How to avoid fear and disappointment when tinnitus comes back. As you start working
on yourself with tinnitus and tending to your internal world and are starting to get more
of a sense of internal well-being, so maybe you have got craniosacral therapy or you are
taking up body-based practices that promote well-being and help you release and let go,
you can expect your tinnitus to back off. I've experienced many times with people that
they start getting better and their tinnitus goes away completely or it goes really quiet
and then they into a state of fear thinking "Oh my God, what happens if it comes back?
You know, "What if it comes back?" People dread that and feel very afraid of that, and
therefore, because of this reaction it activates the nervous system and kind of helps bring
it back in a way. So the first thing to say is that working on yourself you can expect
the tinnitus to drop down and it may come up again but it drops down. If you carry on
working on yourself then you can expect the up and downs overall to get better. So this
is high tinnitus and over a period of time it gradually gets better and better but along
the way you get lots of ups and downs. So when it ramps up and you have a little spike
you really react to that as if it is the end of the world and your mind may catastrophise.
But if you step back and look at the whole picture overall it may well be getting much
better. As a therapist I always write down exactly the words people use to describe their
tinnitus and very often when they come into therapy I say well its not all that bad because
in the last two sessions you said this and you said this and my sense is that it is getting
a bit better or getting a lot better. So when we are in that space where we are looking
out and thinking Oh my God is it going to come back? and dreading that or feeling fearful
about that the classic thing to do is instead of stewing in this activating fearful state
that is the time to practice, to do all your body-based practices. So if you have been
learning yoga and tai chi that's the time to just have a good hour of practice. If you
can get out of your fearful thinking and get into letting go and releasing the body so
you change channel out of thinking mode and freaking out catastrophising mode into feeling
the body and hanging out inside the reality of your immediate experience if you can do
this for quite a long time so half an hour to an hour you will find that all the twitter
up here stops and you get back in touch with your immediate body-based reality. This is
an incredibly helpful way of dealing with mental fear which is what we are talking about
here. So please know that you can step out of this fearful way of thinking which can
trigger a cascade of adrenal fear responses. You can step out of it very immediately by
reconnecting with the body. Keep coming back to that. And if you are really overwhelmed
or fearful then you can organise a skype session with me or go and see your craniosacral therapist
or go and do more tai chi or yoga practice. You will need to depend on these resources
in the beginning like a stabiliser learning to ride a bike. Because once you have got
these stabilisers in place, these resources and body-based practices in place then you
can just cycle off into the sunset. You can expect your nervous system to settle. So please
don't just freak out. Notice when you are freaking out and then take positive action.
If you can step back and have a more long-term view of your tinnitus. Don't get hung up too
much on the little daily spikes up and down and use your practice to unstick your mind
from all of this. Your body-based awareness will be the way that you can literally un-attach
yourself from these negative thought patterns that don't do you any good.