Mindfulness Help

[Alfredo]

Hi Dr. Hubbard,

First of all I'm sorry for my bad English, it's not my native language.
I read your successful story about 9 months ago, and started to use the cognitive technique you described in your post. It started to get better, but i don't understand how to do mindfulness. Can you explain in details how to do mindfulness for Tinnitus? Do I sit for a few minutes every day and listen to Tinnitus? And when I listen what do I do?
I know I can tune it out, in this 9 months I had periods when I was not aware of T, but it didn't last.
When I hear my T, I tell myself that is just a noise, that I would habituate and tune it out. On bad days I repeat it all the time, on good days I mostly forgot.
I would really appreciated if you could help me with this problem because I don't live in a country where this kind of help is supported. Tinnitus help is on the lowest level and the doctors and psychologist are not familiar with this sort of solution or any solution for that matter. Just say live with it and that's it.
Please help.
Thank You!

 

[Dr. Hubbard]

It's a great question but more than i can get into over a forum. And there are many good texts and instructional programs on learning mindfulness (e.g., Jon Kabat-Zin "Full Catastrophe Living"). In summary, mindfulness helps you learn to accept tinnitus emotionally. it also helps you let go and allow tinnitus to exist in the background. These are mental muscles you practice during meditation, that then can bey used in day-to-day life as you notice the tinnitus. You'd start your practice alternating between your breath, or body sensation and sound as the objects of mindful attention. It may help to begin by practicing with some background sound, but not so loud you can't hear the internal sound. You'll then practice mindfully listening to sound - alternating your attention between your breath (and or body), internal sound, and external sound. As your confidence that you can sit with the internal sound increases, then you can gradually fade out the external sound. Another trick is "describing" (sometimes called "noting"). Here you take describe your auditory experience in objective terms, as a scientist might describe it (e.g., a high pitched tone is arising on the left side...). Finally, as mindfulness is about observing your experience as it arises in the moment without trying to change it or wish it away, you will also practice mindfully accepting any emotional reaction to accompanies your practcie, that may be triggered by internal sound (tinnitus) or anything else. Mindfulness takes steady practice and a lot of patience, but if you can do this, then hearing the internal sound when you're out living your life, wont' be as stressful and distracting.