Please join me at my new Tinnitus Blog at THE HARWOOD CENTER where you can learn about:
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Jennifer Battaglino
Posted in tinnitus | Tagged habituation, hyperacusis, ringing of the ear, tinnitus, tinnitus retraining, tinnitus treatment | Leave a Comment »
Good Evening Everyone,
I just wanted to post that I will be picking up where I left on tomorrow and discuss the causes of tinnitus, those obvious and not so obvious ones…
Until then just know that you can get well, feel better, and get your life back.
Jennifer Battaglino
Posted in tinnitus | 18 Comments »
In my last post I touched upon SPADE, the precursor to tinnitus that sets the stage for its onset in the vast majority of cases. Of course a tumor sitting on the 8th nerve doesn’t need to have stress, panic, anxiety, depression, and/or emotional illness in the person’s past but we will see those traits in many cases that begin with a physical event as what pulled the trigger. I didn’t use the word “cause” to describe the final sensitizing event that brought the onset of tinnitus as it is usually a number of events that have done so, although there is an exception to every rule.
For now let’s focus on the physical causes of tinnitus.
Some of those include but are not limited to the following as other health problems can play a role:
The list is long but also note that many of us have experienced that ringing sound. I know I have after belting out Badlands at a Bruce concert. The difference is that it is temporary for the majority while a few wake up days later wondering, “How come I STILL hear it?” At this point, whatever temporary damage that has been done has heeled and yet the sound continues to invade and attack.
So what happened? Carl went to a rock concert and asked that same question in my office. I will continue to talk about him and how he succeeded in his habituation process. You’ll have to come back to find out if he went into remission…
What happened was that Carl entered a hightened state also known as the flight or fight response. We have all experienced this at one time or another in our lives where we assess a perceived threat. We go into overdrive and make a quick judgment in an effort to protect ourselves. Carl was being invaded from the inside out and when the sound didn’t go away fast enough, he panicked and gave it credibility. So the loop in the brain begins and that loop stays after the physical problem has healed.
As time passed in therapy, Carl answered his own question. He had what I call a ”lightbulb” moment and said,”That night was different because I gave the sound significance.” Carl was scared and nervous and kept checking his tinnitus in a flight or fight reponse to the noise.
Think about taking a stick and drawing a line in the sand. The more you go over and over the same line, the deeper and more permanent it becomes but you can erase it with effort. The tinnitus loop can be broken with commitment.
That is also why there is no magic pill when it comes to tinnitus. Whatever you see out there…if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Unfortunately getting well takes patience with tinnitus, which is almost like a cruel joke. Someone with tinnitus has no patience because the sound is driving them crazy. Would you blame them for trying anything in desperation?
Next time we will look at the emotional causes of tinnitus and discus the physical and emotional relationship.
Posted in tinnitus | 24 Comments »
So now that we have covered the fact that you don’t have to know the cause of your tinnitus to get well, let’s discuss how it might have happened.
With almost any problem, we want to pinpoint the exact time and place it all started. We want to make sense of it all so the questions stop coming like “Why me?”, “How could this have happened?”, “What did I do to deserve this?” One of my clients asked me once about an old friend who seemed to have no problem with the sound in his head but also got tinnitus from storming the beach at Normandy. “What better way to get tinnitus than that?!” I asked. It’s like wearing the medal of honor as there isn’t a more noble way than surviving D-Day. This man’s suffering had meaning and significance for a greater cause than himself so he could “live with it”.
For this gentleman, there was one distinct event that caused his tinnitus. For the vast majority of those suffering from tinnitus, it is not that simple. There are usually 4 or 5 “sensitizing” events that create what I call “the perfect storm” so as the final event, the one the sufferer recalls occuring before the noise began, is really the straw that broke the camel’s back, NOT an isolated incident.
It would be unethical to make a blanket statement as there is an exception to every rule. So instead, I would say that 99.99% of those suffering from tinnitus have “SPADE” in their history, particularly in the preceding 18 months to 2 years prior to onset. Coined by Dr. Kevin Hogan, one of the formost experts on tinnitus, SPADE stands for stress, panic, anxiety, depression, and emotional illness. One, some, or all of these stressors are a part of the sufferer’s past. Typically someone with tinnitus, who has ruled out physical causes such as a tumor or has gotten well from an infection, can have the personality traits of a perfectionist, wanting things a certain way, OCD-ish tendencies, and find the noise so unacceptable that they focus on it, checking, giving it significance. Sometimes I talk about tinnitus as though it was alive… The problem is that once you give it power, it does take on a life of its own. It allows the brain to get caught up in the loop of sound and can create panic, depression, and/or anxiety, only making it worse and more engrained.
In my next post we will specifically list and discuss the physical and emotional causes of tinnitus. This will then allow us to continue the journey to finding relief as we discuss how to get well.
Posted in tinnitus | Tagged bringing the volume down, chronic illness, habituate, habituation, ringing of the ear, tinnitus, tinnitus habituation, tinnitus remission, tinnitus treatment | 23 Comments »
Good question.
I would want to know too but the truth is it may not matter in the realm of getting well.
I worked with a 62 year old gentleman who rated his tinnitus in the 6-8 range on a scale from 0 (silent) to 10 (“ready to jump off a cliff” loud). We worked together for about 2 months on a weekly basis. John was reporting, through his log he kept for me, that his tinnitus was down to 1’s and 2’s with an occasional 3. Now that’s progress.
John was also seeing a doctor who specializes in tinnitus treatment who also does a lot of research and ran numerous tests to assess John.
Well the results came back. John walked into my office, handed me his log, and I said, “What happened this week?” The numbers were back up to 6’s and 7’s. “I don’t know, nothing was much different this week but I did find out why the tinnitus is there…Dr. Jones said that the hairs in my ear are paralyzed, dead actually.”
“Oh, really,” I answered but John did not dedect my tone., “How long have they been dead?” John didn’t know how long but completely believed that this was his cause, the reason why he had tinnitus. The question was finally answered and he was not sawying on his conviction.
“Ok, so even if dead hairs in your ear are the reason for your tinnitus, which I don’t believe is the cause in this case, did they become paralyzed this past Wednesday when you got the results? The day you did the exam? 5 years, 10, 20 years ago? When did it happen. If it happened ANY TIME before the day you got the results then it only proves that you are able to get well DESPITE the fact that the hairs in your ear don’t move.”
John smiled and said, “I hadn’t thought about that.”
John did get his tinnitus to go down again but never remitted. Part of him had to believe that the physical issue the doctor “diagnosed” was there. Therefore, how could his brain accept silence when it could not explain away this factor?
Next we will look at the various causes of tinnitus.
All my best
Posted in tinnitus | Tagged bringing the volume down, habituate, habituation, ringing of the ear, tinnitus, tinnitus habituation, tinnitus remission, tinnitus treatment | 24 Comments »
