Tinnitus Retraining Therapy

If that’s really how you feel, you could try benzos.

 

I am pleased that you have sent me an alert message because it now gives me the pleasure to say you are now placed on ignore. I have had enough of your conduct and bad behaviour.

Goodbye.

 

If that's how you interpret my answer it just shows who you are.

 

You can dish it but you can't take it, buddy.

 

So true. Negative "counselling" like this is something you need to avoid. You do not need it, it will only make you more miserable. What didn't work for person A, might work for person B. CBT over a longer period, combined with counselled sound therapy (or follow your own sort of protocol if possible), can help you.

It will take time and patience - but there is great hope for better days! Time is also a healer in a sense, but only with acceptance of tinnitus at present.

 

Yes, @Michael01, sound therapy and CBT can help you. I am in my 10 month of therapy, and it has made me process the whole hyperacusis thing differently. I have a "toolbox" now that helps me react in a way that doesn't put me down as it was for a long time. I am slowly, slowly getting better.

 

If only you could place yourself there.

 

Thanks for that, as right now any encouragement is appreciated.

 

I think this is an important point and I think a good argument for giving these therapies a go. However, the counter-argument is that you can get information from these therapies in particular which can be damaging for those with severe tinnitus and hyperacusis.

This is even more the case with CBT where therapists - most with very limited knowledge of tinnitus and hyperacusis - often seek to persuade their patient that a fear of loud noise exposure is simply an irrational phobia. In most cases it isn't - reducing loud noise exposure in the aftermath of first onset of tinnitus or hyperacusis is the single most important thing you can do to prevent your condition worsening. Continued loud noise exposure will make it much, much more difficult to habituate.

That's why I regard both CBT and TRT with suspicion and never understand the views of those who believe one is good (CBT) and one is bad (TRT).

 

Science is not a style of music or a fashion; it is the act of seeking the truth about something through experimentation. Pretty much every possession we have is a result of science. It is part of the fabric of our society upon which all groundbreaking discoveries are made. To say it has no part to play with tinnitus or hyperacusis is absurd. How else do you expect a treatment or cure to be discovered?

TRT remains controversial, and many are now distancing themselves from it.

Tinnitus and hyperacusis are complex conditions where no two people will experience the same thing. It is unique in each instance, so the more we can learn about it, the better, and one of the best ways to achieve this is to donate towards research (and yes, this involves science!).

 

You make a valid point about CBT @david c Having had two treatments of TRT lasting two years each, with counselling and wearing white noise generators, I believe in the treatment. In 2008 when my tinnitus increased to very severe levels due to a second noise trauma, I tried CBT with my Hearing Therapist briefly. This required writing down on a prepared document how I felt morning, noon and night. I found the whole process tedious to say the least and couldn't cope doing it as the tinnitus was so severe. She then switched to TRT which I found much better.

Michael

 

I know you're being sarcastic, but I actually wonder if he had it. There's no way anyone who's gone through what I've gone through could talk to people like he does unless they were a sociopath.

 

Well I've already tried TRT via a company called Neuromonics, and due to them not really explaining what was going on, or doing any form of counselling or instruction, I'm where I am today. It did help for a time, but my ears eventually started hearing these high-pitched sounds which I first though was my computer power supply malfunctioning but quickly developed into something much more severe.

 

Sorry things didn't work out for you better @Michael01 TRT must be administered correctly as I have detailed in my posts about the treatment, otherwise it is not TRT. Furthermore, it is best that the Therapist doing the treatment also has tinnitus and believe this is vital. Unless the Therapist has tinnitus he/she cannot give good quality counselling because the only way to understand how tinnitus can affect a person is to live with it, as it cannot be learnt from a book. My Hearing Therapist was born with tinnitus. You will find most Hearing Therapists and Audiologists that practice tinnitus and hyperacusis management have tinnitus. They were either born with it or acquired it at some time in their life.

Michael

 

I certainly agree with you Michael on CBT. The majority of CBT therapists have very limited knowledge of tinnitus and hyperacusis and all too often will give advice which is actively damaging. The BTA - which still refuses to describe tinnitus as a health condition (preferring the term symptom instead) - is particularly responsible for promoting this damaging therapy in the UK.

On this I am afraid I have to disagree with you Michael. It certainly hasn't been my own experience with the hearing therapists and audiologists I have spoken with, most of whom didn't have tinnitus. Generally in the UK most hearing therapists/audiologists start training relatively young and reasonably enough see it as a career rather than having any particular vocation as a result of their own personal experiences with tinnitus.

 

"TRT didn't work for me, it made me worse"

"Well, if it didn't work then it wasn't TRT, you need [moves goalpost]"

 

Agree with you one hundred percent David. The BTA used to be good back in the day but not now. The people that work there now know nothing about tinnitus. When I was a tinnitus support contact for them people would phone the BTA and they were referred to me for counselling.

I visit other tinnitus forums David and meet quite a few Audiologists and Hearing Therapists both in the UK and abroad, who practice CBT, TRT and give counselling to tinnitus patients and most of these Therapists also have tinnitus. Unless the Therapist has tinnitus I do not believe they can fully understand how this condition can affect someone that lives with it. If you are unable to understand tinnitus I don't see how you will be able to give good quality tinnitus counselling.

Michael

 

I completely agree that it is difficult to give good quality tinnitus counselling unless you have tinnitus yourself. However, I've met quite a number of hearing therapists/audiologists myself and only one of them had tinnitus herself. I don't find this particularly surprising as most of them had started their training in their twenties and many were still in their thirties while (until recently) tinnitus tended to be something you experienced more later in life.

 

I hear you. When I first got tinnitus with severe hyperacusis 24 years ago the Hearing Therapist that I had was awful. Abrupt, rude and quite impatient. I was going through a very difficult time. Contrary to what some people believe in this forum, I had very severe hyperacusis so bad when someone spoke I had to ask them to please lower their voice as my ears hurt so much from the pain. Anyhow, I wrote a letter of complaint to the head of Audiology about the Hearing Therapist: who didn't have tinnitus by the way and never saw her again.

My new Hearing Therapist was totally different and very understanding and patient. One day I said to her "You seem to understand everything that I'm going through". She replied: " I was born with tinnitus". After some months I learned the hearing therapist that I complained about had been dismissed by the hospital as other patients complained about her.

Michael

 

I told Michael the same thing a long time ago... that I did not think he ever had hyperacusis. I am a long term sufferer and have been through a lot, and reading some of Michael's posts they really sound dubious to me, like copied from somewhere else, but that's just my personal feeling.

 

@Juan

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother to respond if someone had written what you have done about me. For the simple reason I'm not looking to make trouble with anyone here. However, you have been a member and regular poster to this forum for quite some time. Even though you have been disrespectful towards me in the past I have let it go because I know you have had and are still going through difficult time with tinnitus. There have been times when you've also shown respect and that I appreciate. Please take note of the following:

Every one of the 7,531 posts including the articles that I have written on my "started threads" has not been copied from any website or copied from another member at other forums that I visit. That is the absolute truth. If you look at the writing style it is the same all the way through. Threefirefour believed my article: Tinnitus, A Personal View, wasn't my own work. It is 13000 words and took me months to write when I was going through a very difficult time with my tinnitus, if you only knew. I threw the towel in many times as I found it so hard to concentrate because of the tinnitus noise. Every time I gave up I found myself back at the computer struggling to write and wondered, why on earth am I putting myself through this.

It was encouragement from friends that gave me the will to carry on and pleased that I did because I'm here today, even though it took me 4 years to habituate for the second time I didn't give up but I came incredibly close.

Please do not be dubious about any of my posts because they are all written by me and nothing was copied. When I wrote Tinnitus, A Personal View, I mentioned I had used medical terminology such as earwax which is called Cerumen to help with clarification and when I described the Auditory system I did research and used correct medical names for parts of the inner ear for it to sound more professional and that was all.

Michael

 

Michael never describes his stint with hyperacusis in other words than with these exact words, time and time again. That's quite odd. It's also odd that he calls it severe when what he describes sounds more like mild borderline moderate according to Jastreboff's chart.

Michael has never once said what his LDL's were. This is either because:
1. They show that his case wasn't severe.
2. He never had them taken, which would mean that he never had "proper TRT" and that would make his house of cards fall down and all his credibility regarding TRT would be lost.

I personally believe Michael had a temporary case of hyperacusis. But since "hyperacusis" no longer actually exists but is rather an umbrella term for a lot of different pathologies, it's impossible to know exactly what type of sound sensitivity he had and if it responded to TRT or if it just got better with time. However, I very much doubt he has experienced a severe form of DST because then he would never be as ignorant towards severe sufferers as he is. I think he likes to claim his case was severe in order to gain more authority and credibility among newcomers.

 

I am waiting for the Michael shtick where he calls you a disrespectful buffoon child who doesn't know what's it like to have hyperacusis and throws in a and a good day.

It's also weird how his reply to @Juan about all his replies being original sounds like the same few copy-paste fragments he includes in every post. He is either pasting or has some pretty severe thought loops.

 

I want to say a few things about cut and pasting something I have only done around three times on the articles I've written, that were relating to TRT. Whenever I reply to someone asking for help with tinnitus or hyperacusis, the posts will sound very similar because I only advise on Noise induced tinnitus.

I don't usually advise on tinnitus caused by an underlying medical problem within the auditory system and there are many. I rarely advise on tinnitus caused by hearing loss, TMJ, pulsatile tinnitus or tinnitus caused by medication. These types of tinnitus require the intervention of doctors that specialise and are trained in these particular fields.

Noise induced tinnitus is a different kettle of fish because ENT doctors don't usually treat it. This is left to Audiologists and Hearing Therapist that practice tinnitus and hyperacusis management and treatment and comes under Audiology. Treatment can be: TRT, CBT, Sound Therapy, Counselling, Relaxation therapy, Mindfulness, Medication, or a combination of them. As I have previously mentioned many Hearing Therapists/Audiologists that work with tinnitus patients also have tinnitus. When tinnitus is noise induced with or without hyperacusis, the patient should be referred to Audiology.

Michael

 

But why do so many of your replies use extremely similar language? My point, regardless of whether or not you're actually hitting CTRL+C and CTRL+V, is that you mostly say the same stuff over and over again. Ironically enough, you are saying your usual stuff about CBT, TRT, etc. in this reply. You also seem to seek out new sufferers to the condition who are not aware of some of the things you've said on the forum, and who are more likely to treat you as an "expert."

 

I don't want to downplay what you went through Michael, but if you're calling that "very severe", what category do you reserve for people who can't leave the house because of their hyperacusis? Surely you must have seen their stories. Some of them don't improve and it's not for lack of trying. There are people who aren't helped by white or pink noise to desensitize the auditory system. Some get worse because they follow the advice from an audiologist who tells them to persevere with this treatment. One day, people will look back on this era and be filled with horror at some of the common medical practices regarding tinnitus.

I am glad that you were helped twice by TRT, and I will never say you're making that up. I just wish you would understand that everyone is different. Even newcomers with similar stories as yours in terms of noise-induced tinnitus can react differently to the same treatment.

I guess you can tell by the way I express myself about TRT that I'm not a big fan. While I haven't had TRT, I have had CBT counseling where they were using elements of Jastreboff's neurological model. To me, it's very hard to stay composed and calm when someone is regurgitating some dogmatic beliefs coming from Jastreboff that have long been disproven. Coming from a person who does not have tinnitus, yet who speaks with the authority that he/she has to be right and thereby invalidating my own suffering is something I find mildly infuriating.

You will probably dismiss this as you have done in the past with other people saying they haven't had proper TRT and you're right I haven't. Most clinics are still using elements and combining it with CBT or ACT. The habituation part of TRT isn't necessarily wrong, but to me it's more an observation of a naturally occurring phenomenon rather than a treatment.

It's saddening we still only have this in 2020. The hospital where I went had a waiting list of several months before you could get treated. If you have to allocate all your time, personnel and hospital space catering for people telling them that essentially there is no cure, one would think this would be moving things in the right direction but I don't know... When pressed, these people come to the same conclusions as the patient. So you get some empathy at best, but it's a frightening realisation that you've reached the boundary of medical care and there's not much they can do for you.

Also, hearing there's no cure, most people choose not to come back and I'm pretty sure they get thrown in with the "got better/habituated" crowd, which is why CBT and ACT can boast good numbers.

I'm not saying habituation isn't a thing, but mild people habituating on their own doesn't do the severe cases any good.

 

30 years ago I subscribed to ATA. After a couple of years I stopped subscribing. Last year I subscribed to ATA again. Except for better graphics and glossy pages I was reading the same articles from 30 years ago. Sad to say I believe ATA, BTA and others are just self-serving.

 

The ATA website is sad. They have had the same weak “success” stories for years. If those are what they consider success stories I can find hundreds of better success stories on this site and elsewhere. They should be updating weekly new accounts of people who have regained their quality of life. I was told by an audiologist that I should not search the net about tinnitus and that the ATA site should be my primary resource. It took me about a half hour to conclude that I was not going to settle for the little hope that is on there. They could be doing so much more as a resource for our affliction. I mean seriously, I find it hard to even find a website that updates less than the ATA.

For those with severe cases, they bring nothing to the table.

 

I have previously said in this forum that I am here to try and help people that ask for help and advice with tinnitus and hyperacusis when caused by exposure to loud noise. I also do this at other forums, by email, and by telephone. I don't feel it necessary to explain my reasons for what I write to anyone because this often turns into arguments. Some people visit tinnitus forums to make trouble. I saw this happen to an ENT Doctor 24 years ago when I first got tinnitus and attended a forum where he was giving advice. That forum wasn't as sophisticated as this one and not equipped with an ignore facility.

The doctor in question was dedicated to helping people and at the same time there were forum bullies whose only purpose was to make his life a misery. The ridiculing, insults and bad language he received was abominable for reasons I do not know to this day. These bullies challenged him on every comment, post and piece of advice he gave. And yes he also had tinnitus. I learnt a lot from that doctor found his advice very helpful at a time I was going through extreme difficulty coping with tinnitus and hyperacusis.

This doctor some of you know because he has attended this forum and helped people. I corresponded with him some weeks ago at another forum for quite a while. He is aware of the troublemakers in this forum that have tried to do the same to me what happened to him many years ago. Fortunately I can click ignore to deal with persistent troublemakers and never have to see them again. He gave me much encouragement and I was taken aback with his kind comments about what I do. When I responded in kind thanking him for his help 24 years ago, I think he too was a little taken aback.

In answer to your question above please read my previous post where I said that I do not cut and paste. My posts look, sound and seem very similar because a person cannot change their writing style because it is like a fingerprint. Furthermore, 90% of the people that visit this forum for help have Noise induced tinnitus with or without hyperacusis. Most of the regular posters to this forum have noise induced tinnitus including you.

Bartoli, Serendipit1996, Jazzer , n_li808,Bill Bauer, Contrast, linearb, billie48,Tellis, Alue, Frederic, aot, ajc, MBH, Luman, TheDanishgirl, JCB, HeavyMantra, jay777, Fields, Tessie, julien87,Victoria9273,Chinmoku. Juan, LindaS, Tara. The list goes on and on.

Since I only advise on noise induced tinnitus and hyperacusis because that's what I'm familiar with, my posts will inevitably sound and look similar in the way they have been written. I assure you every post that I write is written and not cut and pasted from previous posts. Noise induced tinnitus is typically caused by Headphone, Earbud use or being exposed to other forms of loud noise.

As good as this forum is, I believe it would be helpful for the Administrator to attach a sticky page that gives advice what people should do that are new to Noise induced tinnitus, since in most cases tinnitus is caused by exposure to loud noise. This is followed by hearing loss then underlying medical problems within the auditory system such as meniers. For this reason I wrote my post: New to tinnitus what to do? It mostly gives advice on noise induced tinnitus but I have briefly touched on other things that can cause it.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/new-to-tinnitus-what-to-do.12558/

Michael

 

To see my point about a person's writing style please click on the link below. It can be improved but cannot be changed. A person can try but will soon revert to type sooner rather than later. I write at other forums not necessarily tinnitus. I have included a post written at HI-FI forum: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/does-your-hi-fi-system-sing.43121/

Michael