The Positivity Thread

Beautiful, Inspiring, and VERY helpful to help others in their life journey with any given struggle.

Thanks for posting!

 

Hi, I am new to this forum but I have quite an uplifting story from about 7 months ago I would like to share. Basically my T hadn't been worrying me as much and one day I woke up and it was Completely gone! For over a month I had zero symptoms and no ringing. It was a mini miracle and even though I went to a bar with a live band and it came back, it really gave me hope no matter what happened things can always get better. I have to give the credit to God as I had been praying for him to heal me. Miracles DO happen. You just have to believe. Sometimes all it takes is faith in a higher power and ourselves. Suffering is not always a tragedy because it teaches us humility and how to connect with those who are hurting. Healing comes from within, God just helps it along a little. Postive energy heals in all its forms.

 

Positivity is a force which can help us live a normal, peaceful, and even happy life. I posted the film made by a young and pretty Zoe Cartwright above. You may not be sure by how she feels about her life in the face of such punishing unmaskable scream 7/24 for life. Here in the comment section of this the web site which I provided the link you can read about her positivity and stamina, which is a life force which shelters her from a life of suffering and misery:

http://www.grumpyoldeafies.com/2008/05/film_experience_of_tinnitus.html

How does she view her life in face of total deafness and unending, loud, unmaskable T? Here in one of the replies she made in the comment section of the above link summarizes it (just incredible positivity & stamina which is so touching to witness and which I am trying to emulate to live my life with T):

Dear Dj, Laurence, Chris and Eddie,
Cheers for your lovely comments guys, it really makes me smile
I'm intrigued about Eddie's message regarding "looking at it in the wrong perspective" - the film was not designed to bring out the violin strings or moan about tinnitus. It was simply about showing a different perspective walking around with a noise that can be dominating - which therefore feels surreal. I love my life, and I can honestly say I am happy - Tinnitus is just a slice of my life.
Thanks again.
Zoe.

 

Once one gets T one must become a better person to overcome it.

 

Hi. Glad positivity thread is still going!

I wanted to let you know where I with treatment.


I am 5 months into treatment with neuromonics and have noticed a difference in my reaction to my tinnitus. I am not as stressed nor distracted by it nor angry about it. You need to commit to 2-4 hours per day which is a big ask for many people. Note the studies report a high drop out rate – I assume for this reason.


So I appear to be habituating and as I have another 6 months to go I assume I will continue to habituate. I would like to not hear it at all and hopefully the more I habituate the less I will “notice” it. It is interesting what we fail to notice?


Let me add that I continue to take antidepressants and seraquel at night. The dose hasn’t changed across the treatment period so I can only assume that the therapy is the key to change. The next goal is to slowly decrease both meds.


As a lot of you I tried the notched music route but my tinnitus is about 12500 and little music is recorded with those frequencies. I will have another shot at the notched white noise version. And sincere praise to those who posted instructions for notched music and other software – I hope the kindness you offer is returned ten fold.


Being stuck in one spot listening to quiet music leaves you time to think. How did I get it and why and what now and what later? I realised that I wasn’t taken care of and didn’t care for myself enough either - otherwise I would not end up with this damage. Unpredictable things happen when we quietly take responsibility for our misery. As a psychologist I am very good at taking care of others but have neglected myself and entered into relationships where I was neglected. At middle age I told myself that “good enough” was the goal. For those of you with a background in psychoanalytic thought you will know that “good enough” is an important concept. However, good enough quite obviously wasn’t good enough – it was not enough at all. Not enough for me. Tinnitus told me that my time is limited and I should stop wasting it on problems that cant be solved. To live is to feel passion and joy. The world of grown-ups does not have to be the grey-beige of debt, uncertainty and slow physical decline.


Here is what I did with my misery: I returned to painting and returned to theatre. I gave these up in university to “get serious” about my career. How wrong I was. I paint most days and have moved from “ok” to “Hey that is good! Did you really do that?!” (So THAT is what I do for 2-4 hours a day!). At the end of my first sequence of acting lessons my class did a performance and were the first group since the course started 5 years ago to get a standing ovation! Go figure? And I made friends with people who have NOTHING to do with psychology! To think I was going to attend more workshops on psychotherapy skills?! Let me also say that my relationship has changed remarkably – I don’t get neglected and feel less and less guilty about asking for what I want.


Irony: if I didn’t develop tinnitus would I have rekindled these fulfilling interests and made other changes?


In all of this I ask myself about how I will live without silence. Did I ever notice silence or only its absence? Probably the later. My tinnitus had an onset in March this year. I will wait until March next year to decide how or whether to try any further treatment. Changes are being made all of the time.


Finally – despite your anxiety and distress, don’t become a prisoner or victim to your tinnitus. Maybe many of the solutions offered are short term but in my understanding of the world, many long term solutions are just a bunch of short term ones stitched together. Hold your distress and channel it into those things you gave away.

 

Okay friends......ready for some positivity? I have gone almost 40 days without loud T and sleepless nights! YIPPEE!!! I hope this cycle continues. I have not had any difficulty with Meneires, cochlear hydrops or whatever it is I have in my inner ear other than my cycle of migraine headaches and a some fullness in my ear off and on.

I feel BLESSED!!!! Thank you God for my peace, joy and purpose!

 

Saw this today and thought about sharing it here, because almost all apply to us with T as well...

 

I'm very happy to see that this thread is still going strong!

Remember, even on dark days - think positive. It may be hard, but it is worth it.

 

Thank you Demi for starting this great thread. I like reading anything positive. It lifts the spirit and calm the soul.

Yesterday I had a long day but a memorable day. As usual my ultra high pitch T blasts in the morning but I don't give a dime to it and went about the day with something important to accomplish - volunteering for food bank service. We have to distribute a flyer and a donation bag to each house along the routes of our assigned areas. My area covers hundreds of home. Hey, I am 'fishing' fit with walking. So after work, I drove to the assigned area and trekked the streets and delivered the flyers and bags to many homes within my assigned area. It was a good work out, walking for hours in semi-dark condition and I had to watch my steps. Luckily, no dogs came out to chase me. LOL.

It felt good to do something for others less fortunate. I didn't even pay a bit of attention to the screaming T. Let T be. Let the rest of my life be. On the weekend I will go back to collect any donated foods and to deliver them to the collection depots. It feels great that people do care enough about the poor to donate foods to feed the hungry and the poor. People helping strangers. I like it. That is what we are doing here in the same spirit. The world is a better place when people care. Amen.

 

Demi.just wanted to thank you so much for starting this thread.and also want to say thank you to billie48.your posts are awesome.always so positive and provide so much hope .thanks again

 

Thank you, @billie48 for your efforts in serving others less fortunate. What a good idea. Rather than focus on T, focus on those who need food.

 

Great thread. I like it.

For anyone who is going through a difficult time right now - think about this .....

There is a difference between controlling your emotions and being with your emotions...it is the difference between knowing we are here to do it all from laughing, to crying to feeling joy and pain.

Hope you like this quote by Rumi the great sufi poet.

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”

 

Thanks Billy and Teri for your kind words. I do think positivity has its place in life to help us live a happier and easier life. If life has to be lived one way or another, why not live it positively? There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. The more positive, the less stress. The less stress, the less loud T. So why not positivity? When we focus in positivity and believe, we can overcome adversity. Here is a video of a touching story of a positive young lady who has no legs, and abandoned by her birth parents as a baby, and her moving story reunited with her gold medal Olympian idol - actually her sister. Simply amazing story of positivity by this lady and the unconditional love by her adopted parents. Hope you enjoy this video to sense how positive this young lady is. There is no "can't" word in her dictionary:

Jen Bricker 5 min

By the way, as mentioned before, I went to pick up the donated foods for food bank today, but with a limping left foot due to a sore ankle. I guess the few hours of walking to distribute the flyers gave me a sore ankle because I mis-stepped on one of the steps while distributing the food bank flyers. Nevertheless, I learn from this lady without legs - there is no "can't". So out I went, limping or not. Well happy to say mission accomplished - 12 bags of donated foods. Hope some needy people can enjoy them.

I rested for a few hours and drove out to fishing, limping or not. My fishing destination is beyond the town of Hope along the mighty Fraser River. So folks, my fishing was actually 'beyond Hope'. LOL. But my hope of catching two sockeye salmon is realized. Yummy fresh salmon for dinner. What a nice day. I live my life abundantly and enjoyably regardless of what T does, high or low. I don't let it dictate what I do. It has lost its tyranny over me and my life.

 

@billie48

Wow! What a beautiful story! I loved it. It made me cry.

I have started something that I wanted to share with this board. I am starting to clip out inspirational newspaper articles, magazine articles, etc... to keep in a folder. The latest newspaper article is one from my hometown. An oncology nurse was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Her fellow doctors and nurses had a fundraiser for her. They raised quite a bit on money for her and she thanked them kindly. Then she gave the money to a child who is also fighting cancer. She felt the little one needed it more than she did.

 

@demi How are you doing?

 

You watch that video and t is gone. Speechless!!!

 

In here for some positivity - although I'm having a bad T weekend (I ate a TONNE of chocolate yesterday after being chocolate free for about 5 months, so perhaps that spiked it?) I've actually been going ok for the last few weeks. T is still there but some moments when I notice it, I'm getting better at moving my thoughts onto something else quicker than ever before

 

awesome Karen.getting out and staying active helps me so much with my pulsatile tinnitus.reminds me that im alive and that there are so many wonderful things in life to enjoy .thanks for the positive post.its what I like most on this forum. Billy43

 

Drank two beers for the first time last night in six months and didnt get any increase or crazy sounds.

 

Positivity-my life is becoming more 'normal'. I am going home tomorrow after spending time on a camping trip. Tonight at the camp fire I asked my husband how much my T effected our trip--he said: Not at all! He had a great time! We did many fun things, antiquing, riding our motorcycle (with double ear protection), eating out, cooking crabs over the fire, etc. Then I asked him how much my T effects our relationship and he said that for months he didn't know how to help me, but now I am like my old self. I almost cried. I have used a bit of masking and it's so quiet in the camper that I use my iPod with nature sounds at night to fall asleep, but other than that I've just gotten used to the noise and forget about it while I'm engaged in doing something. I did have two low T days, but on the other days it was loud but like I said, I forgot about it...

 

Thank you all so much for sharing your stories. This really shows that positivity and will power go a long, long way.

Bwspot wrote here that to overcome T, you have to become a better person. That's a great advice and exactly what you should try to do: become the best version of you. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself for having to deal with T, why not talk to other people and try to understand their problems? They may not have T, but do they not deserve to be listened to because of that?

Instead of numbing your brains watching TV at night, why not try to learn something new? Start to play a (new) instrument, learn a new language or follow a course on Coursera. Learning a new skill, and really trying hard to succeed at it will get your brain working at a level at which it may not even have time to notice the T. There are, of course, more benefits to learning new things: it is generally fun, you may improve at your job, and you may even meet new people.

And why not work out more? Maybe you could start running. Or swimming. Or lifting weights at the gym. No matter what you do, physical exercise feels good. There's nothing like finishing . While working out you may not even be able to pay attention to the T, because you may be too focused on going that extra mile or lifting that extra pound.

Anyway, those are all things that may work for you. They definitely work for me. T is no excuse for not becoming a better person!

 

I just want everyone to know that as I struggle with new tinnitus in my only hearing ear, already had habituated 8 years ago to my horrendous T in my sudden deaf ear, I read and re-read positive threads to give me "hope" that I will habituate once again. But I am struggling and I LOVE positivity!!! Keep 'me coming!!

 

Hey @AnneSusan: You habituated once. You will do it again. I am looking forward to coming back to the positivity thread down the road and reading your success story.

 

I believe today. I believe I can make it. "If you're going through hell, keep going," said Winston Churchill. "The only way out is through," sang Alanis Morisette. I started to do relaxation breath techniques to help me with my shattered sleep. I wake up too early for 2 months now... but today I fell back to sleep! So I slept. It's a better day.

 

Thank you LadyDi. I promise I will write of my success, whenever that may occur!!