make these decisions. They love the bright pink forms when they see them stuck on the fridge, or in your glove box, or wallet.
If they don't do what I say in the POLST it's big time problem lawsuit for them, so they just shrug and say "OK...It's his life!"...Yep, it is!

@ampumpkin ...re this: @@carol kane this is the choice you make!! if you decide not to go to a wedding or to a restaurant and live a normal life, then T has gotten the best of you. Why can't you do all these things?? Because when you go, all you will think about is the T? But WHY? This is something you have to do by yourself: allow you to have an evening out or whatever and pay as little attention to T as possible.

I know where you are coming from and fully agree in principle. However, it all depends on volume, volume, volume...and reactivity levels of one's T and H. I plain cannot go to events like these above, not because I will be "thinking about T", but because my T and H will be nailing me to the wall with reactivity. In seconds. And the counter-move to that is to put different plugs in (low, med., or high dB protection) and then "Zappo" the internal feedback loop of the T starts increasing, and increasing, as 'inside my head sound' is louder of course. Then that gets too uncomfortable, and then anxiety will eventually kick in...and, yadda, yadda, yadda. The whole pile of cards of saying "I should try and do this and be a bit less hermitic", falls on its face into the wedding cake.
Takes days to recover and reminders to not try that again "for a while!"
Nice idea though.

Best, Zimichael

 

Carol, is there no way you can mask your T?
All my friends and family know about my problems.
If I go out and I get tensed, I put my headphones on.
Even when I sit in the cinema. Of course I can still hear everything. But I have cricket sounds running so that T is a little bit in the background.
I am sure that if you do the one or other thing, it will get a little bit easier.
I know how it was in the beginning. Even going into the supermarket was problematic because of anxiety.
This is much better now. But I have always my devices with me (smartphone, ipad) to mask and to distract.

 

@carol kane--I've been to parties, graduations, christenings, restaurants--many places--and I've had a really good time--even when my T is being loud. Once I get engaged in everything that's going on--I forget about my T or it gets pushed to the background. I had to push myself at first --not to let T be the boss of me. I realized that I was getting phobic about things so I stopped measuring everything I ate and how many hours sleep I got, and if my T was loud or quiet. Whatever the plans are for the day, I carry through--and it got to where I'd rather go do things then sit at home and worry about my T. I hear it now as I type--but I'm not reacting. It's not that I've made friends with it--although I did name it so I could add to its acceptance. I accept that I have T. I know time is on our sides if we put together a strategy and stay strong habituation will continue and things will be even better. If we don't make the choice to live our lives we will be more and more debilitated, angy and sad. Just my 2 cents, please don't take any offense and please know that I only want to comfort you and show you that it will eventually be okay. I really believe that. (((hugs)))

 

I don't consider T my friend, although the T experience does contribute to my personal growth, such as learning to be patient, be more positive, more caring and more compassionate to the sufferings of others. Like Kathi, I am being realistic with T being a reality in my life. It is a conscious decision to accept this alien condition. When the reality is either acceptance or misery for life, what choice is there but the former? Very tough to do at first but getting better over time. When really loud spikes go on day after day, instead of caving into a mental black hole, I just treat myself as a miner/driller in the 3rd world working long day shift without good ear protection, LOL. They are happy to have the job to feed their family, so I will learn to accept my T spikes and peacefully co-exist with it just to get my life back. At least I don't have to work 1000+ ft underground risking mine collapse & poisonous gases. Then I try to enjoy the rest of my life abundantly, holding nothing back, filling it with positivity, finding joy amid the pain (if any). The pain part was there at the beginning, but now heck the brain doesn't even react to this sound high or low. I have been giving positive affirmation to the brain all this time that T though loud and irritating is harmless, and that given time with the plasticity of the brain it will get used to this repeated stimulus. And it does. Now the brain just fades the loud T out most of the time. T is not a friend and I don't have to like it, but it is livable and life can still be enjoyable after T.

 

Thank you all for your comments and advice, i really, really appreciate that someone gives a damn. My husband has had enough of my condition and just tells me to get over it and live your life as he slams doors and clangs dishes ... thanks honey!!! and i know he means it when he says if i could take it from you and give it to myself i would!!! and how selfish am i because i would let him!!! i'm grateful for all you fantastic people on this board you... all of you keep me sane ... God bless each and every one of us.

 

I pretty much would echo what @Kathi and @billie48 said: Your tinnitus indeed can contribute to your personal growth (it certainly has mine) and I don't let it keep me from doing what I want to do. Would I call it my friend? No. But I don't consider it my "enemy," either. I don't even consider it an "it" ... because "it" is me. It's my own brain that's responsible. I need to learn to accept and live with this part of myself, like I do with my now anxious personality and my flat feet (even though tinnitus has caused me more grief than my feet). To hate my tinnitus would be to hate myself.

I did not take offense to the OP and hope my post does not offend others. It is only my opinion, nothing more. We all deal with tinnitus in our own way.

 

This may sound really stupid but I've been looking at my T as a lesson in suffering. In the 5 weeks I've had this I have come to understand suffering so much better. Everything I do is harder now and often less enjoyable. I feel like I'm forcing myself to 'fake' it so that eventually I'll make it. I work in a quiet office all day and my T is dog-whistle like and on bad days is louder than anything but the shower. The first two weeks I was wracked with panic that I would become disabled just a year after finally finishing all my medical training and starting to work. It was so distracting I just could not concentrate and focus. Now, I realize that won't happen and I can work through it. It's just that my job is now harder. Enjoying a movie is now harder. Socializing is harder. BUT, when I see a movie, or argue with my colleagues over a case or socialize I get periods where I don't hear it. It's amazing. For the first time in over a week I had a day yesterday where my T wasn't intrusive. It was there and I had to force myself to not dwell on it, but in getting busy with some projects and socializing that night with friends I did not hear it for >80% of the day. And, yes, it's loud, intrusive and @&#@$ annoying today but that doesn't make yesterday any less awesome. This is the new me and God willing it will abate, I'll habituate or a cure will come.

I'm a LONG way from where I need to be with this. I still have panic attacks. I still have a lot of anxiety. I'm requiring meds to keep me healthy and where I need to be. But, really I only have two choices. Fight (and God is it a fight sometimes) for as close a similitude of the life I had before the onset of this thing. Or give up and let the negative thoughts take control. Either way, there will still be ringing in my head.

 

Good post, Nich. Your T is new but you are already showing the stamina to win the battle and on the right path. You last paragraph hits right on the nail. The choice is there. The ringing will be there choice A or B. But if A will give you a much better quality of life, and even perhaps a high % of overcoming T, why not A then?

In my journey with T & H, I had 2 heroines and their stories I particularly like. They are role models in my struggle to overcome the T challenge. One was a pretty young lady Zoe. She made a tinnitus film which you can view in youtube. A few years back when I was new with T, she came to Yuku forum to inform the members there about the film. In the process, she disclosed that she became deaf at a young age of 15. Her T was unmaskable due to the deafness. She said at first it made *#(*^%@ of a life for her. She said she had to make a decision. A, accept the ringing and try to enjoy life regardless of T, or B, live the rest of her young life in misery. She said her choice of A is obvious. Who wants to spend the rest of life in misery? It is reality set in for her and she chose A wisely. She said her T is really *@#%^&* and unmaskable. But what else can she do except to move on with life and try to make peace with T. Wise choice. She did just that. She even went on to university where she made her tinnitus film. Her story inspires me to make the right choice fast. Acceptance! Acceptance! and Acceptance! What else have I got to lose?

I also read the story of a young lady jazz singer Melody Gardot. Besides severe T & H, at the young age of 19 she was hit by a SUV while biking which did massive damage to her body. She was in hospital for a long time struggling with incredible pain. Even to this day, she is limping on a cane. She also has to wear sunglasses everywhere due to ultra sensitivity to light. You would think she would quit on life with not just T & H but so much more challenges. Not so. She chooses positivity over negativity. She never quits in the face of adversities, and moves on with a booming singing career doing shows all over the world. She is an inspiration to me as someone who embraces positivity and excel regardless of the challenge she faces.

So given choice A & B, let's make the right choice fast. Why prolong the agony? Eckhart Tolle, the author of the Power of Now, talking about the role of the crooked ego and twisted mind, reveals a point which really dawns on me what went wrong with me and my problem with anxiety/panic disorder. He said & I paraphrase that the ego & the twisted mind of ours often tend to mislead us that by negativity, by reacting emotionally, we can somehow solve the problems we face. Isn't that true for the most of us. Perhaps this is coming from the days we were babies and toddlers. By crying and acting emotionally & negatively, we somehow learned that help will come and problem will be solved for us (by our parents, grandparents). This primordial instinct may linger on even when we are adult. So when crisis as bad as T hit us, and when the doctors can't help us, the negativity, the crying, the negative emotions are in full display.

Yet we know such negativity will be futile against a formidable & non-passionate object as T. It doesn't care how bad shape you are in. In fact, the more negative, the more louder and intrusive it seems. So what choice do we have? I guess reality needs to set in at some point. Change course, from negativity to positivity. It can only help you and doesn't cost you anything. Why not? It makes perfect sense. Fight back with positivity in your life until you bury that T bully. I know it is doable. I am living it. I never thought good life can be back again after T. But I am a believer now. May the force of positivity be with you.

 

@billie48 . Very, very good post and something to think about.

 

While I don’t knock it if someone is helped by making tinnitus his or her friend, the word that best describes how I feel about my own tinnitus is disinterest. I have no desire to track it, monitor it, befriend it, love it, hate it, accept it, fear it, respect it, compare it favorably with something pleasant, compare it to cancer, or make predictions about it.

Learning how to be our own best friend is time well spent; trying to make tinnitus our best friend is to give it a place in our lives it doesn’t deserve. Tinnitus is in my head, but it will never be in my heart.

Tinnitus can’t keep us from doing anything. It seems that it can, especially at first, but it is really our thinking about tinnitus, rather than tinnitus itself, that can make the biggest difference.

Living with tinnitus so it has no impact on us doesn’t require strength or toughness. Strong-willed people have also been knocked to their knees by tinnitus. Living with tinnitus so it no longer affects us may have more to do with expending as little energy toward it as we can, something that we may have to learn how to do over time. @ampumpkin describes it as the day he stopped fighting his tinnitus. What strikes me about his post is his decision to attend a Maroon 5 concert springs from how he thinks about tinnitus. The same is true about Kathi's terrific post. Her tinnitus hasn’t changed a bit; but in her thinking, @Kathi has done a 180.

Reaching the point where tinnitus no longer affects us is not a function of how loud it is. A lot of people with very loud tinnitus have kicked it to the curb and a number of people with comparatively soft tinnitus have sought help in tinnitus clinics. In the end, it is less important whether exposure to certain sounds causes tinnitus to ramp up. It is impossible to see it this way when we are overwhelmed by tinnitus, but the greatest obstacle to living with tinnitus so it no longer affects us has less to do with the characteristics of our tinnitus and much more to do with the content of our thinking about tinnitus.

@Nich, I know you feel you are a long way from where you need to be, but you have taken one of the most important steps that will get you there over time. I enjoyed your post.

here2help

 

@here2help hello For some reason, you refered to me as a man, but I've been 100% woman for 31 years so far !! LOL

 

Love your positivity!! you are a real inspiration! GOD BLESS YOU!