I want to just confirm that it is absolutely possible to let go of tinnitus so that you have
no noise left in your ears this is not something that happens quickly or overnight you know it
can be a bit of a process getting there but it is possible for people to find silence again
regularly I work with people and they come in and say well last week I had four days of total
silence in the quiet room I couldn't hear a thing and then on the other days it was just very minor
and frankly I didn't really notice it because it wasn't enough to press into my awareness and
I'm not sure whether I have it or not because in the quiet room if I listen out then I can almost
create it again by focusing on it but when you get down to this level it's pretty much like anybody
else if you put anybody in a quiet sound booth and say listen out and see if you can hear anything
most people can ramp up their hearing sensitivity enough that they end up hearing the buzz of the
nervous system just like when my father took me out into the desert and asked me to listen to
the silence for 12 minutes after a few minutes I I thought I could hear the molecules banging
up against my eardrum but actually it was my own buzz within my body so most people who never have
tinnitus they can find it if they really strain to hear but why would they bother it's not an
issue for them and if you have had tinnitus in the past and you've made a complete recovery
then it's absolutely boring and uninteresting to try and find it again once you've let go
of tinnitus you just move on and you've got much more important things to worry about once you've
made a recovery it's like being able to feel your own socks you wouldn't walk around all day long
trying to feel your socks it's very low down in your awareness so why bother to know to sit once
once your activations come right down and you're no longer rooting for tinnitus or reacting to it
you let go of it it lets go view and the whole thing can go quiet this is not a miracle it's
not a rarity this happens all the time every day in my practice I come across this every week it's
it's it happens all the time I was on retreat in Germany last week and two people there used to
have tinnitus they had it one had it for six months and the other one had it for a couple
of years and they don't have it anymore and they don't think about it anymore this is no big deal
if you're going through the difficult period in tinnitus when you're freaking out and reacting
to it and you haven't yet learnt to self-soothe or you're dealing with an ongoing stress which is
keeping you activated and keeping you in this sort of freezing response or fight-or-flight response
or if you're going through some major auditory readjustment - noise trauma or shock then you know
it can take a while for your system to settle but please I want to be completely clear about this it
is possible to make a complete recovery you know like me tinnitus can come back a tiny bit if I
sit in a quiet room and I've got a stinking cold and I've had a particularly rough week you know
colds tend to really increase the irritability but I know it'll go away again so I don't react
to it my mind doesn't lock into the sound it's no big deal for me so it just goes away of its own
accord so every day I get asked if it is possible for tinnitus to back off and to make to be cured
of it and yes it is I I want to put this out there because I know it can be difficult for people who
are struggling with tinnitus because it may seem a bit of a way off but I want to leave no doubt
in people's mind that you can make a complete recovery long before you get to silence in a
quiet room it may be so low and uninteresting and unimportant you may not even bother to monitor
monitor it and this happens a lot but yes you can make a complete recovery from this condition