Recovering from Tinnitus:

76% of individuals using Xanax gained relief by more than 40% volume reduction in their tinnitus. It would take 8-12 weeks for the drug to make an impact.(1)

...76% is most people...but I was not comfortable with the odds. Never having been a lucky person, I figured myself as part of the 24% with no change. I started the prescription and felt groggy. The next step was to take some time off of work and go to the library. The inter-library loan librarian was inundated with my request for hundreds of articles, journals, books, periodicals, that I was finding may contain information. We found phone numbers of the few specialists in the United States and I called them. A few treatments were having success. Most were not. Those treatments that were having success looked unpleasant.

60% of individuals who use Seldane experience some reduction in the volume of their tinnitus.(2)

The study wasn't all that well done, as far as I understood it, at that time, but I decided to talk to the doctor. He agreed it was worth attempting. 30 day trial prescription. Still taking the Xanax with no effect....

We take 10 days off and drive to Cape Cod from our Minnesota home. We love Cape Cod and some of our best experiences in life have been there. Knowing from my hypnosis education how important the environment is to you on a psychological basis, off we go....to Cape Cod and still ringing in the high 70's. It was on this trip, as I sat by one of my favorite spots, alone, attempting to meditate and pray, that I first seriously decided that life wasn't worth participating in for me. I was seemingly useless to my wife and daughter. I felt as if the world now revolved around my noise. Everything was out of perspective. Over 30 days into the Xanax and 10 into the Seldane. All I felt was tired and depressed.

My wife talked me out of suicide, thank God. The depression and chronic fatigue continued. We were now home and money was running thin. Time to go back to work. Ironically, I continued to help individuals with chronic illness improve their conditions, but I was getting nowhere.

Pamelor; Stress, Anxiety, Depression and Panic Attacks

A simple math equation reminded me that between the three medications listed above, my chances were over 95% that at least one would be helpful!

Pamelor also seemed to be a logical choice as I had been experiencing a great deal of stress, anxiety and depression for sometime, before the onset of tinnitus. The tinnitus simply made everything worse. The research I had been reading at that time clearly indicated that I was not alone. In fact, most people with tinnitus, experienced,

....stress (4), panic disorder (5), anxiety (6), depression (7) and/or emotional problems (8) before the onset of their tinnitus. (SPADE)

The encouraging news for me was that tinnitus wasn't simply an "ear phenomenon." There was a reasonable correlation between emotional distress, which is very treatable and tinnitus which according to most professionals, was not. In fact, the relationship between what is called subjective tinnitus and (S.P.A.D.E.) was the norm for most clients I would later work with. Another interesting paper I came across noted that once an individual had tinnitus, he became far more likely to acquire other somatics (pains and illnesses) than someone without tinnitus.(9)

This was the first link that I made that hypnosis actually may be a useful treatment for tinnitus. Many of my clients whose illnesses and pains seem to expand into more somatics, were generally excellent candidates for elimination of chronic illness via hypnotherapy. I began to investigate....but my tinnitus was still in the 70+ dB range and the hyperacusis I experienced was becoming more frustrating to deal with every day.

Then sometime in October, the Pamelor was prescribed by my doctor. The tinnitus immediately skyrocketed back into the 80's and it moved around my head. It was very scary. I called the doctor and asked to be taken off and he explained to me the neurological impact of Pamelor in the brain and its likelihood to decrease the volume. I agreed to continue but I was scared. Then a few weeks into the new prescription, the Pamelor completely eliminated my tinnitus. It kicked in with the Xanax and the tinnitus was almost completely gone. The Pamelor days would be short though as the side effects mounted. Dry mouth, fatigue, very high blood pressure. The doctor said we couldn't continue with the Pamelor. I protested of course. I didn't care about the side effects, compared to the benefits I was receiving from the medication. Silence was wonderful, even at the price I was paying fo r it. No matter, Thanksgiving came and the Pamelor went. Zoloft, a substitute was prescribed in its stead. The tinnitus returned, into the 60's range most days. The side effects were gone, but the noise had returned.

Hypnotherapy works?

Occasionally on a bad day during this habituation process, I took a temazepam for sleep, but that was the exception and not the rule. The hypnotherapeutic tapes and self hypnosis that I practice succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I habituated the tinnitus. It was one year later. The sound was in the 40's and 50's on many days, but it rarely mattered. By 1994 years end, the tinnitus began to permanently habituate. During all of 1995 and 1996, the tinnitus would return home and remind me that it still new where I was but the noise never bothered me again. Occasionally noise would come above threshold, maybe 20dB. I decided to come off the Xanax first and then the Zoloft. Except for a few very annoying days of letting the body re-adjust itself to being medication-free, the process was a complete success. The tinnitus did not increase after eliminating the medications. I was, in effect, cured.

During 1995, my work with clients from all over the country was in full stride. The phone calls, faxes and e-mails never stopped, and don't to this day....and now the research that has been released in these last two years has validated my earlier speculations about tinnitus. In fact the important papers released in 1995 and 1996 are among the most important ever. They essentially prove that hypnosis and other cognitive therapies like biofeedback are the most likely road to success for most individuals with tinnitus. (The caveat being that hypnotherapy and biofeedback are practitioner dependent for success, and that drugs are not. You MUST have a qualified hypnotherapist and not someone who has little or no understanding of tinnitus.)

Staying Current for my Clients

What I learned in 1995 was that tinnitus in many clients is a recursive loop of memory, or put another way, is enmeshed into their memory and conscious awareness. This may indicate that hypnosis may indeed be able to block the tinnitus below the cortical level and from awareness, and at worst we could teach the client to create new perceptions that would allow the conscious mind to be filled with other stimuli and not the tinnitus. The theory and experience was validated when I read an unrelated study by Dr. Abraham Shulman which discusses where tinnitus is located in the brain. I merged his work with SPECT analysis(15), and my experience with hypnotherapy into a successful therapeutic regimen, and, it has indeed proven excellent results.

I also discovered that a biofeedback study (which is simple relaxation and manipulation of visualized images to reduce stress) again proved that most people can control their emotional response to tinnitus with proper practitioner guidance. Biofeedback became popularized over 25 years ago when it was deemed useful to measure the client response to altered states of consciousness. It was discovered that most people can reduce their stress level through electronic monitoring. Biofeedback is generally considered to be a useful sub-field of hypnotherapy and it is always encouraging to see positive results for tinnitus sufferers that are taught biofeedback mo nitored relaxation techniques.(16)

This is just the tip of the recent tinnitus research iceberg. In the next issue of Hearing Health, we will specifically discuss what the profoundly deaf can do for their tinnitus reduction, and, we will insert self hypnosis instructions specifically designed for the hard of hearing with tinnitus.

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