MemberSome of you may have already read about my new episode of sudden sensorineural hearing loss or SSHL from my prior posts. I'd like to write a success story on this new experience and how to live and habituate to this new challenges.
A year ago, I woke up finding I have suddenly lost my hearing on my left ear overnight without warning. Violent vertigo also struck me and I basically had to crawl my way on the ambulance to the ER. After all the tests, they ruled out a stroke and then sent me home with some Prednisone to take orally. Soon I saw an ENT and was given a full course of oral Prednisone. He ruled out Meniere's and booked me to get 20 sessions of hyperbaric oxygen treatment or HBOT. After about a week of HBOT, he gave me 3 weekly injection of more steroids. Unfortunately after all these standard treatments, the hearing on my my left ear hasn't been improved pr restored. Such is a new curve ball in life for me after a decade of the original high pitched tinnitus which I have habituated after much sufferings. I wrote my success story "From Darkness to Light..." for it.
However, now is a new journey of initial struggle with this new SSHL episode and I have to learn to live with it and hopefully still can enjoy my life again like the last episode over a decade ago. It is not easy though. Besides losing all hearing on the left ear, on top of that, there are nasty symptoms such as vertigo, dizziness, ear fullness, constant pressured and plugged ears, constant brain fogs and headaches.
But worse still, once again I was hit with a new jet-engine like loud roaring and rumbling tinnitus on the left ears. Then like over a decade ago when I was hit with an ultra high pitched dentist-drill like tinnitus, severe hyperacusis soon followed the new tinnitus. This time feels even harder to bear due to the plugged and pressured sensation which amplifies normal sounds even more. So I basically now have a bass and a tenor singing duet loudly inside my head 7/24. It feels miserable but funny at the same time.
However, I learned my lessons from the first episode of tinnitus a decade ago, that besides bearing up with the sufferings of an endless loud dentist-drill like tinnitus, a big part of the sufferings was mental. As explained in the success story of the 1st tinnitus attack, I was in a mess mentally, overwhelmed by relentless anxiety and panic attacks due to being a victim of anxiety and panic disorders and PTSD for decades prior to the first attack of sudden tinnitus and hyperacusis. I had to take medications to function and survive each day, benzos, anti-depressants, sleep pills, what have you. So it was a nightmare.
This time, however, I learn to smarten up and patiently wait out while practicing the many helpful strategies that I listed on my original success story, telling myself given time and following these strategies my brain will catch up and learn to habituate to the new conditions of SSHL. I list below the steps I followed in general to smooth out the process.
1. Avoid triggering the limbic nervous system, and how to restore the normal parasympathetic nervous system. This can reduce your fear and stress reactions.
Usually the tinnitus trauma will trigger your limbic nervous system so you function in fight or flight mode. Tinnitus will then be treated as a mortal threat and the brain will zoom on it and monitor it constantly, making it hard to ignore it no matter how hard you try. Unable to shake off tinnitus and realizing it may stay for life, you tend to panic with great anxiety about the future. This then causes more anxiety and sleeplessness which then aggravate the ringing. This is a vicious cycle and we tend to feel helpless and hopeless, and the brain will be flooded with dark thoughts. We tend to have a cognitive distortion of the future in this stage, called catastrophic thinking about the future which causes the anxiety and the feeling of despair to rise more.
So in short, when the limbic nerves are dominant with the Amygdala of the brain actively controlling your fearful, traumatic reactions to the tinnitus, functioning in fight or flight mode, your can face an uphill battle with tinnitus. So instead of worrying and focusing on the tinnitus, why not figure out how to avoid or recover from the limbic nerves?
In fact in my case, I did my best on avoiding triggering the limbic nervous system right at the start by using all the helpful strategies I have learned in my first episode of tinnitus, such as staying positive, accepting, adjusting, adapting, writing down all distorted thoughts and countering them with more positive or realistic ones, as taught in CBT. Consequently the brain didn't function in fight or flight mode, and the fear for the new tinnitus is much reduced. This then slowly caused habituation to happen over time. Now I can say I don't hear even the loud jet-engine like roaring tinnitus much during the day. Habituation is great!
2. Forget about the ringing for the time being. If the limbic nerves are dominant, deal with the nerves and the distorted thoughts first. Once these improve then habituation will occur surely, even if slowly at first. I was lucky this 2nd time around to avoid the fight or flight reactions. However, most first time tinnitus sufferers will have to deal with this.
To deal with the limbic nerve system and restore the normal parasympathetic nerve system you may need to learn to relax. Try deep abdominal breathing often when you feel tensed. YouTube has lots of tutorial videos on it. Also try relaxing exercises or activities, such as going outdoors, slow leisure walking or hiking, even jogging. Then progressively increase the intensity of the exercise as that will produce endorphins which can benefit greatly to reduce stress and to feel happy.
You can also try to pursue your hobbies, both old and new ones. This will distract the brain from paying attention to the tinnitus and cause your brain to focus on other happy and positive aspects of your life. I use this approach a lot by going fishing, gardening, walking, hiking, etc. I take on bird watching and driftwoods collecting as my new hobbies. They help greatly as I need to move around a lot to do this and to research on these new hobbies can occupy the mind to distract it from paying attention to the tinnitus. Try deep breathing in outdoors too while you do these activities, as the outdoors give you fresh and abundant oxygen to benefit deep breathing to soothe the nerves.
3. Use CBT techniques for distorted thoughts. For the cognitive distortion of catastrophic thinking, try read up on CBT techniques. One easy way is to write down and counter your negative thoughts or fears with more positive and realistic ones. Dr. Hubbard wrote a success story on how he uses CBT techniques such as mindfulness and exposure to deal with his fear on his ringing. Try to read up on that.
When you do the above steps and activities, the normal parasympathetic nervous system will be back in control at some point. You will likely see that your fear and stressful reaction to the tinnitus will be much reduced. This is because the pre-frontal cortex of the brain will take up processing the tinnitus stimulus under the parasympathetic nervous systems from the Amygdala under the limbic nervous system.
This change is critical and most people are not aware of it. This is because while the Amygdala had caused you to have intense fear of a perceive threat, the pre-frontal cortex has the natural function to reduce the fearful response of the brain. This in turn will help you have better control of your situation and can help you manage your response to the ringing. This will then likely calm you down especially if you continue to live your life as normal as you can. Habituation will then begin when the brain no longer consider the ringing, even a loud one, as a mortal threat. Eventually it will learn to ignore and fade out the ringing sound from consciousness, especially when you are busy with other aspects of life. This is like how you can ignore or not be aware of the loud jet noise during a plane flight when you are deep in watching a movie, even though the loud noise is all encompassing around you.
All the best. God bless your recovery.
A year ago, I woke up finding I have suddenly lost my hearing on my left ear overnight without warning. Violent vertigo also struck me and I basically had to crawl my way on the ambulance to the ER. After all the tests, they ruled out a stroke and then sent me home with some Prednisone to take orally. Soon I saw an ENT and was given a full course of oral Prednisone. He ruled out Meniere's and booked me to get 20 sessions of hyperbaric oxygen treatment or HBOT. After about a week of HBOT, he gave me 3 weekly injection of more steroids. Unfortunately after all these standard treatments, the hearing on my my left ear hasn't been improved pr restored. Such is a new curve ball in life for me after a decade of the original high pitched tinnitus which I have habituated after much sufferings. I wrote my success story "From Darkness to Light..." for it.
However, now is a new journey of initial struggle with this new SSHL episode and I have to learn to live with it and hopefully still can enjoy my life again like the last episode over a decade ago. It is not easy though. Besides losing all hearing on the left ear, on top of that, there are nasty symptoms such as vertigo, dizziness, ear fullness, constant pressured and plugged ears, constant brain fogs and headaches.
But worse still, once again I was hit with a new jet-engine like loud roaring and rumbling tinnitus on the left ears. Then like over a decade ago when I was hit with an ultra high pitched dentist-drill like tinnitus, severe hyperacusis soon followed the new tinnitus. This time feels even harder to bear due to the plugged and pressured sensation which amplifies normal sounds even more. So I basically now have a bass and a tenor singing duet loudly inside my head 7/24. It feels miserable but funny at the same time.
However, I learned my lessons from the first episode of tinnitus a decade ago, that besides bearing up with the sufferings of an endless loud dentist-drill like tinnitus, a big part of the sufferings was mental. As explained in the success story of the 1st tinnitus attack, I was in a mess mentally, overwhelmed by relentless anxiety and panic attacks due to being a victim of anxiety and panic disorders and PTSD for decades prior to the first attack of sudden tinnitus and hyperacusis. I had to take medications to function and survive each day, benzos, anti-depressants, sleep pills, what have you. So it was a nightmare.
This time, however, I learn to smarten up and patiently wait out while practicing the many helpful strategies that I listed on my original success story, telling myself given time and following these strategies my brain will catch up and learn to habituate to the new conditions of SSHL. I list below the steps I followed in general to smooth out the process.
1. Avoid triggering the limbic nervous system, and how to restore the normal parasympathetic nervous system. This can reduce your fear and stress reactions.
Usually the tinnitus trauma will trigger your limbic nervous system so you function in fight or flight mode. Tinnitus will then be treated as a mortal threat and the brain will zoom on it and monitor it constantly, making it hard to ignore it no matter how hard you try. Unable to shake off tinnitus and realizing it may stay for life, you tend to panic with great anxiety about the future. This then causes more anxiety and sleeplessness which then aggravate the ringing. This is a vicious cycle and we tend to feel helpless and hopeless, and the brain will be flooded with dark thoughts. We tend to have a cognitive distortion of the future in this stage, called catastrophic thinking about the future which causes the anxiety and the feeling of despair to rise more.
So in short, when the limbic nerves are dominant with the Amygdala of the brain actively controlling your fearful, traumatic reactions to the tinnitus, functioning in fight or flight mode, your can face an uphill battle with tinnitus. So instead of worrying and focusing on the tinnitus, why not figure out how to avoid or recover from the limbic nerves?
In fact in my case, I did my best on avoiding triggering the limbic nervous system right at the start by using all the helpful strategies I have learned in my first episode of tinnitus, such as staying positive, accepting, adjusting, adapting, writing down all distorted thoughts and countering them with more positive or realistic ones, as taught in CBT. Consequently the brain didn't function in fight or flight mode, and the fear for the new tinnitus is much reduced. This then slowly caused habituation to happen over time. Now I can say I don't hear even the loud jet-engine like roaring tinnitus much during the day. Habituation is great!
2. Forget about the ringing for the time being. If the limbic nerves are dominant, deal with the nerves and the distorted thoughts first. Once these improve then habituation will occur surely, even if slowly at first. I was lucky this 2nd time around to avoid the fight or flight reactions. However, most first time tinnitus sufferers will have to deal with this.
To deal with the limbic nerve system and restore the normal parasympathetic nerve system you may need to learn to relax. Try deep abdominal breathing often when you feel tensed. YouTube has lots of tutorial videos on it. Also try relaxing exercises or activities, such as going outdoors, slow leisure walking or hiking, even jogging. Then progressively increase the intensity of the exercise as that will produce endorphins which can benefit greatly to reduce stress and to feel happy.
You can also try to pursue your hobbies, both old and new ones. This will distract the brain from paying attention to the tinnitus and cause your brain to focus on other happy and positive aspects of your life. I use this approach a lot by going fishing, gardening, walking, hiking, etc. I take on bird watching and driftwoods collecting as my new hobbies. They help greatly as I need to move around a lot to do this and to research on these new hobbies can occupy the mind to distract it from paying attention to the tinnitus. Try deep breathing in outdoors too while you do these activities, as the outdoors give you fresh and abundant oxygen to benefit deep breathing to soothe the nerves.
3. Use CBT techniques for distorted thoughts. For the cognitive distortion of catastrophic thinking, try read up on CBT techniques. One easy way is to write down and counter your negative thoughts or fears with more positive and realistic ones. Dr. Hubbard wrote a success story on how he uses CBT techniques such as mindfulness and exposure to deal with his fear on his ringing. Try to read up on that.
When you do the above steps and activities, the normal parasympathetic nervous system will be back in control at some point. You will likely see that your fear and stressful reaction to the tinnitus will be much reduced. This is because the pre-frontal cortex of the brain will take up processing the tinnitus stimulus under the parasympathetic nervous systems from the Amygdala under the limbic nervous system.
This change is critical and most people are not aware of it. This is because while the Amygdala had caused you to have intense fear of a perceive threat, the pre-frontal cortex has the natural function to reduce the fearful response of the brain. This in turn will help you have better control of your situation and can help you manage your response to the ringing. This will then likely calm you down especially if you continue to live your life as normal as you can. Habituation will then begin when the brain no longer consider the ringing, even a loud one, as a mortal threat. Eventually it will learn to ignore and fade out the ringing sound from consciousness, especially when you are busy with other aspects of life. This is like how you can ignore or not be aware of the loud jet noise during a plane flight when you are deep in watching a movie, even though the loud noise is all encompassing around you.
All the best. God bless your recovery.
