Tinnitus and Suicide

[Street Spirit]

@Telis I know you're out of this thread but have you tried any meds for the pain? In particular amitriptyline.

 

[Street Spirit]

Yeah, the picture is a bullet point, guys. Maybe it's not a very good one. It was useful to me when I was in a deep, dark hole. I am sorry if it is not useful to others.

I love that pic. It's very useful and helps me too. Thanks for posting.

 

[Dr. Nagler]

Did you know that they use sound as a torturing method?

Yes.

Moreover, can sound hurt or damage things? Yes, it certainly can. Sound waves are quiet powerful.

Tinnitus is not associated with a sound wave. Sound waves can cause physical damage. Tinnitus cannot. The suffering - the torture, if you will - from tinnitus is primarily a function of one's reaction to that tinnitus.

You believe that the neurological pathways for sound (neurons) have little in common with neurological pathways for pain and temperature (neurons).

Neurological pathways are routes. Neurons are what makes up those routes. The road from Washington, D.C. to Montreal and the road from Washington, D.C. to Miami are both paved, but they have little else in common.

stephen nagler

 

[billy43]

hi Dr Nagler.just wanted to add my 2 cents to this thread.i was lucky enough to attend one of your presentations in person.it was here in NJ last year.i just want to say you are the real deal. i left that place feeling so much better than when i got there.i know you are going thru a tough time. i truly hope things get better for you and have no doubt they will.just wanted to thank you for all you do for the Tinnitus community. thanks billy 43

 

[dboy]

Yeah, the picture is a bullet point, guys. Maybe it's not a very good one. It was useful to me when I was in a deep, dark hole. I am sorry if it is not useful to others.

I did not mean to cause offence. I know you are trying to help. I guess I was trying to make a serious point in a non-serious way. There is clearly something about what you are saying that bothers a few folks though, and as I'm one of them let me take a stab at figuring out what it is. We are talking about stuff that words don't grab hold of very well, and also I am generalising/simplifying a bit. So please bear with me if you can - I'm not trying to start an argument so much as head one off.

What I think happens in the assertion that tinnitus suffering is 100% caused by the reaction is that an important stage gets missed. That stage can be called experience. Experience happens before we have an emotional reaction, and yet experience also can encompass that reaction. Reactions are something that it is theoretically possible to control, so it is comforting to identify them as the source of all of the suffering. Experience cannot be completely controlled (not by oppressed buddhist monks or by T sufferers). So it is less comforting to talk about it.

When we get tinnitus our experience is changed. We don't have a choice in that. From now on we will experience a sound in our heads that we don't want there. At first we react very strongly – lots of anxiety that makes the experience worse (and can make the tinnitus worse). Over time the anxiety hopefully goes down. We can work on improving our emotional reaction further so that it does not compound the unpleasantness of the situation. But the experience of the sound remains.

So our experience of the world is altered. Like many people I choose to own the perception that it is degraded from what it was previously. The degree to which it is degraded no doubt depends on many things – how bad the T, whether we also have H, what our personalities are like, what our jobs or our passions are, etc. Some people cope very well, some folks even manage to come out happier overall than they were before (life is complex!). Their emotional reaction is no doubt a big part of that picture. But consider this: how many of those people would refuse a safe and effective treatment that removed their T? Would you? Would Dr Nagler?

I suspect not, and that is likely because however much you can mitigate your suffering through controlling the emotional reaction, you know at a fundamental level that your experience of living is altered – and altered for the worse – by having tinnitus. If that were not true then you would be indifferent to the possibility of a cure. There are probably people with mild tinnitus who are indifferent. But I doubt many of us with intrusive tinnitus are - because we suffer from the experience of tinnitus as well as from our emotional reaction to it. My best guess is that you know this if you let yourself. You are brave enough to describe those calls to your parents and what happens when you return from your camping trips to 'normal' life. It can be hard.

This does not mean anyone should give up on life. It is just calling it what it is, thinking clearly, not wanting to be bamboozled. Accepting a delusion can seem comforting to some people (a function that most religions perhaps fulfil). Other people are just inherently uncomfortable with making that choice. We each have different lives, different T, and we each experience things in different ways. One thing that is quite fundamental in providing support is to try not to impose your own worldview on someone who is having a hard time, however great you think that worldview is. Sharing ideas, anecdotes, suggestions is great, but it is also important to listen to what others say and not to assume that your experience can map directly onto theirs (whatever the similarities).

I think it is great to suggest ways of working on one's reaction to tinnitus because that reaction is definitely a part of the overall experience of tinnitus or tinnitus suffering. There is a lot of scope there to improve how people feel and improve coping strategies. The emotional reaction just isn't (I strongly believe) the whole picture. That seems like a reductive, dogmatic assertion and it does not reflect the reported experience of some people who have been posting here.

 

[linearb]

Yup, I agree with that entirely.

I guess a big part of my thinking and bias, comes from previous experience. Even before I had tinnitus, I suffered with a bunch of other miserable problems. The distinction you're trying to draw between experience and reaction, is very significant -- and for a long time, I tried to control experience, with drugs of one kind or another. All of these attempts more or less ended badly.

I suppose I still try to control experience -- when my T is most bothersome, I either control my experience by doing calming things like hot baths/saunas, or I directly control my experience of the T by masking it. I don't think there's anything wrong with that -- and I also don't disparage anyone who just takes benzos and deals with it that way, but for me that created as many problems as it solved.

So, what I overlooked in all those years, was that experience is only half the battle, maybe less. And when I'm comparing hardcore sedatives to meditation, I think that for me, controlling experience is perilous, and trying to control reaction is safer. I say safer, and not "safe", because I don't think anything is truly safe. If you look hard enough, you can find people who seem to have really fucked themselves up with meditation... I even know of one anecdote of a woman who said that intense meditative experience caused her to start reacting negatively to her T. In fact, "Dibbi-sota" appears to refer explicitly to "meditation-induced tinnitus": http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/tinnitus.pdf

 

[NiNyu]

..calmly self-immolating as an act of protest. You think that dude would have been fazed by some head noise?

That said, clearly there is a difference between physical pain and sensory distress.

I don't think that chronic pain/tinnitus comparisons are necessarily off base, because there's plenty of research to suggest that they have similar underlaying mechanics (link)... but so what? People learn to live with chronic pain.

Maybe he was a T sufferer himself; and he wanted to burn it out. Or was afraid that nobody would strew his ashes in the wind like Vincent.

There you contradicted yourself.
Nerves are nerves, neurons are neurons no matter where they are located in the body.

I used to be patient, but how can you be patient when being tortured incessantly. Didn't get any sleep last time. And Benzo has no real effect. Though thinking is petty hard ATM.

What do you gain if you claim acceptance over something were you had no choice to begin with? And how can you genuinely claim a success when the T hasn't changed one bit? Isn't that rather deceiving yourself? It's raining outside and I do accept it. What happens if I don't accept it? Will the rain suddenly stop or change? Nay. So why bother with acceptance? Fighting it.. how? Yelling at it? Smashing your head into solid matter? We are doomed. I say we are doomed! And there are no real success stories. Just momentarily whims like the ever fluctuating franken fuck T.

If I'm reborn I will not have any of my memories or any of the things that make me, "me". That concrete "I" is just ego shit that's going to get blasted away when my brain dies.

Tabula Rasa, indeed. That might be actually true that the reborn you might not like any of those things that you do fancy now, or have access to, and all your knowledge might be lost as well. That's also something I'm very afraid of. I have learned so much and I'd love to use all my wisdom to enjoy life.. inspire, charm, seduce, entertain others, which I used to do - but with T it's all tits up.

Unless there's a real treatment or real cure nothing will change my mind. So I can either live a life of a zombie or man up and make my own success story, 'off T' the old fashioned way.

If you were a demi-god with such a bad spell I'd punch you right in the face. I have a unstoppable passion for self-defense. The thing is, I do not think about T. But T is thinking about me 24/7. Fear has made way for hatred. I cannot stand it anymore. It's ultra annoying, debilitating and even painful. I get severe headache from all the noise. Hence my emotional reaction is insanity.

I have been a perfectionist for many years, but eventually you do realize that there's beauty mostly in imperfection.

No one is going to agree with me that suicide, a temporary thing, is a reasonable solution for a permanent problem, T? Never say never. Watch me die!

 

[linearb]

I used to be patient, but how can you be patient when being tortured incessantly. Didn't get any sleep last time. And Benzo has no real effect. Though thinking is petty hard ATM.

It's easy to be patient when there's no money on the line; it's much harder to be patient when your limbic system is screaming at you.

What do you gain if you claim acceptance over something were you had no choice to begin with? And how can you genuinely claim a success when the T hasn't changed one bit? Isn't that rather deceiving yourself? It's raining outside and I do accept it. What happens if I don't accept it? Will the rain suddenly stop or change? Nay. So why bother with acceptance? Fighting it.. how? Yelling at it? Smashing your head into solid matter? We are doomed. I say we are doomed! And there are no real success stories. Just momentarily whims like the ever fluctuating franken fuck T.

If you don't think that people who have happy, rich lives despite tinnitus are a "success", then, yes, you may never succeed. I don't think you understand what acceptance is, and I don't know how I can better explain it.

Unless there's a real treatment or real cure nothing will change my mind. So I can either live a life of a zombie or man up and make my own success story, 'off T' the old fashioned way.

This kind of black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking is a classic cognitive distortion:
http://panicdisorder.about.com/od/livingwithpd/tp/All-Or-Nothing-Thinking.htm

The thing is, I do not think about T.

Bullshit, you talk about nothing else on here.

No one is going to agree with me that suicide, a temporary thing, is a reasonable solution for a permanent problem, T? Never say never. Watch me die!

No one has to agree with you, dude. If you want to kill yourself, I can't stop you, and I won't suffer as a result. I prefer the modified thelemic philosophy, "harm none, do what thou wilt". But if you wanna be all crowley and just say "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law", then, sure, do what thou wilt!

 

[NiNyu]

Tinnitus is not associated with a sound wave. Sound waves can cause physical damage. Tinnitus cannot. The suffering - the torture, if you will - from tinnitus is primarily a function of one's reaction to that tinnitus.

Ok, ok fair. Then how don you differentiate between the T and some noisy sound wave that enters your ear?

If the suffering of T is primarily a function of one's reaction to it then you could say the same about pain. All happens in the brain. Did you know that many neurologists compare T with phantom pain?

Neurological pathways are routes. Neurons are what makes up those routes. The road from Washington, D.C. to Montreal and the road from Washington, D.C. to Miami are both paved, but they have little else in common.

Both are roads thus they do have something in common. Let me ask you this, if were in a moving car blindfolded, could you really tell which road you are on?

 

[NiNyu]

Vincent, you are hilarious. You made me laugh, something that's pretty hard ATM.

Laziness and coffee that's true. Oh, there are better way than trains.

It's kind of funny thinking back about the stuff that one used to think were troublesome. Compared to being locked up in a box with the precise size of your own head together with a never ending wake up alarm, just about anything is a walk in the park.

Well put. That's why I need a second chance! There are so many things I feel that needs to be done. And for them I need peace of the mind.

@Telis don't leave. I genuinely believe you are one of the strongest here.

 

[NiNyu]

What I think happens in the assertion that tinnitus suffering is 100% caused by the reaction is that an important stage gets missed. That stage can be called experience. Experience happens before we have an emotional reaction, [...] Experience cannot be completely controlled.

When we get tinnitus our experience is changed. We don't have a choice in that. From now on we will experience a sound in our heads that we don't want there.

@dboy, well put. The experience sucks! And it does not care about our emotional reaction.

 

[dboy]

No one is going to agree with me that suicide, a temporary thing, is a reasonable solution for a permanent problem, T? Never say never. Watch me die!

It is something that I have seriously considered and been close to. And sure, if you are absolutely convinced that life will never again be worth living for you then I'm not against it in principle. But here are my caveats (some of which have been covered before):
- Give it time, your T is still acute and may still go down naturally. Let your emotions stabilise for a while longer too.
- The treatments in the pipeline might turn out to be effective. What if you could be cured in a few years?
- I like your provocative way of expressing yourself so would prefer it if you stuck around.
- These threads might be available on the internet for a long while and might influence vulnerable people (children, folks with mental health problems, etc.) during a time of crisis. We shouldn't be afraid of talking it through but lets do it carefully.

 

[MattK]

@Telis when you work out and stuff, does that take your mind off of it at all? If you really feel you can't take it anymore then please try Trobalt. I know you have concerns with it, but if you're thinking death is the best option then what would you have to lose?

 

[gintas]

1. Hi, anyone has some ideas does those thoughts have something commont with useing benzo or AD ? maybe people who useing benzo, AD are less possible to habbituete T. and opposite . does someone have experiences. ?

 

[nills]

1. Hi, anyone has some ideas does those thoughts have something commont with useing benzo or AD ? maybe people who useing benzo, AD are less possible to habbituete T. and opposite . does someone have experiences. ?

Benzos and other similar type of meds are infamous for creating suicide idealization ... why and how this happens I don`t know .. also self mutilation (hurting oneself) can happen ... If these thoughts persist while being on these med`s you should definitely speak to your doctor. your psyche is greatly influneced by these drugs and one can forget that the things experienced and percieved are appearing the way they do because you take these med`s ... not because it is a sane idea to follow them.

 

[glynis]

★ For anyone who ever feels suicidal there is help ★

☆★ MIND ,The Samaritans,Mental health line who have a crisis team,Doctor and AnE is a safe place to go ☆★......lol glynis