May I be calm and without fear. Tinnitus does not rule me.
If you have chronic head noise, you’ll try almost anything to get rid of it. Tinnitus sticks to you in every waking moment, a biting bug you can’t shake off.
Science hasn’t yet figured out how to fix the venomous noise in your brain which monopolizes your focus, pulling your attention away from what offers more joy and positive interest.
You may have tried drumming or massaging your head with your fingers. You swallow expensive herbal remedies ‘guaranteed’ to eliminate the noise. You drink more alcohol than usual to dull the feeling.
Or, while you wait for the day when science delivers something resembling a cure, you can address the stress that tinnitus produces in most of us. You pursue a better night’s sleep. You do cardio-rich exercise. You focus on intentional breathing that may just expand to the practice of mindfulness and then to meditation even though you-can’t-believe-you’re-actually-doing-this.
For me, mindfulness meditation was a game-changer, possibly a life-saving one.
Whereas meditation uses mental focus techniques that produce calmness and awareness, mindfulness is the practice of placing our attention in the present moment with purposeful self-compassion. Mindfulness meditation combines these therapeutic techniques in a practice that puts aside judgement and interpretation in order to calm the nervous system.
Many people on social media despair of the negativity they find on tinnitus forums. Yet there they are, back again and again, looking for hints of a cure. Thoughts of their tinnitus consume them, and they will try anything, including responding to advertisements for every snake oil tinnitus ‘cure’, even though they read dozens of “don’t waste your money” responses. Some feel that “At least I tried it and now I know it doesn’t work. What’s next?”
Stress reduction is next.
Lowering our stress is being kind to ourselves. Stress not only fans the flame of our tinnitus, it can also lead to other health issues such as heart disease, high blood pressure, mental health issues and even cancer. A tinnitus sufferer on Facebook posted that after months of severe anxiety over his tinnitus—how did this start and what am I going to do—he realized that the anxiety was far worse than the actual tinnitus. When he dealt with his anxiety, he was able to live more calmly with his condition.
Understanding the role that stress reduction plays in tinnitus management may make us more aware of our tinnitus triggers. Because I suffer from severe reactive, somatosensory tinnitus and constant hyperacusis, I tend to avoid loud noise and I aim for seven hours nightly sleep. I need to drink lots of water (two litres a day, seriously) and daily aerobic exercise (three to five-kilometre hike, seriously) because that often lowers my tinnitus level the next day, at least for a while.
And a daily must – deep intentional breathing and meditation. I’ve just started using the physiological sigh in my daily ‘breathwork’. This is a pattern of breathing discovered by Stanford physiologists in the 1930s, and recently popularized by neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, that helps reset the nervous system and reduce stress. Through the nose, take a double-breath – a deep breath followed by a quick top-up breath – then exhale through the mouth, long and slow. Try this for five minutes daily.
Living with tinnitus is a journey, one we’d rather not be on. But let’s reframe our goals, making self-care and stress reduction our top priorities. These are things we can control. As a start, here’s a meditative prayer/meditation that you can address to yourself, the universe or to God. Change it up to make it more ‘you’. Before startign, take a few physiological sighs.
May I be calm. I will not fear my tinnitus.
It is present in me. It is part of me. It does not rule me.
I will care for myself, nourish my mind and body through exercise, sleep, healthy food and connecting with those I care for and who care for me. These are the important things.
Let me be open to life, even though some experiences may ignite my tinnitus, while others will not.
I’m grateful for those who support me, help me and love me. Let me show my gratitude.
May I be calm and without fear. I have tinnitus but it does not rule me.
Mindfulness, meditation and deep breathing are not cures; they are helpful tools. See this podcast with Shari Eberts and meditation teacher Janaki Zaremba on Making Guided Meditation More Accessible for People with Hearing Loss.
On September 14, Janaki is offering, at no charge, a calming, live guided meditation session with live captioning, specially designed for anyone living with hearing loss. Access the registration link here.
