Stage One - How to Approach Tinnitus

The first stage in Taming Tinnitus™ is to know how to approach it. What is it? Is it anything to be concerned about? What causes it?

A better understanding of Tinnitus will ensure that your brain has the information it needs to correctly categorise the Tinnitus and therefore know how to react to it.

The Brain's Map

1. The brain has an internal map that it uses to make quick decisions and to check if anything has changed from how it expects things to be. This applies to all parts of our body and perception, including our hearing.
2. It compares this map to what’s actually happening in the “real world” (i.e. the “terrain”).
3. Any change in our hearing – or in any of the areas of our body, or pathways up to the brain, or parts of the brain that connects in some way with our hearing – creates a mismatch between what brain’s has on its map and the actual terrain. The areas of the map most likely to change in some way include:
   1. Our hearing (including differences between the ears)
   2. Our head & neck
   3. Our face & jaw
   4. Our emotions
   5. Our eyes
4. The brain needs to either:
   1. Correct this mismatch (by updating its internal map or by changing the terrain)
   2. Or else try to interpret the mismatch in a meaningful way.
5. When it tries to interpret the mismatch, the result is often tinnitus.

Stage Two - How to React to Tinnitus

How we react to tinnitus is very important if we want to tame it.

For example, if we begin to worry about tinnitus (usually because we don’t understand what it is), the brain flags it as a potential threat to us until it has satisfied itself that it is “a normal reaction to change”.

This means it gives it far more attention than it deserves, and we may even find our body goes onto “high alert” (the “freeze, flight or fight” mechanism). When it is flagged in this part of the brain, the tinnitus becomes very susceptible to fluctuations in anxiety and stress.

So in order to tame tinnitus, the first step is to ask:

1. Do we need to change the terrain?
2. Or update the map?

Sometimes we can’t change the terrain. That’s when we need to allow the brain to update its internal map.

Stage Three – Taming the Tinnitus

We update the brain’s internal map through the following four steps. Please note that steps 1 and 2 are often together in the initial stages.

• Reduce the anxiety (if present)
• Reduce the annoyance (if present)
• Reduce the attention
• Reduce the awareness

1. Reducing Anxiety

If you know something helps you relax, use this to reduce any anxiety. Anxiety is like a rough sea: the landscape is always changing and the tinnitus bobs up and down on it.

Our full Taming Tinnitus™ programme includes tailored advice and strategies to help you reduce any anxiety that might be getting in the way of you taming the Tinnitus.

2. Reducing the Annoyance

See your tinnitus as something you are experiencing, rather than something that’s part of you – you almost need to be an "outside observer" looking on the Tinnitus with curiousity.

Our full Taming Tinnitus™ programme includes tailored advice and strategies to help you reduce any annoyance that might be getting in the way of you taming the Tinnitus.

3. Reduce the Attention

The more attention we give something, the more significant it appears (the brain actually puts it more clearly into its map – see above).

In the first instance you can use distraction – such as having other sounds on in the house, or an off-tune radio at night time with under pillow speaker – to reduce your attention of it. But ultimately you need to learn how to direct your brain's attention, and this is something we teach more during the Taming Tinnitus™ programme.

4. Reduce the Awareness

Gradually, the gaps between when you’re aware of the tinnitus and when you’re not aware of the tinnitus will increase. When you’ve not been aware of the tinnitus, don’t think of it as “hiding”. If you’re not aware of it, it’s really not there - because Tinnitus is the perception of a sound, not an uderlying "thing".

You might always come across the Tinnitus… if you look for it!

But you’ll find it less and less noticeable as you learn to tame it, until eventually you’ll realise that you haven’t really heard it for sometime… then it may “say hello” again because you looked at it!

But at least now, you’ll have trained the Tinnitus to react to you, rather than the other way round.

For more information about Taming Tinnitus™ please contact us on 01392 436714 or use the contact form.