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Not sure if this will be of any use to anyone but it's what I do for severe (though not catastrophic), very loud tinnitus (I don't have hyperacusis) that is bilateral and consists of several tones, as well as for mild but chronic paint. The approach is easy to learn (by Googling 'shikantaza')...

And a second term of Trump is the solution? Slightly abbreviated extract from Ian Hughes's highly acclaimed book Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy. Can’t think who this reminds me of. 'The characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder are...

Inflation, eh? Maybe an economic history lesson is in order, starting with the UK (because that's where I am). Thatcher got elected on the back of the Saatchi slogan 'Labour Isn't Working'. This is because there was, at that time, one million unemployed in the UK. For Friedman and Hayek (the...

Veterans like myself and Michael Leigh are well aware that there’s nothing out there right now apart from TRT, CBT and MBCT. So I am not sure that he can be accused of ‘gloating’ in pointing out a state of affairs that is as true today as it was 15 years ago (when I first developed severe...

I missed this earlier post of yours. What surprises me about it is the fact that it was recommended that one should make tinnitus the actual object of meditation. I have serious reservations about that. To me it seems masochistic (or tantric if you happen to be familiar with that strain of...

Chinmoku, you are such a star! And it’s a real shame that the stunning, evocative post that you have contributed has to appear in a necessarily debilitating forum of this nature. I have to state categorically that I hate the universe for compelling us to interact in this manner. Have just...

Chinmoku, I sincerely apologise if any of my earlier posts, especially the one about Kent Taylor, caused you discomfort in any way. I have the highest regard for you and regret - even temporarily - staking out a position that is different from your own. As far as I am concerned - and this is...

When TRT is presented as exceptionless dogma, I would very much agree. However, this is not the position I have taken in previous replies to this thread. My view is somewhat more pragmatic, in the sense that it seems to work for some people. That’s all that I am claiming.

You know what, Chinmoku? I am tired of disagreement and will readily bow out of this thread and this forum in deference to you guys. But there’s a slightly weird reason for doing so in your case. I just happen to know that ‘chinmoku’ means ‘silence’ in Japanese (having lived in the country in...

He was suffering from additional, post COVID-19 symptoms that your disingenuous post conveniently overlooks.

Years ago I had an operation for an umbilical hernia which was treated by the insertion of a a surgical mesh. A couple of days afterwards I encountered a forum with threads that warned off all-comers as to the dangers of having this procedure performed. Having yet to personally experience the...

This is me writing several years ago: "I certainly have profound suicidal ideations. Now my tinnitus fluctuates between being extremely loud and off the scale. It's just day after day of searing, squealing, hissing madness. Basically, I just don't understand what people are going on about when...

They might well be (as Digital Doc has also suggested). I have never tried the foam ones so I can't compare, though I did wear wax earplugs to a gig once and pretty much all I could sense were vibrations of sound through my feet. To be honest, overnight I have found myself regretting having...

Boots sell wax earplugs. They pretty much eliminate all external noise. They are called Boots Muffle Wax Earplugs and retail at £2.69 for a box of five pairs. You hold each pair in your hand until they soften and then insert them. What you could do is purchase some (they are sold in most...

There is a problem with TRT, CBT and MBCT if they are advocated in a manner that makes them unfalsifiable as methods to affect habituation. In other words, if they work that’s because the relevant techniques and protocols were observed by the patient and if they don’t it is because they were...

The answer to your first question is 'no'. Some have succeeded in habituating to very loud tinnitus. A good example is Dr Stephen Nagler who has described his tinnitus as comparable to a cross between a screaming teakettle and a jet turbine, so loud that he could even hear it over the sound of...

I had my second Pfizer vaccination on Wednesday evening. Like yourself, I have loud tinnitus (mine consists of a variety of tones) and hearing loss. About 12 hours later the tinnitus went haywire and I was hearing all kinds of weird stuff. Especially prominent was a pervasive fog horn type...

When it comes to the management of the accompanying anxiety, it doesn't sound as if your fiancée is presently in anything like the right frame of mind to explore mindfulness based cognitive therapy as a means to manage what she is going through. However, that does not mean that you can't take a...

Had my first Pfizer jab yesterday. Feel okay so far. My tinnitus is loud today but no more so than it is on other loud days, so I thought I would post this to reassure people. For the science, over here in the UK, I have found Professor Devi Sridhar to be a good source of information, along...

When it comes to the limits of free speech and a consideration of what it is appropriate or inappropriate for a President to state in public, the most obvious example to draw on is one described by John Stuart Mill. Mill contrasts a newspaper article in which the author claims that corn dealers...

The Trump supporting ‘Biden stole the election’ mentality in a nutshell (thanks to the British philosopher Stephen Law): ‘Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they are here from Venus to do reconnaissance work. Dogs, Dave...

This lengthy article on Obama by David Runciman in the London Review of Books might be of some interest to readers of this thread, given the recent publication of the former's autobiography. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n01/david-runciman/magic-beans-baby I had a friend forward a pdf of...

When it comes to the USA, the election of Trump is actually unsurprising, as there is some evidence that a minority of the voting populace themselves may not all be psychologically normal. Turning to Matthieu Ricard's enormous study of altruism, one finding he reports is that the USA is...

Slightly abbreviated extract from Ian Hughes's highly acclaimed book Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy. The profile fits Trump to a tee (especially the last sentence): 'The characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder are well-known: a grandiose...

Billie, very sorry to read this. I don't have experience with vertigo and you probably know this already but your mention of sudden hearing loss reminded me of the importance of getting hold of prednisone asap. I Googled to confirm this: 'Sudden deafness, also called sudden sensorineural...

ISIS recruits would probably be unconcerned as long as their own demise preceded that of their relatives. This is from Olivier Roy's Jihad and Death: The Appeal of Islamic State. 'Most radicals are deeply immersed in today's 'youth culture'...they go to nightclubs, pick up girls, smoke and...

After fifteen years of this unrelenting shit (screamingly loud tinnitus blasting 24/7 from my left ear), I have finally have enough.

This could be tensor tympani syndrome that you are describing. Although I am presently having renewed issues with this condition, I have been successfully treated for it in the past by Mr Gerald Brookes at the Harley Street ENT Clinic (with low doses of clonazepam). Hopefully, this approach...

This link may possibly provide some reassurance (about the voices not the tinnitus). I don’t hear voices myself. With me it’s just loud tinnitus. I only occasionally visit this forum these days and just thought that it might be worth a mention.

Hi Nikkilu, I noticed that you are in the UK. Boots sell a cheap brand of wax earplugs called ‘Muffles’. When inserted, you will barely hear a thing. I would be very wary of exposing your ears to loud music at this stage but if you stick them in when frequenting the noisiest places at the...

I wouldn't say that habituation is a 'myth' or involves some kind of stoical, coping-through-gritted-teeth scenario. Just to be clear for any newbies who happen to read this post: habituation is a lived reality for the vast majority of those with tinnitus. But you won't find many of us posting...

I don't like the term 'habituation'. But I would say that my tinnitus doesn't bother me most (though not all) of the time and when it does I just find it annoying and distracting. My tinnitus is reactive in the sense that it ramps up in the presence of things like supermarket refrigeration...

Symprove worked very well for me but is expensive and only available in the UK. Unusually for an alternative remedy (it’s not a drug), there’s actually some decent research been carried out to support its efficacy. It had no detrimental effect on my tinnitus.

My TTS went away over time (though it still thumps when I burp!). A combination of Mindfulness and low doses of rivotril helped. I was able to function perfectly normally while taking the medication and it had no side effects. The specialist I saw was Gerald Brookes at the Harley Street...

I have what is probably bog standard tinnitus, in the sense that it varies from loud to very loud (with occasional quiet days thrown into the mix). It's reactive too, and consists of several tones and sounds, though they all seem to coalesce during a spike. I can tell you that it took a lot...

I work about a 55 hour week. The work is utterly immersive, demanding and stressful, but fun and creative too. This means that I can go long hours without noticing my tinnitus. When that awareness returns, it can be like a tidal wave of noise crashing in. However, the tinnitus I have...

Hi Glynis, I only swing by here occasionally but was sorry to read that you are going through a tough time right now. I generally do okay with tinnitus, though mine has been ‘blasting’ away recently at a preternatural level. So I can relate to your use of that adjective. However, that’s not...

For me, what I would call the slacker mentality eventually kicked in and I just couldn’t be bothered rising to the bait. Might seem an odd way to describe things, and as a comment it does not do justice to the years of mental torment that preceded it. But that’s what happened. The other reason...

I was suicidal with tinnitus several years ago. Decided to give Mindfulness a try. And I am still here. I followed the protocol outlined in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living. It took me 2 attempts to get through the 8 week programme described in the book (it is designed for those who...

I missed my own mother's funeral because she died before I had turned the corner with this condition. So I wouldn't be too hard on yourself about this.

Valeri, I didn't think I'd get a chance to sit in front of a computer for the rest of the day and so am taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity to do so. As far as following an 8 week programme to establish a mindfulness practice is concerned, I followed the one described in John...

Hi Valeri, I’ll have a think about which resources have proved to be most helpful down the years and then I’ll get back to you. The only problem is that I can’t do this today as I am quite busy. But by this time tomorrow, I will have posted some suggestions. I am not intending to leave...

Valeri, that photo more or less captures the human condition, not just life with tinnitus. Looking at it and knowing the distress that you are in makes it difficult for me to know what to say. But I'll have a go. The photo also serves as a reminder of why, personally, I have always found...

First of all, I have heard about people who have habituated tinnitus after having it for more than eight years. So don’t write yourself off or be too hard on yourself. It took me about five years to get anywhere, and even then I was only shakily habituated for quite some time. In my case, I...

Tracy, I don't swing by this place all that much these days, but this is me writing in another forum several years ago. It is pretty obvious that I was in a very bad place at the time, and it was frustrating too because I had had tinnitus for quite a while already, and had been the recipient of...

I haven’t had the surgery but Gerald Brookes is a London based surgeon with the relevant expertise. If you Google his name together with ‘myoclonus’, you should find some links. In my case, low doses of rivotril combined with stress reduction eventually resolved the issue.

Although meditation helped me to habituate tinnitus (and I have continued to use it to deal with intermittent but chronic pain), I would be wary of taking a cavalier approach to what might now be called 'The Mindfulness Industry'. Here is one of the reasons why...

This is a good (simultaneously harrowing and entertaining) book to read for anyone who wants to get a sense of what chronic pelvic pain is like: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7877329/Teach-Us-to-Sit-Still-by-Tim-Parks-review.html linearb, I don't swing by here very often but I was...

It took me about five years to get a handle on my tinnitus so I wouldn't get too discouraged. What made a difference for me was reading John Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living and two other publications: The Mindful Way Through Depression and The Mindful Way Through Anxiety. There's nothing...

I am aware that Dr Nagler is a controversial figure and was both a recipient and practitioner of TRT, but in his well-known 'Letter to a Tinnitus Sufferer', considerable space is devoted to CBT as a method for achieving habituation and Tinnitus: A Self-Management Guide for the Ringing in Your...

This is my hope too. Habituating to tinnitus was a dreadful ordeal in my case and took a very long time. It's good that - in the absence of a viable medication to alleviate the condition - there are psychological approaches to managing tinnitus that people can absorb and apply. But even as an...

Acclimatizing to tinnitus can be a slow, incremental process. It can also be a bit like a game of snakes and ladders, one in which a sudden descent down a snake - after a period in which you think you are getting somewhere - can leave a person feeling that they are now even lower on the board...

Not in any particular order.... Sion Sono's Love Exposure is the best film I have seen over the last few years (though take care over the trailer as it's not suitable for viewing at work): After that, it's..... Blade Runner Stalker Mirror Andrei Rublev If.... Blow Up The Sweet Smell of...

I have reactive tinnitus and wear bilateral hearing aids outside as well as in. I'm rather prudent about this and avoid doing so in the presence of very loud noise. But I simply accept it if the tinnitus temporarily spikes as - in my case - it eventually goes back down again. For a long time I...

Higgs Boson Blues is my favourite epic song from the last couple of years. It's mesmerisingly good. Here's my second-favourite :

Derpytia, this post is pretty much a duplicate of one I wrote shortly after joining this forum. Apologies to other readers for the repetition but it seemed to be once again relevant and may help to support others who are presently struggling but didn't see it first time around: First of all...

The road to habituation is often rocky. It sounds to me that you were shakily habituated. A prolonged spike, a permanent increase in volume, or other stress-generated health/life issues can cause an already full pot to overflow so that the habituation process is temporarily derailed. I was...