Noxacusis and Tinnitus Caused by Repeated Exposure to Someone Who Is Hard of Hearing

I really don't know what is the best way of regulating the mind and the body. Perhaps it is doing whatever brings balance to you, based on your natural disposition and your current mood and circumstances. In my case, since I am a sedentary person who frequently journals and ruminates and reads, I am unable to achieve balance except through bodywork. Perhaps someone with the exact opposite disposition (a natural athlete or dancer who is always moving but never stopping to think, feel, read, or write) would benefit greatly from talk therapy and journaling and self-help books.

I always benefit from acupuncture. I've also benefited from chiropractic work and massage in the past. Exercise is also helping me a bit. I just to have to summon the motivation to do it and avoid falling back on thinking, which is my usual way of coping with problems. (Funny story: someone recommended a book on the many ways in which physical exercise heals and maintains the brain. Because I hate to exercise and love to read, I almost bought the book, thinking that if I read the book from cover to cover that I would be more motivated to exercise. Then I decided it would be far better for me to get out of my chair and just start moving. For someone like me, reading a book about exercise amounts to procrastination, not education.)

Vagus nerve exercises have become very trendy on YouTube lately, so I've been trying them out during spare moments. I believe they work. All types of bodywork will relax tight muscles and regulate the notorious fight-or-flight-or-freeze-or-fawn response. The effects may last for only a day or two, but that short respite from pain and depression is worth it. You may enjoy sampling different kinds of bodywork to see what suits you best.

 

@Uklawyer, it seems you are really into something and reading interesting stuff!

I really believe if the brain is unregulated (limbic system impairment), it can produce physical symptoms like pain, nausea, intolerances, etc. I read several cases of people with POTS, Post-Covid Syndrome, Lyme, visual snow, light and sound sensitivity and other chronic issues getting better or healed using neural retraining techniques.

An example is @Marin’s story; she got better from severe hyperacusis using DNRS and diet changes + homeopathy.

I feel that I have tried everything else (pink noise, silence, gradual exposition, etc.) and nothing worked in my case, and I’m slowly worsening, no matter what. So I’m starting neural retraining with DNRS and some vagal nerve exercises, let’s see what will happen.

I wish you a good recovery!

 

Hi @Samy, I am sorry that you are finding things difficult at the moment - I I hope that you can soon turn a corner on the road to recovery.

There are, indeed, many stories of people with an array of physical symptoms (tinnitus and hyperacusis included) who have fully recovered by working on their minds and brains and regulating their nervous systems.

Sukie Baxter has has a couple of useful videos on vagus nerve exercises - the one is which you orient by focusing on objects around you, shifting your gaze from near to far and taking in colours, textures, shapes etc - and then doing some eye movement exercises always has me feeling exhausted.

If you would like to hear a podcast on hyperacusis (@ECP), here is a link:

Stumped: A Double-Boarded Physician’s Quest to Cure Her Chronic Pain (Alicia Batson, MD)

Dr. Batson, who suffered with lots of physical symptoms, seems like a lovely woman. She also did an interview with Dr. Johnathan Stracks, who does mind-body work.

I have heard of DNRS. It's great that you are trying it out - I am sure it will provide some benefit.

Please keep us updated on progress.

Best wishes.

Funny indeed. Today, I believe my therapist told me that I try to think my way through problems. She thinks that is why I am reading a lot at the moment. Having a "lighter" mind certainly seems like a nice option.

I wonder how you learned to realise that you were doing this.

 

@Uklawyer, thank you. I am listening to Dr. Batson's interview on that podcast now. It's a pity that they have no transcript of the entire interview, as my right ear is incredibly sore today. But anyhow, it's interesting that she said that wearable noise generators did not help her at all. I have been reluctant to try those myself, for people on the board have had such a mixed bag of experiences.

I don't know how to figure out the right balance between thinking one's way out of a problem vs. using bodywork and other means to release the problem. For me, it was the realization that no additional amount of rumination on the past or speculation about unknown variables will be beneficial. Trauma is lodged in a place that can't be extracted by the mind alone.

Over twenty years ago, I read over a dozen books on trauma and spent a lot of time on a message board for trauma survivors. It was an educational experience and an emotionally validating one for sure, but learning new things and experiencing validation from empathetic people doesn't actually remove trauma. All it does is give you a partial set of tools to craft your own particular method of recovery.

 

I just want to chime in that @Uklawyer knows what's up! I have been on a very similar journey - doing many of the same readings and applying the same techniques - since September and I have had a 90%(ish) reduction of hyperacusis and an 70% reduction of tinnitus. Interestingly, all this "chronic" pain I thought I had from child birth and sports injury (hip, low back, ankle, wrist) is now gone too. When it or the tinnitus flares up, I just tune in to what my body wants me to FEEL and acknowledge what is actually taking up space in my thoughts - and it dies down! No lie. I said to my husband three weeks ago that it was interesting how it took me exactly 1 year to get better. A week after that BAM - total return of symptoms. Why? Buying a new car and meeting with my boss to tell her about not returning next year. After the dust settled and I stopped giving tinnitus any attention, it was even better than before the regression.

I don't come on here much because for a while it was such an emotional roller coaster for me to read of all of these people suffering so badly. But I appreciate that @Uklawyer is taking it upon themselves to help people. Listen to him/her!

 

Hi @ECP. I agree with you entirely on that one - it is hard to know if ear generators will be helpful or not. I have a pair (all covered here in France), but I don't use them now because I was finding that I was focusing too much on the sound they were making vs the tinnitus itself. I was measuring and comparing, which is not the idea. It was hard to just leave them play and not give them any thought. Also, at night they could run out of battery and make a noise which would wake me up and require me to change battery and set them up during the night if I did not want to switch to silence. Rechargeable would have been better and might have been worked but I could not even bring myself to wear these all day - the awareness (and thus attention) was there, so they were counterproductive to a measure. I was also seeing if my internal noise was getting any worse, as some have reported happens initially.

Write that in bold capitals and put in on your wall for now...

I have read so far that fully integrating the traumatic experiences into memory is the goal. I have read Bessel Van der Kolk's description of EMDR and it seems really interesting. Do you have experience of this?

 

@OnlyUP - thanks for the endorsement - I am so happy that this mind-body healing has been helping you. You seem to be further along than me with it. How are you doing exactly? And are there any techniques that you find especially helpful? I think that the ability to access and gain some control over the unconscious part of our minds via the conscious part is amazing thing and that we can do some great things if we can change these learned pathways of fear/pain etc.

I understand your wish to get on with life and to spend as little time as you can considering the noise and I think it is great. Perhaps a success story if you get to a great place, if you so wish, but go out and live - here's to moving on!

 

My goodness, your experience with the noise generator sounds so disappointing. I'm so hyperaware of all noises now that I will probably have an experience very much like yours.

I was able to recover from PTSD two decades ago using several sessions of acupuncture. It was nothing short of miraculous. This time around, acupuncture is helping somewhat, but since hyperacusis also involves physical pain, not just emotional trauma, treatment is proving to be much more complicated and it may take longer.

I am well aware of EMDR but never got around to trying it twenty years ago. If acupuncture hadn't saved me, I believe EMDR would have been next on my list of things to try. What made me reluctant to try EMDR is that there is usually a talking aspect to it. I didn't want to see a therapist and discuss the trauma, even if the EMDR purportedly draws out the trauma at the same time you are talking about it / thinking about it.

I do think there is value to EMDR. I understand that the lady who popularized it (or perhaps invented it) came up with the idea after discovered the benefits of eye movement purely by accident. She went for a long walk while looking left and right at the scenery, and afterward she noticed that she felt different somehow. I have noticed that if I walk for hours and look at my surroundings, using sweeping motions of the eyes, I always feel weird afterward. A good kind of weird. I won't try it now because I'm still hypervigilant about being outdoors and exposed to noise, but down the line I might.

 

@ECP, perhaps try the Sukie Baxter meditation for chronic pain on YouTube:

Somatic Meditation For Chronic Pain

There is a little eye movement exercise at some point. I think this is supposed to provide new sensory information for your brain to process and thus do some physiologically (I cannot remember if it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system).

It would be interesting to see if it helps a little bit.

I really have no idea about the efficacy of the sound generators. I do see their potential to shift focus away from internal sounds, but it would require a commitment to wearing them constantly, I believe. Experimenting with ambient sound through use of a white noise machine for a prescribed period (like a week) might help to determine whether the sound approach could be of benefit to you.

 

Thanks, I have done all the Sukie Baxter videos before. She is very good, but her methods alone have not been entirely effective for me.

White noise is very painful to my ears. I can listen only to brown music for now, and only for a few minutes at a time.

Thanks anyway for trying to help.

 

Is that you saying "they did nothing at all for me" in a nice way?!

The machines have various sounds, like nature sounds. The audiologist said that fractal tones should be used, i.e. with no discernible pattern. Can you tolerate these?

Essentially, anything that can help with a change of focus could be beneficial: walks in nature; watching TV with subtitles; reading; light exercise; drawing. I guess you are doing this stuff anyway.

It will come @ECP.