What To Do For Ringing In The Ears
Hypnotherapy presents at least three different, useful models for helping people reduce the volume of their tinnitus. Although you will learn some useful information about hypnotherapy later in this blog, this blog is not about hypnosis. Hypnotherapy alone will not eliminate tinnitus in most people. However, an expert therapist, very familiar with tinnitus and its management, can work remarkable magic in literally "re-wiring" the brain of the tinnitus sufferer. Later in this blog, I will share with you
- research that has been done in helping people turn the volume down with hypnotherapy.
- recent research about reducing volume with many other vital modalities.
- experiences of my clients and their personal successes and failures.
Finally, there is enough understanding about tinnitus and its reduction to put you on the road to a quieter life. There is not a plethora of scientific research in the tinnitus reduction field being done in 2007. Something that impacts so many gets so little attention. Nonetheless, current knowledge is sufficient to believe that if you utilize this blog, you will, in all likelihood, gain significant relief from tinnitus and reduction in volume.
Whether it takes you weeks, months, or a few years is an entirely different issue. It is very difficult to predict how long it will take before you experience quieter days and nights. The majority of people who follow through completely on the information in this blog can expect significant improvement in as little as a few months. You will need help, though, from medical health professionals and several other people. You will need persistence and patience. You will need to make a financial investment in your healing process. You will need to make lifestyle changes. And you will be happier for your efforts.
Until a person has experienced tinnitus, there is no way to explain the distress and frustration you experience. It is possible to reproduce the noise of your tinnitus for someone on a synthesizer, or possibly in an audiologist's office. You could turn up the volume, match the pitch of your tinnitus, and let someone listen to it. There is, however, something very different about listening to a distressing sound for a few moments, knowing that in seconds it will be turned off, and living with a disturbing noise that you think will never quiet. Suffering from tinnitus goes beyond distress for many. The noise sometimes can be maddening, and many people have committed suicide because of it.
Two unrelated people experiencing severe tinnitus in 1997 became clients of mine after each watched a sibling (brothers in both instances) take his own life because of tinnitus. At this time there is no reason to believe that severe tinnitus is genetic, but one thing is certain: Very few experiences in human life are as intensely devastating as suffering from severe tinnitus. This blog is written for the person who is suffering from tinnitus.
Tinnitus, according to tinnitus expert, Dr. Abraham Shulman, can be defined as, "a disorder of auditory perception due to an altered state of excitation/inhibition in neuronal networks resulting in a dysynchrony of neuronal signaling. The underlying mechanism is that dysynchronization, that is, a lack of synchrony or interference in timing of the discharge rate and phase locking of the auditory signal having a location peripheral, central or both".
In lay language, I might define tinnitus as any noise produced in either the ear and/or the brain that is experienced, in large part, from the conscious portion of the mind spending time in a feedback loop that is constantly moving from hearing noise to experiencing negative emotions, ad infinitum.
In simpler terms yet, tinnitus is noise, heard in the head or the ear, that is generated from within the individual. Severe tinnitus is that which causes the individual distress in the form of anxiety, depression, stress, panic, emotional and/or communication problems.
Importantly, just because tinnitus seems to emanate from the ear, in no way means that is true. Almost all tinnitus is being generated in the auditory cortex of the brain. There is an illusion that happens quite often.
Tinnitus can be experienced as moving sound, unilateral, bilateral, central, you name it. But the fact is that except in rare cases it's coming from one location and that is the superior auditory cortex. Thus treatments in the ear are likely to fail more often than succeed in people with severe tinnitus.
How Does My Tinnitus Compare to Others?
Millions and millions of people all across the world suffer from tinnitus. The American Tinnitus Association reports that in the U.S., an estimated 12 million people have tinnitus to a disturbing degree. There is no objective method of measuring how "bad" someone has it; however, there is one classification system that I find particularly useful as a scale for understanding the distress caused by tinnitus. To find out more, you can check out What To Do For Ringing In The Ears.
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