Miles ...

An interesting story about Miles O'Brien popped up on cnn.com this morning. You can read it HERE.

The last paragraph struck home because it very much applies to tinnitus.

Think about it. Miles O'Brien lost his arm. We have lost our silence.

Here is what he writes:

"I don't think you need to be superhuman to bounce back from these things. I believe it is something we all have inside of us. The question is whether we want to access it."

Best to all -

stephen nagler

 

This is so motivating. It makes me think "It is not that bad, there are people that suffer much more"

 

I honestly don't think you can fairly compare one person's loss to another's. The loss of silence can be of incalculable magnitude, at least it was for me. My purpose in pointing to the article is to stress that while the solution to our tinnitus might not lie within us, the solution to our suffering most assuredly does.

stephen nagler

 

Agree completely on both accounts:

Suffering is not a contest. Comparing tinnitus to, say, cancer is pointless.
Yet suffering is part of life. It comes for all of us. It's what we do, when it arrives, that's important.

 

Dear Dr. Nagler,

But....
We did not only loose our silence, also our brains added something..... terrible noises.
So we have to deal with a lost, and to deal with something (horrible) new.

Noises in your brains brings you constantly in the alert-modus, the sound processing in the brains lies against our fear-center in our limbic system. Thats why the brains will 'let us know' about the noise and you will be alert by it continue. And I think that is not the issue when you've lost an arm.

Don't want to be negative but it's a difference.

 

Tinnitus activates the fight-or-flight reflex, so a sufferer may feel he never gets a chance to relax again. Ever. If the T is severe, the tourment may be particulary intense.

However, if you can find a way to relax despite the T, the problem is to a large extent solved. You just need to protect your ears from further damage, but beeing a bit paranoid about your lifestyle is doable. The closest we have to such relaxation is people who learns to not give a damn, which is to my understanding what TT-members like @Dr. Nagler and @billie48 have accomplished.

But if you lose an arm, there's no way to make it grow back. Or if you have become blind, you will never get your seeing back.

I hate having T, every second of it. But it's only the second worst in my book.

 

I won't want to lose my eye sight and mobility for sure. Those are the most limiting things to a person. I remember playing blind and handicapped every morning when I woke up with my loud T, trying to minimize T and put it in proper perspective. I said screw you T, you can't limit me going around places (actually H did), and you can't stop me from enjoying the beauty of the visible world. As for the loud ringing, people can get used to it over time with the right approach and positive attitude. It is not an end game and good life can be back. You just have to give it time and have patience for whatever strategies to work and don't expect perfect or quick fix either. Life has many imperfections and T is one of them for us. We need to learn acceptance to accommodate T to reduce the stresses from painfully resisting such reality in our life. Remember all the negative reactions remind the brain T is a threat and it will zoom on T and sensitize our senses for it, making it sound much louder.

As for the horrible ringing, you get used to it over time, especially you don't put up a painful resistance to the reality. I used to watch videos of people working in loud jobs and turn up the volume to reflect real life loudness. I saw the drillers and miners running horrific loud drills and they don't even have ear protection. I use that analogy to help me absorb in the T ringing with less and less negative reaction, knowing that it is probably my reaction to the T ringing that contributed to my sufferings. Once my mind starting to believe in that, it sets forth the momentum for habituating to the T ringing.

 

OK. But that changes absolutely nothing from Miles O'Brien's message:

"I don't think you need to be superhuman to bounce back from these things. I believe it is something we all have inside of us. The question is whether we want to access it."

stephen nagler

 

People who lose limbs often can severe chronic phantom pain in that limb. This is thought to arise from the same kind of map reorganization that causes tinnitus.

As for which is worse, I have no idea -- I'll get back to you if I lose a limb.

 

This strikes a strong chord with me, because of an experience I had last summer. I really struggled with my T last summer, then it was much better in the fall. As I've been struggling again lately, I have been going through my journals from the end of the summer, and I came across a detailed description of a lucid dream that I had:

I was in a large, brightly lit room. I was surrounded by people I've known from every different part of my life, and I became aware that I was dreaming. My only purpose in this space, is to show love for all these people, and so I make my way around the room, going from person to person, giving each a warm hug. Each time, I am filled with an overwhelming sense of connection and peace, as we embrace.

After a while, I realize it is time for the dream to end. I sit down on the floor. I look over to my left, and then I roll up the left side of the room - the whole side of the room literally becomes a sheet of fabric, swimming with colors and sensations, which I roll up with my hands. I turn right, and roll up the right side of the room. I turn around, and roll up the back of the room. I turn forward, and roll up the last parts of the room - now I have the whole space rolled up into one warm, fuzzy blanket, and I wrap it around myself. I lie there, basking in a sense of calm, loving reflection, as I wait for my body to wake up.

When I awoke fully, I instantly felt that I had somehow connected with a very real, very deep source of love and power within myself, and also felt that if I could cultivate a stronger connection with that source, that all of life's various struggles might be easier.

I'm not, in general, prone to a theological understanding of the universe, but I do believe that the things this dream reflected are every bit as real, and important, as my usual day-to-day experience.

I do not believe that it was a coincidence to have had this dream almost immediately before entering a relatively calm, happy period of my life.

 

@linearb Thanks for sharing that dream--that is really profound. I can share that I had a yoga experience a couple months ago where I had a spontaneous thought into my head where I was stuck in some kind of slime that I couldn't move from, and I pushed myself out of it and stepped out. Looking back, ever since then, I have felt a lot less "stuck in the mud" of tinnitus and have been living my life a lot more.