Habituation - General Health and Well Being

[Freddie]

Hello Doctor Nagler

I have had tinnitus for getting on nearly 5 months now and this has to be one of the worst phases of my life that I have ever tried to get through,i am in my mid fifties, it came on i believe during a stressful period i was having towards the end of last summer and with having at that point an unknown slight hearing loss in my right ear ( I can only assume my other side compensated so well that I never noticed ) it was enough for my poor brain to ,make the tinnitus kick in.

My audiologist has given me a hearing aid for the right ear and has been collaborated to let more noise in in the area where the hearing is weak to enable auditory gain and the slow process of habituation but i am concerned that due to how i constantly feel that it could be difficult for me to habituate whilst my body is still in the nervous arousal state.

I seem to always have a pain on the temple area and back of my head , my thighs ache and I have a faint tremble i can sense but even more so in my right hand that at certain times of the day particularly morning and evening seems to shake more is this all due to overall tension and how will this effect the long term goal of habituating as i guess i am now trapped in a vicious circle of being nervous that i may never habituate due to how i feel and i partly feel the way i am as i guess I am nervous, can you please advice me on what is best to help me and calm me so my only concern is the noise that I have to handle and overcome apart from my other symptons .

Thank you, for your time.

 

[Dr. Nagler]

I love this question, @Freddie, because there are no wrong answers.

Well, that's not exactly true. There's one wrong answer, which is to continue your current strategy. If your goal is to habituate your tinnitus, then the last thing you want to to is make your tinnitus your only concern!

So, now that we have eliminated the one wrong answer, the question comes down to which of the million or so right answers makes most sense to me.

And having been involved with tinnitus on a variety of levels for twenty years now (as of this month!), it is my firm believe that the very best thing you can do on your own to pave the way towards habituation is to make a firm commitment do doing something meaningful for a few hours two or three times a week to improving the life of somebody less fortunate than yourself in your community, plan it carefully, and keep the commitment. Why just for a few hours? Because it's sometimes hard for a person with intrusive tinnitus to concentrate on a project for longer than that. Why just two or three times a week? Because this sort of thing takes planning. I'm not talking here about helping an elderly person cross the street safely (as important as that might be), because that would be a random act of kindness, and I'm talking about something that takes planning. So perhaps drive for Meals on Wheels one or two shifts a month - but be sure to spend time visiting with those two whom you bring food. Don't just drop it off. Or work a shift a month in a battered women's shelter - and make the women there feel valued, because they are! Perhaps get a few friends together and instead of putting a dollar or two in the hand of a homeless person on the streets, take him or her to lunch. You get the idea. The key to your own habituation, in my opinion, lies not in a book. It lies not in a doctor's office. Nor does it lie on an Internet tinnitus board. No, the key to your own habituation lies in your heart ... and in what you can do for others.

In my opinion.

Dr. Stephen Nagler