The sound of loud tinnitus can trigger a very intense fight-or-flight stress response that never completely goes away because the sound never stops. And being stuck in a vicious cycle of fight or flight is definitely like stress. Glen Schweitzer But when you look deeper, you begin to see that the core emotion at the heart of every problematic case of tinnitus isn’t anxiety – it’s helplessness. You feel completely powerless to find any kind of relief in the face of a confusing health problem that is actively destroying your quality of life. All the anxiety, fear, sadness and every other negative emotion that tinnitus sufferers experience – all flow outward from this central feeling of helplessness. But in reality you are not as powerless as you think you are. You just need to understand where your strength lies and how to exercise that strength to achieve results. Some things are under your control and some things are not. Differentiating between the two begins with a better understanding of the problem.
How tinnitus can make you feel so helpless
Imagine you are watching a movie, feeling relaxed and completely distracted by your tinnitus, when suddenly there is an explosion on the screen and the movie plays the high-pitched sound of tinnitus that the hero is supposed to be experiencing. Hearing this sound will likely make you immediately notice your own tinnitus in a negative way, possibly even louder than before. Most tinnitus sufferers have had this experience, or something similar. In that moment of stress, most people try to push the sound away. You’re probably thinking, “Please go away! Just let me enjoy my movie. I need another 5 minutes of peace!” But now think about what is happening from the perspective of your nervous system. Your nervous system says, “Hey, do you hear that sound? Something terrible is happening! You need to get up now and deal with it!’ People with chronic tinnitus have higher rates of depression and anxiety. In response, you’ll think, “I don’t want to deal with this for a second! Please just leave! Leave me alone and let me enjoy my movie!” And so your nervous system responds, “What do you mean go away? Something terrible is happening! Don’t you hear that sound? Okay – tension building, stress, adrenaline building. All systems go! We have to deal with it right now!’ By trying to push it away, you are fighting against the way your nervous system evolved to protect you from danger, the way you would want it to protect you if the danger were real. If the sound wasn’t your tinnitus, but the fire alarm going off in the middle of the night because your house was on fire, you’d want it to wake you up with so much adrenaline you could lift your family and your pets up with one hand. another while running out of the house to safety. But somehow, that level of activation happens on the couch while you’re trying to watch TV. We try to push away the sound of our tinnitus, but we fail, and all we do is feel more powerless (and more anxious and afraid).
Where weakness leads
On an individual level, tinnitus experiences can vary greatly from case to case. Two separate tinnitus patients may give you two completely different reports of discomfort. One person experienced an auditory trauma, the other a side effect of medication. One hates noise, the other silence. One person hears a sharp sound, the other a loud, low-pitched roar, like a jet engine. One is not bothered by the sound at all, the other is completely miserable. Every patient has a different story to tell. But despite all the differences, patterns emerge. Most sufferers have had a doctor wrongly tell them that there is nothing they can do about their tinnitus, that they just have to learn to live with it. (And what could make you feel more helpless than being wrongly told by a doctor that your condition is hopeless?) Many patients are deeply afraid that they will not be able to find relief, which can mutate into feelings of sadness and a state of depression. Almost all sufferers experience high levels of stress and anxiety.
There is always hope, even in the most serious cases. Despite what your doctor may have told you, there is absolutely something you can do about your tinnitus. Only with familiarity can you restore your quality of life to what it was before the tinnitus started.
It starts with weakness, but the downstream psychological and emotional effects of tinnitus can quickly become significant and overwhelming. Patients may begin to feel trapped in a 24/7 state of pain and distress. It can become hard to eat, hard to sleep, hard to concentrate – hard to feel at all normal, let alone happy. I’ve experienced this myself with my own tinnitus and I’ve seen it firsthand in the hundreds of other patients I’ve worked with over the years. Even patients with no prior history of mental health problems may begin to show signs of deep depression and severe anxiety. There is always hope, even in the most serious cases. Despite what your doctor may have told you, there is absolutely something you can do about your tinnitus. Only with familiarity can you restore your quality of life to what it was before the tinnitus started. But when tinnitus becomes severe, it can be downright terrifying. In fact, the most similar health problem to tinnitus is not another ear or hearing problem, but post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Defining tinnitus as an anxiety disorder
In my opinion, a more accurate description of tinnitus might be acute auditory stress disorder (AASD). Right now, tinnitus is seen primarily as a hearing health problem. If there was a reliable medication, surgery, or treatment that could cure tinnitus completely, this framework would be fine. But in the absence of a cure, treating tinnitus is a lot more like trying to treat PTSD than any other hearing problem. Meditation can be a powerful way to learn to get used to tinnitus. In both cases, a person is repeatedly triggered into a state of intense stress/anxiety and emotional despair. With both tinnitus and PTSD, the nervous system goes into a constantly over-activated fight-or-flight state that never fully subsides, creating a vicious cycle of suffering. Even the way the suffering manifests seems similar: A trauma survivor actively suffering with an episode of PTSD will experience many of the same psychological and emotional effects as a person experiencing an intense spike or episode of tinnitus. It may seem like an arbitrary comparison at first glance, but it is very important to understand the similarities. Because tinnitus, like PTSD, often requires a multidisciplinary treatment approach. The best results are often achieved through a combination of a variety of different treatment methods such as counselling, guidance, medication, therapy devices such as hearing aids/mask luggage when necessary, relaxation techniques, coping tools and mind-body techniques. few. There may not be a one-size-fits-all solution, but with the right toolkit, acute stress disorders of all varieties can be resolved and quality of life restored. Tinnitus is no exception.
PTSD: A personal example
When my wife Megan was 6 months pregnant with our son Zach, she was diagnosed with somewhat aggressive breast cancer. The good news is that Megan is now almost four years cancer free! But at the time, it was a stressful nightmare. She had a lumpectomy surgery while pregnant and then shortly after endured a painful early labor that lasted 3 days. After my son was born (healthy and happy), Megan underwent IVF to preserve her fertility, immediately followed by chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy. And all the while, we had a newborn baby at home – our first child. When you’re in the middle of a situation like that, you just find a way to survive. We both did. But when her cancer went into remission and the dust settled, she really struggled with PTSD. For months, Megan worked hard to resolve her PTSD and underwent many treatments, including medication, intensive counseling, breathing, and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). And everything was working. It was slow at times, but he made great progress and was having better and better days and then better and better weeks. But then, inevitably, something would trigger her PTSD in the middle of it all and she’d have another episode.
Where tinnitus and PTSD meet
When Megan experienced a PTSD episode, she would not dissociate, but would feel the emotions all over again as difficult memories flooded her mind. And in this moment of despair, not only would she not remember that she had been having a great week up until that point, but she often wouldn’t remember that there had been a single good day since the cancer appeared. It would completely distort the sense of time and space. It was as if he were stuck on a ship lost at sea, and not only was there no land in sight, but there had never been land before, and there never would be again. This is exactly what it can feel like when I have a severe tinnitus spike and something I hear all the time from my tinnitus coaching clients. You may be having a great week, and a sudden change in the intensity of the tinnitus can trigger the fear and weakness again. It can make you feel like you’re right back at the beginning. Difficult spikes and intense moments of tinnitus always pass eventually, and once you calm down again, you’ll usually end up right where you were before…
