Tinnitus Is All in Your Mind

I've been a member here for a year and a half and I've read a lot of posts where people say the cause of tinnitus is thinking about it too much. Just forget about it and move on with your life. It's all in your mind if you stop thinking about it it will lessen.

If you're in the initial stages I admit we all think about it too much. How could you not?

However, if someone has had t for over a year or two they're not hyper-focused on it (I know there are cases where you can't ignore it, I don't mean you.)

To those people who say stop thinking about it and it will go away I want to say that's a load of hooey. We've stopped thinking about it and focusing on it yet it's still very much there.

 

To me, there is a great misconception to how we even think. We as humans have very limited free will. Ask a schizophrenic if he/she plans to recite Shakespeare at the local theater.

The subconscious mind steers the ship. You ever hear of an 'impulsive person'? Perhaps you have. Basically it is a person whose strong impulses from their subconscious mind bubble up and they act out on them. These impulsive behaviors aren't particularly sensible to the conscious mind. Btw, I am the polar opposite of an impulsive person...an analytic. Analytics seem to be 'consciously rational'. How do they do with tinnitus? According to a brain surgeon I consulted recently looking for answers, not very well. They may suffer the most.

So how does it go with tinnitus? When we first contract tinnitus, each of us almost to a person are scared to death of this foreign invader. WTF? We go see our doctor and find out there is no cure. This makes us even more anxious. We go through the panic stage which on some level is a function of 'not believing we can live this way'. This is the subconscious mind having its way with us as it always does. Anxiety is something that can not be willfully beaten down on a conscious level, no made how rational the person is. The subconscious mind is what we truly believe about ourselves and our situation and who we are at that point in time.

So what happens over time? We cope with tinnitus. At first is almost impossible and then the days and weeks go by and we are still alive and somehow trying to find our way. We struggle but on some level we succeed and survive. Meanwhile, what is happening to us? By data...aka the brain's awareness of our survival, we begin to believe we will survive tinnitus, the demon that has invaded our sacred minds...the minds that create sound from the percussive air waves in the environment and sometimes the brain manufactures sound within our brain on its own aka tinnitus. We demonstrate to ourselves we can live with it on some level. Not what we want but we can deal with it as one of life's blows that come our way. Then what happens? As the days go by, we gradually gain confidence we can live with it, our subconscious mind loses its stranglehold on us, our anxiety level reduces and we incrementally start to inch our way back to when we were more normal...or considered ourselves more normal. We believe it in our core we will survive this scourge. With this belief, the mind settles and tinnitus is even reduced for many from its early grip because anxiety is known to affect our brain chemistry which can heighten tinnitus. There are constant increments of setbacks and spikes and disbelief over time but ultimately we adjust our lives and move on.

There are exceptions but that is kind of the norm. Of course there are those with very minimal tinnitus and it really doesn't bother them 'much'. But I have friends that say they sometimes are distracted by their tinnitus.

But there are horror stories here. My personal belief is mental health is even a precursor to acute tinnitus. Those that suffer greatly. But in fairness, if you place a loud enough sound into a sane person's head, it may drive that person insane on some level. For many of us, tinnitus in some ways is the test of our lives. Our will to live and find enjoyment in life.

I have great empathy for those who suffer beyond the pale because I personally have suffered enough with this to know if it were a lot worse how dark a place life would be.

 

I agree. When I first got tinnitus it was quite low so I never really thought about. Didn't make it go away, though. Now that it's gotten louder, more reactive, etc. it's all I think about and it sucks. I want my old tinnitus back!