The Power of Thoughts

“Nothing can be done but i’ll refer you to someone for a chat.”

“You just have to live with it”

“ There is nothing wrong with you”

“Just ignore it”

“ My Uncle Jeff had that and it drove him crazy!”

These are just a selection of the comments and advice those with tinnitus have received from medical professionals, friends or colleagues when discussing their tinnitus awareness. Positive huh? Do you feel reassured and optimistic about the future? Would you even bother going for that “chat”? How can nothing be wrong when your ears are ringing?

We believe that the information those with tinnitus receive around the point of onset can have a profound effect on outcomes and on that individual’s ability to habituate to tinnitus over time. Negative thinking and the subsequent ‘tagging’ of tinnitus as a potential threat has the potential to maintain a tinnitus awareness even after the triggering event has resolved. Why would you forget about or ignore a symptom when you have no idea why it’s there or what it could be? A quick google on the subject and posts will flash up suggestions of brain or ear tumours or circulation problems. May be you are a professional musician, your ears are your livelihood. Does this noise mean you have damaged your hearing? Will you have to quit your job? How will you pay the bills? Are you managing to ‘ignore it’ yet? Of course you aren’t. Like a chipped tooth your tongue keeps going back to explore, you will keep checking on it. Has it got louder? Is it a different pitch? What does that mean? And so goes on the cycle of hearing your tinnitus, worrying about what it might be and subsequently checking on it.

Worry itself is a powerful exacerbating factor. In the process of worrying about what tinnitus may be or mean there is the potential for it to be tagged as a ‘threat’. Now our bodies have a way of dealing with threats. You will no doubt have heard of the Fight or Flight (or Freeze) Response. This is a physiological survival response which allows us to physically react to threats. Physical effects can include an increased heart rate (heart racing) , fast breathing, nausea (butterflies), muscle tension and sweaty palms. You can also experience a heightening of the senses i.e vision and hearing. As a result of this response tinnitus can appear louder which alongside the other physical symptoms can lead to or reinforce any worries about its cause. Ultimately it is very difficult for your brain to ‘ignore’ or ‘forget about’ something that may be harmful. Self-preservation is a powerful thing.

But there IS no cure for tinnitus you are shouting. Yes this is correct there is currently no pill, laser, or mystical loaf of bread that will cure tinnitus, but it is important to remember that tinnitus is not a disease. We look at it more as a symptom of changes to neural signals caused by other factors such as hearing damage or stress responses. Current popular forms of tinnitus management are very much directed at promoting the brains natural ability to filter out sounds that are not important, a process called habituation. This is that same process that’s at work if you live next to a busy road or train line. To begin with you hear every train but after a while you don’t notice the trains any more. It is only if someone draws your attention to the sound or if unexpectedly the train sounds it’s horn that you hear it. Now here again is where ‘thinking’ comes in. In order to habituate to a sound it needs to be constant, repetitive and importantly ‘non threatening’. You can habituate to traffic noise, the sound of the boiler or a ticking grandfather clock because you know what they are, where they are coming from and that they are of no harm to you.

So what to take from this? No we cannot currently cure tinnitus anymore than we can remove the trains from the track or turn off the boiler without being cold but it is possible for it to be there in the background and for you not to be aware of it. We will look at how to help habituation next time but the take home message from today is ..…. worries about what tinnitus is and why it is there can make it much harder to habituate to, so put your mind at rest and get it checked by an appropriately trained audiologist. In many cases this alone is enough to get you on the road to a quieter life.

NEXT TIME: How to break the cycle :o)