MemberI am one of those who strongly believe that being positive will help us habituate to tinnitus faster. A few years back I was in total darkness of immense sufferings from severe tinnitus & hyperacusis. I have ultra high pitch and loud tinnitus (T) which was soon followed by piercingly hurtful hyperacusis (H). My T sounds like dog whistle, screaming & resonating in my whole head. It packs with so much condensed energy like a laser beam in a night sky, like a dentist drill with 10 times the pitch. It is absolutely an unbearable and alien sound. I could even hear it above the jet noise in my last few flights, and above the sounds of the raging, roaring rapids in the wild salmon river I fish. How bad was my T to a normal person? Well, once at better time, my family asked how bad and high pitch it is. So I played a sound clip matching my T sounds to them. Instantly, everyone screamed, covered their ears, and ran away as fast as they could. So while I don't know if my T is of the worst kind, I know it is not what a normal person can bear.
The hyperacusis turned all normal sounds glassy and piercingly hurtful, as if someone scratching glass with metal, like the ears being drilled. I couldn't stand the sounds or noises of TV, parties, restaurants, movies, driving, social conversations etc. Even the soft voice of my wife speaking too close was hurtful. Every normal sound seemed too loud to bear. What a misery! I had to wear earplugs to stop the hurtful sensation. But the earplugs blocked off all outside masking sounds, making the T scream so unbearably dominant. I tried to choose the lesser of the two evils, but there is no lesser choice among them. If I did things to please T, H would kill me and vice versa for H. I had no escape from them. I was facing two tortuous, alien monsters which dislike each other.
These two alien beasts of T & H literally overwhelmed my senses and my nerves were stretched to the breaking point. It was hard to control my emotions and I was teary easily during those dark, highly stressful days. Worst, prior to T & H, I had also suffered decades of anxiety and panic disorders and severe PTSD symptoms after suffering the trauma of witnessing the tragic accidental death of my young 5 years old son who died in my arm. My nerves were already weakened and unstable prior to T & H. So these two alien beasts just opened the flood gate of hell of relentless anxiety and panic attacks on auto mode daily from the moment I woke up by the screaming T.
These anxiety (A) & panic (P) attacks were very alarming and hurtful sensations to the body, with heart attack alike symptoms of chest pain, tightness of chest, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sore muscles and pains, headaches of all kinds, sharp pain like migraine, tingling pain like being pinned all over the skull, and numb pain with the brain like being enveloped in a fog not able to think clearly. There were moments feeling not yourself, frequent nightmares, profuse sweating, strong adrenaline rush, fears & phobia about things & about the future, feeling disoriented, dizzy, lost and helpless. There were emotional and nerve overloads with uncontrollable moments of tearing due to too much stress. These severely hurtful symptoms coming on auto mode daily made it very hard to live with my already horrible sufferings from T & H. I was literally overwhelmed physically and mentally.
During the darkest period, day and night, T, H, A, and P all conspired to attack me with great sufferings, both mind and body, causing great despair and inevitable depression and sleeplessness.
Each day was a long, dark day of sufferings from these torturous masters of my life. Like many new sufferers, I was obsessed with T and was constantly monitoring it. I was scared and desperate. I had to depend on meds like Ativan, Prozac and sleeping pills just to survive each day. I cut off all social contacts, withdrew from things I used to enjoy doing and hid in a quiet room whenever I could. Life was bleak, lonely, desperate & hopeless. I was staring into the abyss of a life ahead filled with tremendous sufferings and loneliness. For how long? The thought just sent chill through my spine and gave me despair. Very often the big 'S' word was dangling in front of this tired and stressed out mind as it saw no way out. I thought me and my good life would end soon. Things just couldn't be any worse. How can one live with something so unlivable? For life? Gosh!!! I thought I would never recover and be happy again.
But that was then. Miracle does happen. Never say never. Today, by the grace of the loving God, I am back to normal, living a full, happy, productive and enjoyable life, free from the darkness and tyranny of tinnitus and hyperacusis. I also don't need drug any more for my T & H. My hyercausis has long faded within the year it started, when I slowly and reluctantly took off the ear plugs for normal sounds, as advised by kind forum members. Tinnitus still rings but my brain has gotten used to and hardened to the ringing. It doesn't bother me or scared me like before. As I am typing on the subject of tinnitus, it is brought forth to consciousness. I can hear it screaming with its ultra high pitched shrill. The same dog whistle sound used to overwhelm me and my nerves. No longer! I have lost the fear for it and don't give a dime. It is now just a paper tiger. I am free from this T tyranny.
Today I can truly feel and breathe & see the beauty around me - fresh air, blue sky, green trees, lovely flowers, sweet faces of family and friends, lovely children and all that beauty of nature the Almighty has bestowed so generously for us mortals to enjoy. I can go dancing, singing, gardening, fishing, playing guitar, travelling, hiking, camping, eating out, watching cinema movies, even volunteering for church and charitable functions such as collecting foods for the local food bank, etc. etc. I don't let this tinnitus bully take any fun and meaning away from my life.
My new motto is "Finding Joy Amid the Pain", as advocated by the late Darlene Cohen, yes, living life abundantly to compensate for tinnitus and its suffering (if any). When one can do that, tinnitus will be like a paper tiger. It can still rings loud, but it has lost its power to scare you and rob you of your life. More often T just got faded out by the brain from consciousness when it no longer perceives T as a threat. It sounds amazing but it is possible even for loud T. You may say how is it possible? Well, remember those flights you took when you were deep into watching a movie, did you hear the all encompassing loud jet noise around you? That is that simple. The brain can fade out even loud noise when it is not considered a threat. Many who have habituated have experienced the same.
So never say never. The good life can be back. I am not the lone case of enjoying life after T. Here is Aaron who said he was suicidal initially. His fiancee also left him. But read his success stories below and you will know that he is enjoying life to the fullness like some of us who have kicked the butt of T.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...hare-with-you-some-pictures-i-took-after.3268
So good life can be back. Don't panic nor despair. Give it time. T may just disappear or fade. Even if it doesn't, good life is still possible. Try to follow some great insights from others. Copy success. From the wisdom of others, and copying them in my life, I got better. One war veteran said, when replying my inquiry on how to live with T long-term, "I am a soldier and I fight for a living. But when it comes to tinnitus, I have learned to accommodate it instead of fighting it". That is one great advice of wisdom from a professional solider that I will never forget. I have learned to accept and flow with life's ups and downs, even my loud tinnitus, by willing to coexist peacefully with T without all the emotional and negative reactions. This in turn allows the brain to habituate to T. It can be done.
Your good life can be back. Believe it and have a bright hope for your future. Please keep this in mind, that is, if an anxiety and panic prone person with prior conditions of chronic anxiety & panic disorder and PTSD, with both severe T & H, a person with a much weakened and damaged nerves like me can do it, have faith that you can too. Give it time and don't panic nor despair. I encourage you to read the Positivity thread on the Support forum to fill yourself with the positive energy to move on and to live a great life even after T.
Thank you for reading my success story. It is a bit long. If you want to learn some of my strategies in more detail please read on. If you feel this story will help you and other suffering members, you are welcome to leave short comment after reading it so others can see how the story or the strategies can help you and your comment will also bump this story to more current status so newer members can see it easier. If you wish to have me respond to your comment or question(s), you can tag me with @billie48 to alert me and I will be able to respond faster. Thanks and God bless your recovery.
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DETAIL STRATEGIES:
Here are some of the important points or strategies which have helped me in my tinnitus & hyperacusis journey. Some of the strategies are my own and some I learn from other kind members. I hope you can benefit from trying them out:
1) Being positive or Positivity - Being positive helps me reduce my anxiety level. A big part of tinnitus suffering is mental. So being positive has helped me speed up my recovery. Just to think of it, if life has to be lived one way or another, negatively or positively, why not choose to live it positively? It can only help the problem and not make it worse. Positivity can actually alter the brain processes to benefit our health. What really happens is that positivity can help calm your nerves so the normal parasympathetic nervous system will return to replace the limbic nervous system which is active now due to the tinnitus trauma. As such the T stimulus will be processed by the prefrontal cortex of the brain instead of the amygdala which tends to make you function in fight or flight mode and everything looks much worse. The pre-frontal cortex has the function to extinct or reduce our fear response to make things easier to handle. So I choose positivity over negativity. I try to bring positivity to the NOW, the very moment in front of me which I can have some control to make it the best moment. Do this as a habit and your life will be positively changed for the better. Life will be much easier and more enjoyable with positivity even after T. Besides, positivity will help to bring down your stress level and anxiety which are bad for T. So The more positive, calm and relaxed you are, the less intrusive your T will become.
2) the AAA approach - an important part of positivity is to adopt the AAA approach - Accept, Adjust and Adapt. I learn from the wise war veteran of the need to accommodate T instead of confronting or fighting it with extremely negative emotions. To accommodate is to accept, to make adjustment for the new reality, and to adapt to the new normal of living with T. This is a mental state of flowing with life's ups and downs. To accept doesn't mean you like T. It just means you accept the reality of T in your life. at least for a time. Then you make the adjustments without painful resistance. This may mean you need to protect your ears and avoid loud places, or that you need to mask T quite often initially, etc. You try to adapt to this new normal without negative & emotional resistance. It may not be easy to do so at first. But as time goes on, it will get easier. You will have much less emotional struggles and stress. These are bad for T. Why help the T bully by supplying the fuel, the stress and the anxiety, it needs to perpetuate its tyranny over us? Try the AAA approach for a change. It can only help and not hurt.
3) Give it time - another very important thing is to give yourself time. Don't rush anything or expect too much improvement in the short term. Don't compare with others and don't set a schedule for recovery. Each person is different in how much time to improve and to achieve habituation. Your body needs time to absorb in the alien T ringing sensation. It is still trying to figure out if T is a threat and failing to shake T, the brain reacts in shock and fear. You are in 'fight or flight' mode and the nerve is under the limbic system which tends to make you react more nervously. After enough time to adjust to the new sensation with positivity and the AAA approach, the nerve will return to the normal parasympathetic system and you will be able to control your reactions better and then your perception of T may change for the better. If you read the success stories, you can see that TIME is a very important element and the most common element of recovery. Many posters will tell you they suffered badly initially and never beleive at first that they can either accept their T nor achieve habituation but they do eventually. No one is super human and can recover overnight. So remember to give TIME and your body enough time. Time is on your side if you adopt positivity and the AAA approach. So give TIME enough time for your body to heal. Just take it easy and focus on other aspects of life while you let the body heal in due time. Be patient. The best advice/strategy I can say to you is "If you know within a year or two you are going to be okay, why worry about the little bumps here and there (the spikes or the setbacks) along the way to final recovery?".
4) Reading success stories - They are so important to my initial days. I read many of them from various forums and learned their insights. Knowing that people can actually survive severe tinnitus and hyperacusis has given me tons of hope and confidence that I can get there by following their strategies. Thanks Heaven there are those kind and caring souls who care enough to help out the newer sufferers by sharing what they have learned. Together, they offer us their collective wisdom and insight how to battle T and come out a winner. I learn to emulate success by copying success from these folks. There is nothing better to learn from those who had done the battle and who understand your struggle intimately and understandably, because they were where you are. They are not super humans. They suffered badly too like you at the start. But given time, and after using some helpful strategies or making some positive changes, they get better. So can you. Reading success story will give you hope and calm your nerves, so that you can begin to embrace Positivity and AAA approach to speed up your recovery. Therefore, read as many as you can to soak in the spirit of hope, positivity and inspiration and learn to apply their strategies.
5) Beware of distorted thinking - You may be bombarded by really distorted thoughts at the initial phase of T suffering. A new T sufferer can be so traumatized by T that the limbic nervous system takes over and you function in 'fight or flight mode'. As such every bad or alien sensation is magnified and you begin to have many scary & irrational thoughts. You zoom in on T at the slightest irritation and you monitor it non-stop, fearing and worrying about what horrible things can await you. I realized back then that I tended to have catastrophic thinking about the future. I researched on it and realize that these are cognitive distortions in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). So I bought an inexpensive paper back book 'Feeling Good' by Dr. Burns and studied it well. Another great CBT oriented book specifically for tinnitus is called 'Tinnitus: A Self-Management Guide for the Ringing in Your Ears" by Henry & Wilson. It should be available from amazon.com. Dr. Hubbard who is in the Doctor's Corner is also specialized in CBT. He too had bad T but he overcame it with CBT techniques which he described in detail in his success story.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/how-cbt-helped-me-live-again-dr-hubbards-story.4608/
With CBT approach, besides the use of mindfulness, exposure or other techniques, it is important to write down the distorted thoughts, ponder on them, and counter or replace them with more realistic and positive ones. I used to have lots of WORD documents on these so I can look them up often to help 'deprogram' the mind from falling for these cognitive distortions. You tend to become less stressful next time the same distorted thought appear again, as you have already prepared a rebuttal to that. This will cut down the anxiety and stress level your body has been subjected to, and this in turn helps to avoid all the mental sufferings due to the distorted thoughts.
6) You are not Your Mind - this is a most powerful concept of mental positivity to combat distorted thoughts of the mind, a concept now promoted by many people and web sites, including Eckart Tolle who wrote 'The Power of Now'. Just google 'you are not your mind' and you will see so many writings from individuals and institutions, even psychology sites and youtube videos. Yes, detach yourself from the egoistic, scared, sad and depressed mind. That is not you. Free yourself from it. The real you is like a child, like a life force full of joy and life. There is a real peaceful and joyful you inside, Tolle called it your Being (a spiritual person may call it your real, precious soul inside of you), whereas the mind has been conditioned and corrupted by bad life's events. You are not your mind. Be a Watcher of the Mind, meaning you you detach yourself from the mind and observe its negative thoughts. Do not follow nor react to its chaotic distorted thoughts. By so doing, you are spared of all the negative reactions your chaotic mind is trying to suggest to you. You can see how a member 'meeruf' using this concept to help his battle with T here. He is now enjoying life travelling often.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...from-the-tyranny-of-tinnitus-my-journey.2717/
7) Mindfulness - Mindfulness is another powerful approach to help you tame your violent rejection of the ringing sensation. It teaches you to relax (perhaps in a meditative state) and to be aware of your present state sensations, to try to create space and openness to even the unpleasant feelings or sensations without painful resistance or judgement. By practicing this more, we gradually train the brain to accept the presence of T. Mindfulness teaches that you can soften the presence of the unpleasant thing by humanizing and talking to it. So with T, we can try talking to it. This will train the brain to not go into traumatic reactions by the mere presence of the T ringing. I couldn't do this initially but after some time I often tried to joke with T saying it acts like a crying baby wanting milk at night by waking me up with its loud scream, and teasing it that it has found the wrong body as I am a guy. Lol. This approach of talking to yourself about a feeling/sensation without extreme negative reaction to the loud T is probably what makes the 'Back to Silence' method by IWLM so effective and followed by many members. Check this link out about this most read success story 'Back to Silence' so you can see if this simple method will help you.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/
8) Play a smart game with the mind
Your traumatically negative reactions to the onset of tinnitus has triggered the 'fight or flight' mode by the limbic nervous system. As such it erroneously consider T as a mortal threat to you. The amygdala amplifies this ringing sensation to alert you of the 'danger and threat' and it causes the brain to monitor this 'threat' non-stop. So the more fearful and anxious you are, the more your brain will try to 'protect' you from this dangerous threat to put it front and center to your senses (so you can fight it or run away) and the louder T seems to become. So how do you rewire or retrain your brain so it won't do that? You do this by training it not to freak out by T, if slowly. Mindfulness, the exposure technique in CBT, and TRT etc. all try to help in reducing your panicky reaction to T. Even the 'Back to Silence' method seems to function in the same way to reduce our fear of T. So we need to play a smart game with the mind, trying to do the exact opposite of what the freaky mind is telling us to do, by trying to embrace this T ringing, by acknowledging its presence without panic, training the brain to slowly be able to face T without a phobic reaction to it. The result can be dramatic, as this guy posting a video to explain why his T disappeared:
So by being able to counter the distorted thoughts with more positive and realistic ones, and by being able to step out of the box of my 'freaky T-scared mind', while maintaining an open mental frame of mind for the T sensation via mindfulness, I have reduced my anxiety level and mental sufferings tremendously even with my T screaming with its ultra high pitch shrill. When anxiety level and stress level are down, T will be robbed of its fuel to haunt us. Once the brain doesn't freak out with T, recovery can begin. So don't help T by providing more negative emotions. Why not facing it with positivity? Embrace Positivity and play a smart mental game. Positivity is and should be your new motto.
9) Masking - when T is new & alien, it can create a lot of mental stress, such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression and sleeplessness. These can create havoc on your health and aggravate your suffering. One simple approach without using drugs is masking your tinnitus. Get masking going as soon as possible. You can cut back on masking later when you are more emotionally stable. For my high pitch T, I download high frequency nature sounds such as waves, heavy rain, waterfall, cicadas, shower, even squeaky faucet sounds. Due to my H, initially I could only use low volume. But try to not over power T in all masking. Instead try to set the volume slightly below T so your brain can slowly learn to accept and get used to T.
There are many free sound generators or APPs out there. You can use a sound machine or pillow for bed time masking. Also consider these:
TT's own audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/
or download free 'aire freshener': http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html
or make your own rain sound: http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/rainNoiseGenerator.php
If your T is really high pitch, you can also try this but do turn volume low first
10) Medications - when T is new and if you are really struggling emotionally and depression sets in and you can't cope with the sufferings by will power alone, please do consult with your doctors on using medications to help smooth out the sharp edges of emotions like what I had to do. With prescribed drugs, it is best to use them for short term out of necessity. There is no need to be scared by negative stories about drug usage from posters on internet. For every one with negative reaction, there can be many who are benefited by having to use drugs to control their symptoms. Drug reaction or allergy is a highly personal thing. It doesn't mean you are bound to have bad reaction. If the benefit outweigh the risk, and you have no alternative, then why not? You can always phase them out gradually later but make sure you do so with the supervision and advise of your doctor(s).
11) Getting back to living - It may be hard to do at first. The tired and stressed body didn't want to do anything except to stay in bed or to glue to the computer for T information. I had to dare my T & H to pull myself out to do the things I used to enjoy, even with ear plugs sometimes. I would not let the T bully intimidate me and control my life. I fought to have my freedom back. Given time, it gets better and easier. At least I was winning the psychological battle. Remember to get back to living for yourself, for your love ones, and NOT for trying to reduce your tinnitus. Doing so will cause you to often get anxious why getting back to living hasn't helped and then you give up trying to live again. SEPARATE the two. Of course, given time, your tinnitus will lose its intensity as a consequence of the distractions of life's many activities and you losing fear for it because you now have you life back. It will happen gradually. Be patient. Give TIME and your body enough time.
12) Minimizing tinnitus - I learn not to dwell on tinnitus and give it more fire and fuel to perpetuate its tyranny on me. I minimize it by realizing that many people in the world have to work or live in very loud environment, like the drill workers, miners, flight attendants, etc. etc. If people can endure these loud noises for life for wages, perhaps even happy to have a job like that to feed the family, I can tolerate and accept my loud ringing just to get my life back. At least I don't have to work 1000+ ft underground drilling & risking mine collapse or gas poisoning. It is not a perfect analogy but I could ill afford a perfect analogy. It is either acceptance or misery for life. I chose the former. I also minimize tinnitus by comparing it to blindness and being handicapped. I played blind and handicapped often to help me put tinnitus in its right perspective in my life. I minimize T by gradually switching to more positive thinking about T and my life, that it is not a catastrophe nor the end game. It is livable and many people prove that. Heck, even famous celebrities like David Letterman, William Shatner (Star Trek Capt. Kirk), Streisand, Ronald Reigan, Townsend etc. etc., they have T and life goes on. Google celebrities with tinnitus and you will see a long list of them.
13) Maximizing my life force - by living life abundantly, by finding joy amid the pain. The brain was tired and it is dying for some new excitement to stimulate it. I realize I need to practise 'finding joy amid the pain' as advocated by the late Darlene Cohen. I decided to accept the pain, understand it and accept it. Then I focus on the joy of living. Enjoying what I used to do & taking on some new hobbies have kept life fun again. These new hobbies involves time away from tinnitus and they gave me the breaks I need from tinnitus. You can also try volunteer service for the good of others like collecting foods for food bank or teaching others how to fish as I did. These events give you breaks from T. The more breaks, the longer the breaks, the more confident that you will be just fine over time. Remember to fill your life with enough life force, enough positivity that it will just bury T to make it less and less an issue.
14) Be nice to ourselves and loved ones - T can draw the worst emotions out of us. Beware of this T bully. It can destroy relationship. After having T and dealing with strong negative emotions daily, I realize T was beginning to not just ruin me, but the great relationship with my love ones. I humanize T as my worst bully out there trying to charge my family to harm them (by knocking me down first). So I said no way to the T bully. I would stand up on my feet and fought this bully. If it made me live like hell, I want to make sure my family live like heaven in return. I decided to be extra nice to them. I even massaged my wife daily while my ipod was masking T. I hugged and kissed so everyone knew I love & care for them. They sensed my effort & returned the same. The result was great love and harmony, a ray of light for me amid the darkness of T & H. It gave me hope then that my life wasn't utterly wasted and worthless, as well as the confidence & strength to soldier on with life despite immense T sufferings. At the worst period of relentless sufferings, I just considered I donated my body as if it were composted, and dead to the unpleasant sensations by ignoring them, just so that I could still be around to nourish my love ones especially the young ones (just like how in nature mother plants compost themselves to give nourishment to their seeding plants). Perhaps they can learn from my perseverance during tough struggles and hopefully they can emulate that later in their life to help them through their struggles.
15) Following Guiding Lights - with my nerve being weakened by prior condition of anxiety & panic disorder, I found it necessary to borrow strength from some others and their fine examples, how they can overcome tough, even unmaskable T and be able to live a normal, even happy life.
Then there is the incredible story of the young Zoe Cartwright who became totally deaf at young 15. It was bad enough to face sudden deafness, but on top of that she developed loud unmaskable T which according to her can be #!%^&* loud. Yet she made the wise choice to accept the reality of her unmaskable T, and decided to live her life and pursue her goals. Against all odds, she made it to university where she made a tinnitus film to tell us her story. I have posted her story and her film link on the Positivity Thread of the Support Forum. Please read her story and watch her film at page 14 (post# 420) & page 15 (post# 423) and hopefully you will come away realizing what an amazing story of courage and positivity this young pretty lady shows us. Despite facing her loud unmaskable T, she said she loves her life and enjoys it. T is just a slice of her life which she accepts. Amazing positivity and stamina for a young lady. Sometimes, guiding light like her can help lift us up to want to soldier on with our own T journey.
Here is post# 420 of the Positivity Thread on Zoe : The Positivity Thread
Here is post # 423 : The Positivity Thread
And then there is the inspiring story of the young & beautiful jazz singer Melody Gardot, with severe T & H, and worse was hit by a SUV at young 19 causing massive damage to her body, being hospitalized for a year suffering from incredible pain & immobility. Yet she didn't cave in to these incredible sufferings. She turns to positivity and music, accepting her disability and all, and excels in guitar, piano and what a singer she has become. Here is her story of triumph over her tough struggle and a youtube clip of her performance on David Letterman's show (who has 2-tone T himself, LOL):
http://jazztimes.com/articles/24598-melody-gardot-s-melodic-therapy
16) You are not alone - millions have this condition. Many people in your social circle may have tinnitus you don't know about. I now know dozens of people around me have had T, some have it so loud that they have trouble hearing others (yet life goes on normally for them). So you are not alone. Knowing this fact alone can help you calm down and be more hopeful that you can live a normal life like others even after getting T. Tinnitus is so common that even household names & celebrities have them. Google 'celebrities with tinnitus' and the list is long. Here are two guys I often watched back then, David Letterman the famous comedian and William Shatner the Star Trek captain. They show me that even after initial suffering (Shatner said he was suicidal at one time), people do get back to living a normal life.
The inspiring guiding lights don't stop with these ladies or celebrities. There are many of them here posting their success stories or sharing their experiences or advice to help others, and you can get just as inspired by them. Through these people and their stories, I find my guiding lights.
17) Focus on the beauty and the wonder of life - I decide to focus on the positives of life and practice acceptance of T. I learn to move on to focus on life's many beautiful aspects and blessings. No more All-or-Nothing thinking for me. I can accept T as an imperfection in my life without ignoring all the positives. I treat T as only a slice of my life (as Zoe Cartwright with unmaskable T puts it). Besides T, I find joy in travel & discovery, creativity, family and friends, love & affection, compassionate service (like what we do on TT forum), outdoors, hobbies, etc., etc. Life is like a beautiful park with wonderful floral beauties and lovely trees of all kind. So if you are in this beautiful park, try positively focus on the beauty around you instead of the little bird droppings or dog dumps once in a while (sorry T bully, to me you are just a dog dump and I like the analogy. LOL).
Focus on positivity and not negativity. Do that habitually over time and you will be just fine. I now live a normal, productive and an absolutely enjoyable life. I travel frequently all over the world enjoying life with my loved ones, with T high or low. I don't give a dime to T. Good life can be back. Believe it. Give it time and take good care of yourself. Have faith for a bright future. You can beat this T bully and it feels great to do so. Take good care. God bless you all.
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Some verbal exercises of positive affirmations and mental imagery:
A simple mental exercise of positivity that I often do which may help you:
- while waking up (even with T blasting like I often have), spend a few minutes before getting up to flash through some of the positive & beautiful or fun things in your life. If you have loved ones dear or great friends, flash through their smiling faces and the tender moments with them. Chant out loud to yourself 'I am blessed even though I am having this T challenge. It is harmless and I believe I will get better over time especially if I stay positive, calm and hopeful'.
- while having self-pity & feeling depressed about T, I often played blind or handicapped (only when safe to do so) for a few minutes. This is not comparing T to other tough challenges, but to help put it in the right perspective in my life. I learn to appreciate the visible world and my mobility a lot more. Suggest to the brain again, "I am blessed to be able to do many things other people can't. I am confident my T and/or my reaction to it may get better over time with a positive attitude and willing to accept the new normal of life with T".
- I use mental imagery of drillers, miners and flight attendants and their loud jobs a lot when my T spike, especially waking up to this loud scream. I often watch videos of those loud job with real life volume of the loud machines (see bottom of page for some samples of people working w/o protection). I used ear plugs initially to protect from the H, but this gave me a vivid picture of how loud these people have to deal with day in and day out. T is usually drowned out by these loud machines. Then when T spikes, I often have a vivid mental imagery of myself handling the loud machines and suggest to myself, "OK, I will treat myself like one of those people with loud jobs on long shifts and T is nothing in loudness compared to these. I will take T on without negative reactions like these folks taking on their loud machines. They accept these noises for wages, I will try to learn accepting my T noise or the reality of living with T for having my life back and having my emotional sanity intact. At least I am not 1000+ ft underground or facing possible dangers like them". This exercise has helped me to shift from feeling miserable and anxious about the spikes and then the brain is spared from dealing with all the negative emotions and sufferings. This can then help the brain to accept the reality of T and habituate to it easier and eventually.
- try mindfulness meditation to bring T as the object of awareness. It will be tough at first, as Dr. Hubbard wrote about this in his success story, but it will get better in due time. This 'exposure' exercise can help the brain to not freak out so much to the T sound. I often visualize and humanize T as a hated bully trying to pin me down to make me kneel, bow and beg for its mercy. I said "Screw it bully. I don't fear you and won't bow & kneel to you begging for mercy. This is all you can do to me with this sound, and I am facing it dead on and winning. I will harden to this sound in due time and time is on my side". Honestly, when we take this accepting but defiant stance and when it is achieved, then the brain can learn to habituate to this ringing sound which it doesn't fear nor care after a while. Remember, TIME is on your side.
- try the powerful mental imagery of 'You Are Not Your Mind' as talked about in point 3a) above. Imagine you are detached from the corrupted, scared, anxious and depressed mind, and be a witness or watcher of that mind and its distorted thoughts. Don't react or identify with the mind nor react to it, as if you are a separate entity. Even if you are anxious and scared, try to say 'Hey, I am not my mind, and I don't have to listen nor react to its wild, distorted thoughts. I am a watcher of it and I can see how weak and distorted that mind is'. This is a powerful mental imagery which can help you step out of the misery of the distorted mind and all its negativity. Believe me, I used this technique heavily during the darkest time when the mind was in a mess and I could still maintain my sanity, lol.
- Watching the distressed and chaotic mind can be achieved by powerful technique of focussing on the NOW. I used this technique quite often during the tough struggle because often distorted thoughts drifted through the mind to cause so much anxiety. The chaotic thoughts are usually about the future or the past, never much about the present. It is the fear of the uncertain future and the horrible past experiences that drives the insanity while we forget living the NOW, the very moment in front of us. I would say to myself, "The future is not reality and the past is history. The NOW, the very moment in front of me is the only time I can do and act to make a positive difference to my life", and then I would focus on the present moment and would try to make it a positive moment. By doing this constantly, you gradually change your life for the better and you become a more positive person. By doing this, you also have a good chance to bring about a positive future and to heal the wounds and bad experiences of the past.
- try to live my life abundantly and enjoyably by finding 'joy admit the pain'. When you go back to living, talk to the brain like "Tell T to take a ticket and wait in line. I am busy and having fun. I can live my life abundantly, enjoyably, and positively regardless of T high or low. I love my life. T is just a slice of my life (as Zoe Cartwright with total deafness and therefore unmaskable T puts it). I am going to enjoy my life and the heck with T".
- Repeat these positive self-affirmations and mental exercises often until the brain slowly if surely buy into the constant self suggestions. Repeat this process until you get better. Don't give up. You will get better. Just believe it. God bless your recovery.
- Videos for using an imperfect analogy and mental imagery. If you don't object to this imperfect analogy, watch these samples of loud jobs of people (including the airline crew in those loud jets in the jet videos) without ear protection and NOT freaking out. Turn the volume up to real life loudness if you can bear it and then watch your T drown out by these machines. Whether we realize it or not, T has become a PHOBIA and like other phobia, the irrational fear for T needs to be DEPROGRAMMED. So I used these videos to help myself to stay calm during huge spikes. Try suggest to yourself that if people can work like this and face these noises day in and day out, perhaps even happy to have a job to feed the family, then why we need to freak out with T which can be completely or partially masked unlike these workers without ear protection? At my worst spikes, I just have a mental imagery of myself being the one working like them, and NOT freaking out to T. It works for me. I hope it works for you. This perhaps can start your REVOLT against T's supremacy over your life and your emotional stability. Don't fear T and don't let T ruin our life with its much weaker sound than these machines and T can be masked to varying degree:
Loud city noises, imagine how billions of people, from America, Europe to Asia, they live under these conditions daily and thrive or be happy. So try to tolerate or accept T (masking it if you need), and not let our life be wasted and ruined by it.
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(ps. just a reminder, if you have questions or comment requiring response from me, please tag me with @billie48 so I can be alerted about that and respond to you faster. Thanks.)
The hyperacusis turned all normal sounds glassy and piercingly hurtful, as if someone scratching glass with metal, like the ears being drilled. I couldn't stand the sounds or noises of TV, parties, restaurants, movies, driving, social conversations etc. Even the soft voice of my wife speaking too close was hurtful. Every normal sound seemed too loud to bear. What a misery! I had to wear earplugs to stop the hurtful sensation. But the earplugs blocked off all outside masking sounds, making the T scream so unbearably dominant. I tried to choose the lesser of the two evils, but there is no lesser choice among them. If I did things to please T, H would kill me and vice versa for H. I had no escape from them. I was facing two tortuous, alien monsters which dislike each other.
These two alien beasts of T & H literally overwhelmed my senses and my nerves were stretched to the breaking point. It was hard to control my emotions and I was teary easily during those dark, highly stressful days. Worst, prior to T & H, I had also suffered decades of anxiety and panic disorders and severe PTSD symptoms after suffering the trauma of witnessing the tragic accidental death of my young 5 years old son who died in my arm. My nerves were already weakened and unstable prior to T & H. So these two alien beasts just opened the flood gate of hell of relentless anxiety and panic attacks on auto mode daily from the moment I woke up by the screaming T.
These anxiety (A) & panic (P) attacks were very alarming and hurtful sensations to the body, with heart attack alike symptoms of chest pain, tightness of chest, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sore muscles and pains, headaches of all kinds, sharp pain like migraine, tingling pain like being pinned all over the skull, and numb pain with the brain like being enveloped in a fog not able to think clearly. There were moments feeling not yourself, frequent nightmares, profuse sweating, strong adrenaline rush, fears & phobia about things & about the future, feeling disoriented, dizzy, lost and helpless. There were emotional and nerve overloads with uncontrollable moments of tearing due to too much stress. These severely hurtful symptoms coming on auto mode daily made it very hard to live with my already horrible sufferings from T & H. I was literally overwhelmed physically and mentally.
During the darkest period, day and night, T, H, A, and P all conspired to attack me with great sufferings, both mind and body, causing great despair and inevitable depression and sleeplessness.
Each day was a long, dark day of sufferings from these torturous masters of my life. Like many new sufferers, I was obsessed with T and was constantly monitoring it. I was scared and desperate. I had to depend on meds like Ativan, Prozac and sleeping pills just to survive each day. I cut off all social contacts, withdrew from things I used to enjoy doing and hid in a quiet room whenever I could. Life was bleak, lonely, desperate & hopeless. I was staring into the abyss of a life ahead filled with tremendous sufferings and loneliness. For how long? The thought just sent chill through my spine and gave me despair. Very often the big 'S' word was dangling in front of this tired and stressed out mind as it saw no way out. I thought me and my good life would end soon. Things just couldn't be any worse. How can one live with something so unlivable? For life? Gosh!!! I thought I would never recover and be happy again.
But that was then. Miracle does happen. Never say never. Today, by the grace of the loving God, I am back to normal, living a full, happy, productive and enjoyable life, free from the darkness and tyranny of tinnitus and hyperacusis. I also don't need drug any more for my T & H. My hyercausis has long faded within the year it started, when I slowly and reluctantly took off the ear plugs for normal sounds, as advised by kind forum members. Tinnitus still rings but my brain has gotten used to and hardened to the ringing. It doesn't bother me or scared me like before. As I am typing on the subject of tinnitus, it is brought forth to consciousness. I can hear it screaming with its ultra high pitched shrill. The same dog whistle sound used to overwhelm me and my nerves. No longer! I have lost the fear for it and don't give a dime. It is now just a paper tiger. I am free from this T tyranny.
Today I can truly feel and breathe & see the beauty around me - fresh air, blue sky, green trees, lovely flowers, sweet faces of family and friends, lovely children and all that beauty of nature the Almighty has bestowed so generously for us mortals to enjoy. I can go dancing, singing, gardening, fishing, playing guitar, travelling, hiking, camping, eating out, watching cinema movies, even volunteering for church and charitable functions such as collecting foods for the local food bank, etc. etc. I don't let this tinnitus bully take any fun and meaning away from my life.
My new motto is "Finding Joy Amid the Pain", as advocated by the late Darlene Cohen, yes, living life abundantly to compensate for tinnitus and its suffering (if any). When one can do that, tinnitus will be like a paper tiger. It can still rings loud, but it has lost its power to scare you and rob you of your life. More often T just got faded out by the brain from consciousness when it no longer perceives T as a threat. It sounds amazing but it is possible even for loud T. You may say how is it possible? Well, remember those flights you took when you were deep into watching a movie, did you hear the all encompassing loud jet noise around you? That is that simple. The brain can fade out even loud noise when it is not considered a threat. Many who have habituated have experienced the same.
So never say never. The good life can be back. I am not the lone case of enjoying life after T. Here is Aaron who said he was suicidal initially. His fiancee also left him. But read his success stories below and you will know that he is enjoying life to the fullness like some of us who have kicked the butt of T.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...hare-with-you-some-pictures-i-took-after.3268
So good life can be back. Don't panic nor despair. Give it time. T may just disappear or fade. Even if it doesn't, good life is still possible. Try to follow some great insights from others. Copy success. From the wisdom of others, and copying them in my life, I got better. One war veteran said, when replying my inquiry on how to live with T long-term, "I am a soldier and I fight for a living. But when it comes to tinnitus, I have learned to accommodate it instead of fighting it". That is one great advice of wisdom from a professional solider that I will never forget. I have learned to accept and flow with life's ups and downs, even my loud tinnitus, by willing to coexist peacefully with T without all the emotional and negative reactions. This in turn allows the brain to habituate to T. It can be done.
Your good life can be back. Believe it and have a bright hope for your future. Please keep this in mind, that is, if an anxiety and panic prone person with prior conditions of chronic anxiety & panic disorder and PTSD, with both severe T & H, a person with a much weakened and damaged nerves like me can do it, have faith that you can too. Give it time and don't panic nor despair. I encourage you to read the Positivity thread on the Support forum to fill yourself with the positive energy to move on and to live a great life even after T.
Thank you for reading my success story. It is a bit long. If you want to learn some of my strategies in more detail please read on. If you feel this story will help you and other suffering members, you are welcome to leave short comment after reading it so others can see how the story or the strategies can help you and your comment will also bump this story to more current status so newer members can see it easier. If you wish to have me respond to your comment or question(s), you can tag me with @billie48 to alert me and I will be able to respond faster. Thanks and God bless your recovery.
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DETAIL STRATEGIES:
Here are some of the important points or strategies which have helped me in my tinnitus & hyperacusis journey. Some of the strategies are my own and some I learn from other kind members. I hope you can benefit from trying them out:
1) Being positive or Positivity - Being positive helps me reduce my anxiety level. A big part of tinnitus suffering is mental. So being positive has helped me speed up my recovery. Just to think of it, if life has to be lived one way or another, negatively or positively, why not choose to live it positively? It can only help the problem and not make it worse. Positivity can actually alter the brain processes to benefit our health. What really happens is that positivity can help calm your nerves so the normal parasympathetic nervous system will return to replace the limbic nervous system which is active now due to the tinnitus trauma. As such the T stimulus will be processed by the prefrontal cortex of the brain instead of the amygdala which tends to make you function in fight or flight mode and everything looks much worse. The pre-frontal cortex has the function to extinct or reduce our fear response to make things easier to handle. So I choose positivity over negativity. I try to bring positivity to the NOW, the very moment in front of me which I can have some control to make it the best moment. Do this as a habit and your life will be positively changed for the better. Life will be much easier and more enjoyable with positivity even after T. Besides, positivity will help to bring down your stress level and anxiety which are bad for T. So The more positive, calm and relaxed you are, the less intrusive your T will become.
2) the AAA approach - an important part of positivity is to adopt the AAA approach - Accept, Adjust and Adapt. I learn from the wise war veteran of the need to accommodate T instead of confronting or fighting it with extremely negative emotions. To accommodate is to accept, to make adjustment for the new reality, and to adapt to the new normal of living with T. This is a mental state of flowing with life's ups and downs. To accept doesn't mean you like T. It just means you accept the reality of T in your life. at least for a time. Then you make the adjustments without painful resistance. This may mean you need to protect your ears and avoid loud places, or that you need to mask T quite often initially, etc. You try to adapt to this new normal without negative & emotional resistance. It may not be easy to do so at first. But as time goes on, it will get easier. You will have much less emotional struggles and stress. These are bad for T. Why help the T bully by supplying the fuel, the stress and the anxiety, it needs to perpetuate its tyranny over us? Try the AAA approach for a change. It can only help and not hurt.
3) Give it time - another very important thing is to give yourself time. Don't rush anything or expect too much improvement in the short term. Don't compare with others and don't set a schedule for recovery. Each person is different in how much time to improve and to achieve habituation. Your body needs time to absorb in the alien T ringing sensation. It is still trying to figure out if T is a threat and failing to shake T, the brain reacts in shock and fear. You are in 'fight or flight' mode and the nerve is under the limbic system which tends to make you react more nervously. After enough time to adjust to the new sensation with positivity and the AAA approach, the nerve will return to the normal parasympathetic system and you will be able to control your reactions better and then your perception of T may change for the better. If you read the success stories, you can see that TIME is a very important element and the most common element of recovery. Many posters will tell you they suffered badly initially and never beleive at first that they can either accept their T nor achieve habituation but they do eventually. No one is super human and can recover overnight. So remember to give TIME and your body enough time. Time is on your side if you adopt positivity and the AAA approach. So give TIME enough time for your body to heal. Just take it easy and focus on other aspects of life while you let the body heal in due time. Be patient. The best advice/strategy I can say to you is "If you know within a year or two you are going to be okay, why worry about the little bumps here and there (the spikes or the setbacks) along the way to final recovery?".
4) Reading success stories - They are so important to my initial days. I read many of them from various forums and learned their insights. Knowing that people can actually survive severe tinnitus and hyperacusis has given me tons of hope and confidence that I can get there by following their strategies. Thanks Heaven there are those kind and caring souls who care enough to help out the newer sufferers by sharing what they have learned. Together, they offer us their collective wisdom and insight how to battle T and come out a winner. I learn to emulate success by copying success from these folks. There is nothing better to learn from those who had done the battle and who understand your struggle intimately and understandably, because they were where you are. They are not super humans. They suffered badly too like you at the start. But given time, and after using some helpful strategies or making some positive changes, they get better. So can you. Reading success story will give you hope and calm your nerves, so that you can begin to embrace Positivity and AAA approach to speed up your recovery. Therefore, read as many as you can to soak in the spirit of hope, positivity and inspiration and learn to apply their strategies.
5) Beware of distorted thinking - You may be bombarded by really distorted thoughts at the initial phase of T suffering. A new T sufferer can be so traumatized by T that the limbic nervous system takes over and you function in 'fight or flight mode'. As such every bad or alien sensation is magnified and you begin to have many scary & irrational thoughts. You zoom in on T at the slightest irritation and you monitor it non-stop, fearing and worrying about what horrible things can await you. I realized back then that I tended to have catastrophic thinking about the future. I researched on it and realize that these are cognitive distortions in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). So I bought an inexpensive paper back book 'Feeling Good' by Dr. Burns and studied it well. Another great CBT oriented book specifically for tinnitus is called 'Tinnitus: A Self-Management Guide for the Ringing in Your Ears" by Henry & Wilson. It should be available from amazon.com. Dr. Hubbard who is in the Doctor's Corner is also specialized in CBT. He too had bad T but he overcame it with CBT techniques which he described in detail in his success story.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/how-cbt-helped-me-live-again-dr-hubbards-story.4608/
With CBT approach, besides the use of mindfulness, exposure or other techniques, it is important to write down the distorted thoughts, ponder on them, and counter or replace them with more realistic and positive ones. I used to have lots of WORD documents on these so I can look them up often to help 'deprogram' the mind from falling for these cognitive distortions. You tend to become less stressful next time the same distorted thought appear again, as you have already prepared a rebuttal to that. This will cut down the anxiety and stress level your body has been subjected to, and this in turn helps to avoid all the mental sufferings due to the distorted thoughts.
6) You are not Your Mind - this is a most powerful concept of mental positivity to combat distorted thoughts of the mind, a concept now promoted by many people and web sites, including Eckart Tolle who wrote 'The Power of Now'. Just google 'you are not your mind' and you will see so many writings from individuals and institutions, even psychology sites and youtube videos. Yes, detach yourself from the egoistic, scared, sad and depressed mind. That is not you. Free yourself from it. The real you is like a child, like a life force full of joy and life. There is a real peaceful and joyful you inside, Tolle called it your Being (a spiritual person may call it your real, precious soul inside of you), whereas the mind has been conditioned and corrupted by bad life's events. You are not your mind. Be a Watcher of the Mind, meaning you you detach yourself from the mind and observe its negative thoughts. Do not follow nor react to its chaotic distorted thoughts. By so doing, you are spared of all the negative reactions your chaotic mind is trying to suggest to you. You can see how a member 'meeruf' using this concept to help his battle with T here. He is now enjoying life travelling often.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...from-the-tyranny-of-tinnitus-my-journey.2717/
7) Mindfulness - Mindfulness is another powerful approach to help you tame your violent rejection of the ringing sensation. It teaches you to relax (perhaps in a meditative state) and to be aware of your present state sensations, to try to create space and openness to even the unpleasant feelings or sensations without painful resistance or judgement. By practicing this more, we gradually train the brain to accept the presence of T. Mindfulness teaches that you can soften the presence of the unpleasant thing by humanizing and talking to it. So with T, we can try talking to it. This will train the brain to not go into traumatic reactions by the mere presence of the T ringing. I couldn't do this initially but after some time I often tried to joke with T saying it acts like a crying baby wanting milk at night by waking me up with its loud scream, and teasing it that it has found the wrong body as I am a guy. Lol. This approach of talking to yourself about a feeling/sensation without extreme negative reaction to the loud T is probably what makes the 'Back to Silence' method by IWLM so effective and followed by many members. Check this link out about this most read success story 'Back to Silence' so you can see if this simple method will help you.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/
8) Play a smart game with the mind
Your traumatically negative reactions to the onset of tinnitus has triggered the 'fight or flight' mode by the limbic nervous system. As such it erroneously consider T as a mortal threat to you. The amygdala amplifies this ringing sensation to alert you of the 'danger and threat' and it causes the brain to monitor this 'threat' non-stop. So the more fearful and anxious you are, the more your brain will try to 'protect' you from this dangerous threat to put it front and center to your senses (so you can fight it or run away) and the louder T seems to become. So how do you rewire or retrain your brain so it won't do that? You do this by training it not to freak out by T, if slowly. Mindfulness, the exposure technique in CBT, and TRT etc. all try to help in reducing your panicky reaction to T. Even the 'Back to Silence' method seems to function in the same way to reduce our fear of T. So we need to play a smart game with the mind, trying to do the exact opposite of what the freaky mind is telling us to do, by trying to embrace this T ringing, by acknowledging its presence without panic, training the brain to slowly be able to face T without a phobic reaction to it. The result can be dramatic, as this guy posting a video to explain why his T disappeared:
So by being able to counter the distorted thoughts with more positive and realistic ones, and by being able to step out of the box of my 'freaky T-scared mind', while maintaining an open mental frame of mind for the T sensation via mindfulness, I have reduced my anxiety level and mental sufferings tremendously even with my T screaming with its ultra high pitch shrill. When anxiety level and stress level are down, T will be robbed of its fuel to haunt us. Once the brain doesn't freak out with T, recovery can begin. So don't help T by providing more negative emotions. Why not facing it with positivity? Embrace Positivity and play a smart mental game. Positivity is and should be your new motto.
9) Masking - when T is new & alien, it can create a lot of mental stress, such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression and sleeplessness. These can create havoc on your health and aggravate your suffering. One simple approach without using drugs is masking your tinnitus. Get masking going as soon as possible. You can cut back on masking later when you are more emotionally stable. For my high pitch T, I download high frequency nature sounds such as waves, heavy rain, waterfall, cicadas, shower, even squeaky faucet sounds. Due to my H, initially I could only use low volume. But try to not over power T in all masking. Instead try to set the volume slightly below T so your brain can slowly learn to accept and get used to T.
There are many free sound generators or APPs out there. You can use a sound machine or pillow for bed time masking. Also consider these:
TT's own audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/
or download free 'aire freshener': http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html
or make your own rain sound: http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/rainNoiseGenerator.php
If your T is really high pitch, you can also try this but do turn volume low first
10) Medications - when T is new and if you are really struggling emotionally and depression sets in and you can't cope with the sufferings by will power alone, please do consult with your doctors on using medications to help smooth out the sharp edges of emotions like what I had to do. With prescribed drugs, it is best to use them for short term out of necessity. There is no need to be scared by negative stories about drug usage from posters on internet. For every one with negative reaction, there can be many who are benefited by having to use drugs to control their symptoms. Drug reaction or allergy is a highly personal thing. It doesn't mean you are bound to have bad reaction. If the benefit outweigh the risk, and you have no alternative, then why not? You can always phase them out gradually later but make sure you do so with the supervision and advise of your doctor(s).
11) Getting back to living - It may be hard to do at first. The tired and stressed body didn't want to do anything except to stay in bed or to glue to the computer for T information. I had to dare my T & H to pull myself out to do the things I used to enjoy, even with ear plugs sometimes. I would not let the T bully intimidate me and control my life. I fought to have my freedom back. Given time, it gets better and easier. At least I was winning the psychological battle. Remember to get back to living for yourself, for your love ones, and NOT for trying to reduce your tinnitus. Doing so will cause you to often get anxious why getting back to living hasn't helped and then you give up trying to live again. SEPARATE the two. Of course, given time, your tinnitus will lose its intensity as a consequence of the distractions of life's many activities and you losing fear for it because you now have you life back. It will happen gradually. Be patient. Give TIME and your body enough time.
12) Minimizing tinnitus - I learn not to dwell on tinnitus and give it more fire and fuel to perpetuate its tyranny on me. I minimize it by realizing that many people in the world have to work or live in very loud environment, like the drill workers, miners, flight attendants, etc. etc. If people can endure these loud noises for life for wages, perhaps even happy to have a job like that to feed the family, I can tolerate and accept my loud ringing just to get my life back. At least I don't have to work 1000+ ft underground drilling & risking mine collapse or gas poisoning. It is not a perfect analogy but I could ill afford a perfect analogy. It is either acceptance or misery for life. I chose the former. I also minimize tinnitus by comparing it to blindness and being handicapped. I played blind and handicapped often to help me put tinnitus in its right perspective in my life. I minimize T by gradually switching to more positive thinking about T and my life, that it is not a catastrophe nor the end game. It is livable and many people prove that. Heck, even famous celebrities like David Letterman, William Shatner (Star Trek Capt. Kirk), Streisand, Ronald Reigan, Townsend etc. etc., they have T and life goes on. Google celebrities with tinnitus and you will see a long list of them.
13) Maximizing my life force - by living life abundantly, by finding joy amid the pain. The brain was tired and it is dying for some new excitement to stimulate it. I realize I need to practise 'finding joy amid the pain' as advocated by the late Darlene Cohen. I decided to accept the pain, understand it and accept it. Then I focus on the joy of living. Enjoying what I used to do & taking on some new hobbies have kept life fun again. These new hobbies involves time away from tinnitus and they gave me the breaks I need from tinnitus. You can also try volunteer service for the good of others like collecting foods for food bank or teaching others how to fish as I did. These events give you breaks from T. The more breaks, the longer the breaks, the more confident that you will be just fine over time. Remember to fill your life with enough life force, enough positivity that it will just bury T to make it less and less an issue.
14) Be nice to ourselves and loved ones - T can draw the worst emotions out of us. Beware of this T bully. It can destroy relationship. After having T and dealing with strong negative emotions daily, I realize T was beginning to not just ruin me, but the great relationship with my love ones. I humanize T as my worst bully out there trying to charge my family to harm them (by knocking me down first). So I said no way to the T bully. I would stand up on my feet and fought this bully. If it made me live like hell, I want to make sure my family live like heaven in return. I decided to be extra nice to them. I even massaged my wife daily while my ipod was masking T. I hugged and kissed so everyone knew I love & care for them. They sensed my effort & returned the same. The result was great love and harmony, a ray of light for me amid the darkness of T & H. It gave me hope then that my life wasn't utterly wasted and worthless, as well as the confidence & strength to soldier on with life despite immense T sufferings. At the worst period of relentless sufferings, I just considered I donated my body as if it were composted, and dead to the unpleasant sensations by ignoring them, just so that I could still be around to nourish my love ones especially the young ones (just like how in nature mother plants compost themselves to give nourishment to their seeding plants). Perhaps they can learn from my perseverance during tough struggles and hopefully they can emulate that later in their life to help them through their struggles.
15) Following Guiding Lights - with my nerve being weakened by prior condition of anxiety & panic disorder, I found it necessary to borrow strength from some others and their fine examples, how they can overcome tough, even unmaskable T and be able to live a normal, even happy life.
Then there is the incredible story of the young Zoe Cartwright who became totally deaf at young 15. It was bad enough to face sudden deafness, but on top of that she developed loud unmaskable T which according to her can be #!%^&* loud. Yet she made the wise choice to accept the reality of her unmaskable T, and decided to live her life and pursue her goals. Against all odds, she made it to university where she made a tinnitus film to tell us her story. I have posted her story and her film link on the Positivity Thread of the Support Forum. Please read her story and watch her film at page 14 (post# 420) & page 15 (post# 423) and hopefully you will come away realizing what an amazing story of courage and positivity this young pretty lady shows us. Despite facing her loud unmaskable T, she said she loves her life and enjoys it. T is just a slice of her life which she accepts. Amazing positivity and stamina for a young lady. Sometimes, guiding light like her can help lift us up to want to soldier on with our own T journey.
Here is post# 420 of the Positivity Thread on Zoe : The Positivity Thread
Here is post # 423 : The Positivity Thread
And then there is the inspiring story of the young & beautiful jazz singer Melody Gardot, with severe T & H, and worse was hit by a SUV at young 19 causing massive damage to her body, being hospitalized for a year suffering from incredible pain & immobility. Yet she didn't cave in to these incredible sufferings. She turns to positivity and music, accepting her disability and all, and excels in guitar, piano and what a singer she has become. Here is her story of triumph over her tough struggle and a youtube clip of her performance on David Letterman's show (who has 2-tone T himself, LOL):
http://jazztimes.com/articles/24598-melody-gardot-s-melodic-therapy
16) You are not alone - millions have this condition. Many people in your social circle may have tinnitus you don't know about. I now know dozens of people around me have had T, some have it so loud that they have trouble hearing others (yet life goes on normally for them). So you are not alone. Knowing this fact alone can help you calm down and be more hopeful that you can live a normal life like others even after getting T. Tinnitus is so common that even household names & celebrities have them. Google 'celebrities with tinnitus' and the list is long. Here are two guys I often watched back then, David Letterman the famous comedian and William Shatner the Star Trek captain. They show me that even after initial suffering (Shatner said he was suicidal at one time), people do get back to living a normal life.
The inspiring guiding lights don't stop with these ladies or celebrities. There are many of them here posting their success stories or sharing their experiences or advice to help others, and you can get just as inspired by them. Through these people and their stories, I find my guiding lights.
17) Focus on the beauty and the wonder of life - I decide to focus on the positives of life and practice acceptance of T. I learn to move on to focus on life's many beautiful aspects and blessings. No more All-or-Nothing thinking for me. I can accept T as an imperfection in my life without ignoring all the positives. I treat T as only a slice of my life (as Zoe Cartwright with unmaskable T puts it). Besides T, I find joy in travel & discovery, creativity, family and friends, love & affection, compassionate service (like what we do on TT forum), outdoors, hobbies, etc., etc. Life is like a beautiful park with wonderful floral beauties and lovely trees of all kind. So if you are in this beautiful park, try positively focus on the beauty around you instead of the little bird droppings or dog dumps once in a while (sorry T bully, to me you are just a dog dump and I like the analogy. LOL).
Focus on positivity and not negativity. Do that habitually over time and you will be just fine. I now live a normal, productive and an absolutely enjoyable life. I travel frequently all over the world enjoying life with my loved ones, with T high or low. I don't give a dime to T. Good life can be back. Believe it. Give it time and take good care of yourself. Have faith for a bright future. You can beat this T bully and it feels great to do so. Take good care. God bless you all.
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Some verbal exercises of positive affirmations and mental imagery:
A simple mental exercise of positivity that I often do which may help you:
- while waking up (even with T blasting like I often have), spend a few minutes before getting up to flash through some of the positive & beautiful or fun things in your life. If you have loved ones dear or great friends, flash through their smiling faces and the tender moments with them. Chant out loud to yourself 'I am blessed even though I am having this T challenge. It is harmless and I believe I will get better over time especially if I stay positive, calm and hopeful'.
- while having self-pity & feeling depressed about T, I often played blind or handicapped (only when safe to do so) for a few minutes. This is not comparing T to other tough challenges, but to help put it in the right perspective in my life. I learn to appreciate the visible world and my mobility a lot more. Suggest to the brain again, "I am blessed to be able to do many things other people can't. I am confident my T and/or my reaction to it may get better over time with a positive attitude and willing to accept the new normal of life with T".
- I use mental imagery of drillers, miners and flight attendants and their loud jobs a lot when my T spike, especially waking up to this loud scream. I often watch videos of those loud job with real life volume of the loud machines (see bottom of page for some samples of people working w/o protection). I used ear plugs initially to protect from the H, but this gave me a vivid picture of how loud these people have to deal with day in and day out. T is usually drowned out by these loud machines. Then when T spikes, I often have a vivid mental imagery of myself handling the loud machines and suggest to myself, "OK, I will treat myself like one of those people with loud jobs on long shifts and T is nothing in loudness compared to these. I will take T on without negative reactions like these folks taking on their loud machines. They accept these noises for wages, I will try to learn accepting my T noise or the reality of living with T for having my life back and having my emotional sanity intact. At least I am not 1000+ ft underground or facing possible dangers like them". This exercise has helped me to shift from feeling miserable and anxious about the spikes and then the brain is spared from dealing with all the negative emotions and sufferings. This can then help the brain to accept the reality of T and habituate to it easier and eventually.
- try mindfulness meditation to bring T as the object of awareness. It will be tough at first, as Dr. Hubbard wrote about this in his success story, but it will get better in due time. This 'exposure' exercise can help the brain to not freak out so much to the T sound. I often visualize and humanize T as a hated bully trying to pin me down to make me kneel, bow and beg for its mercy. I said "Screw it bully. I don't fear you and won't bow & kneel to you begging for mercy. This is all you can do to me with this sound, and I am facing it dead on and winning. I will harden to this sound in due time and time is on my side". Honestly, when we take this accepting but defiant stance and when it is achieved, then the brain can learn to habituate to this ringing sound which it doesn't fear nor care after a while. Remember, TIME is on your side.
- try the powerful mental imagery of 'You Are Not Your Mind' as talked about in point 3a) above. Imagine you are detached from the corrupted, scared, anxious and depressed mind, and be a witness or watcher of that mind and its distorted thoughts. Don't react or identify with the mind nor react to it, as if you are a separate entity. Even if you are anxious and scared, try to say 'Hey, I am not my mind, and I don't have to listen nor react to its wild, distorted thoughts. I am a watcher of it and I can see how weak and distorted that mind is'. This is a powerful mental imagery which can help you step out of the misery of the distorted mind and all its negativity. Believe me, I used this technique heavily during the darkest time when the mind was in a mess and I could still maintain my sanity, lol.
- Watching the distressed and chaotic mind can be achieved by powerful technique of focussing on the NOW. I used this technique quite often during the tough struggle because often distorted thoughts drifted through the mind to cause so much anxiety. The chaotic thoughts are usually about the future or the past, never much about the present. It is the fear of the uncertain future and the horrible past experiences that drives the insanity while we forget living the NOW, the very moment in front of us. I would say to myself, "The future is not reality and the past is history. The NOW, the very moment in front of me is the only time I can do and act to make a positive difference to my life", and then I would focus on the present moment and would try to make it a positive moment. By doing this constantly, you gradually change your life for the better and you become a more positive person. By doing this, you also have a good chance to bring about a positive future and to heal the wounds and bad experiences of the past.
- try to live my life abundantly and enjoyably by finding 'joy admit the pain'. When you go back to living, talk to the brain like "Tell T to take a ticket and wait in line. I am busy and having fun. I can live my life abundantly, enjoyably, and positively regardless of T high or low. I love my life. T is just a slice of my life (as Zoe Cartwright with total deafness and therefore unmaskable T puts it). I am going to enjoy my life and the heck with T".
- Repeat these positive self-affirmations and mental exercises often until the brain slowly if surely buy into the constant self suggestions. Repeat this process until you get better. Don't give up. You will get better. Just believe it. God bless your recovery.
- Videos for using an imperfect analogy and mental imagery. If you don't object to this imperfect analogy, watch these samples of loud jobs of people (including the airline crew in those loud jets in the jet videos) without ear protection and NOT freaking out. Turn the volume up to real life loudness if you can bear it and then watch your T drown out by these machines. Whether we realize it or not, T has become a PHOBIA and like other phobia, the irrational fear for T needs to be DEPROGRAMMED. So I used these videos to help myself to stay calm during huge spikes. Try suggest to yourself that if people can work like this and face these noises day in and day out, perhaps even happy to have a job to feed the family, then why we need to freak out with T which can be completely or partially masked unlike these workers without ear protection? At my worst spikes, I just have a mental imagery of myself being the one working like them, and NOT freaking out to T. It works for me. I hope it works for you. This perhaps can start your REVOLT against T's supremacy over your life and your emotional stability. Don't fear T and don't let T ruin our life with its much weaker sound than these machines and T can be masked to varying degree:
Loud city noises, imagine how billions of people, from America, Europe to Asia, they live under these conditions daily and thrive or be happy. So try to tolerate or accept T (masking it if you need), and not let our life be wasted and ruined by it.
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(ps. just a reminder, if you have questions or comment requiring response from me, please tag me with @billie48 so I can be alerted about that and respond to you faster. Thanks.)
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Also, I'm in fear that some excedent noise will cause further damage and increase T so I don't want to risk. Specially since almost every time I go out something loud hepens as sirens, alarms at store exits, children screaming etc. so I get comfort from wearing earplugs..
