Deep Down

Tinnitus is far more than a simple hearing discorder. It is a complex intermingling of deficient brain chemistry, phantom auditory perception, cell receptor damage, and/or negative emotional experiences.

The source and nature of tinnitus is only partially undestood. The uncertainty of doctors led a group of patients to form the Tinnitus Association of Canada as a registered charity in 1986.

Tinnitus can be initiated by anything that upsets the nervous system. Stress, depression, panic disorder and anxiety can all cause tinnitus. The reason Medicine is not so efficient on Tinnitus is that medicine is organized by body systems; but tinnitus is a mixed mind/ody (somatogorm) disorder. Tinnitus patients have been described as rigid, desperate, obsessive and neurotic. Many present with additional problems contributing to tinnitus distress (i.e. divorce, lack of money, dissatisfaction with their occupations. Some have a history of clinical depression).

Click here for an unofficial stress evaluation developedby Holmes and Rahe as a simple and fairly objective scale to determine the amount of stress.

Treatment Methods:

1. Medication: Some anti-anxiety or anti-depressant drugs are efficient in reducing tinnitus.
2. Masking: A “covering” of he noise that is in the head or ears with noise that is external to the head and ears
3. Habitualtion (Tinnitus Re-Training therapy): A process of adding broad band white noise in small increments to “re-train the auditory pathways”, so that the sound of the tinnitus no longer creates a negative emotional response.
4. Hypnotherapy: The safest and most comfortable way to reduce volume and distress in tinnitus. There are:
   • Regression Therapy
   • Ego State Therapy
   • Suggestive Therapy
   • Self-help programs
     
   • • 

Improving the state of the nervous system can reduce the intrusiveness of tinnitus and the discomfort that’s part of the conditon. More often than not, this happens gradually through the organism’s natural ability to heal itself. In serious cases, therapy can often rehabilitate the nervous system, so that the sounds and symptoms gradually lose their disturbing quality.

Think Tinnitus as a signal to care for our health, happiness, and those we love. If this is possible you would not hate the noses you hear, but emotionally accept it. I would take the noise I hear as a constant reminder for me to get out of my thinking mind and get into the instant-by-instant flow of life, the now moment.