Setback

[kevin b]

I guess I am here for any advice or encouragement. To try and keep it short, I believe I got T from switching SSRIs about 1 & 1/2 years ago. I am a 25 year depression suffer and as much as i would like to be off them , iknow I need them. After much struggling and medicine changes, my T settled in a steady pulsating T in my right ear. My left ear ringing left on its own. By January of this year I felt I was maybe 70% habuiated, it still caused distress but I was able to string together hours of the day and night when it didnt bother me. i started going back to the gym, work was going well and I had tapered down from Klonopin 3 times aday @.05 to just on dose in the morning. my depression was still bothering me so my Pscy added Lamatical and it worked, I slowly tapered up to 150mg. Accidentally I took a double dose- for probably a few days, and started to get a hiss in my left ear. I immediately went back down to 150 but the hiss stayed. it really shook me but i tried top push on the last few weeks and seemed to be making some progess, I even started acupuncture last week to try to do everything i can to heal. Sunday night the anxiety and hissing/pulsating were at high levels and I did not sleep well. Monday was adisaster, I left work early and took a Klonopin at 3pm to try and get some sleep before my family got home. I am now at work completely depressed and anxious that i have fallen back

 

[linearb]

All I can really say is that it will get better, and what you're feeling now is temporary. I have experience with all the drugs you mention, but for me it was a lot different, and nothing really improved for me until I found a way to get off all of them. I know that not everyone has that same experience.

Good luck. All of this will pass. If nothing else, try to stop making rapid dose adjustments to your benzo; Klonopin has a 30 hour half life, and I personally would not be comfortable altering the dose by more than 10% every 2 weeks.

 

[billie48]

Setbacks are quite common on the road to recovery. In my first few years I must have tons of setbacks. I just read a success story on anther forum by a guy who said he must have hundred something setbacks. It is better to mentally prepare for setbacks, knowing they are going to happen, and that most likely they will return to baseline or that we can apply the same things we learned to habituate the first time to the 2nd, the 3rd... and so you get back on the feet faster each time. This habituation is like a ladder, not a straight climb. The more we stay positive and relax about it, the easier for the normal parasympathetic nervous system to take over the limbic nerves which cause us to function in fight or flight mode. Take care and God bless.

 

[kevin b]

yes , setbacks seem to be the norm. For me, the mornings are so hard, I sleep well without any medication, but when I wake up the realization of the sounds start the anxiety/ depression in motion. As the day moves on I get better and usually by mid afternoon I feel so much better. My nights coming home to see my family I almost feel like myself again and I usually fall asleep with confidence that I can live a happy and productive life, but each day the cycle begins again. I know it is important to try and build on the good times that I have. I pray every day for strenght and guidance, i guess I must continue to work on the positive things I am doing and maybe the mornings will get better.

 

[billie48]

I can't say for others, but I used to watch videos of people working in loud jobs without ear protection as a way to help me accept the loud ringing in the morning. I used mental imagery to imagine myself having a loud job like these guys but don't have to bear a sound as loud as their machines nor needing to work in hot sun or 1000 ft underground in a mine risking mine collapse, explosion or poisonous gas. In you case, if you only feel bad at the morning, then imagine you are only having a short morning shift with a loud job. It is not a perfect analogy. But the mental fortitude to accept the exposure to a loud sound (or perceived loud sound in tinnitus case) can be paralleled to these folks. So I said to myself, "So what I have to bear with this loud sound for a few hours in the morning until I got too busy and distracted from it? These folks bear with this loud sound days in and days out for their working life for wages. I will accept my loud T so I will have my life back."

So I would turn the volume of these videos up to reflect real life loudness, then soak it in to realize how horrific the noise level is. The T is usually drowned out by the noise of the machines. Then seeing these folks doing ok w/o ear protection, I realize that perhaps I shouldn't be so freaked out or be so sad to have T in my life. This is a mental game we need to play with T. It has turned that ringing sound into a phobia. The more we can minimize T, the easier to accept its reality and the less we feel phobic about T. That is my way to deal with my phobia and I don't suggest that it can work for every body. But we need to do what we can to neutralize T, whatever works.

Watch these guys with amplified speakers and you will know how loud it can be:

(No ear protection for these guys. One of them was even smiling to the camera in that horrific noise)


(The worker is near the end of the video and surprisingly he didn't seem to have ear protection either)