Possible psychology behind tinnitus

What is tinnitus?

Tinnitus is a noise or a ringing sound in your ears. You might often hear a high-pitched tone and it may even feel as if you are going to go crazy. It’s a constant ringing that just won’t stop. Tinnitus will come and go, but it may become worse when your stress levels are increasing. 

You might have seen many doctors and specialists, and they tell you that nothing can be done since some of the cilia in your ears have collapsed. There is no medical cure for tinnitus.

There is much controversy going on about the cause of tinnitus.  However, the question remains – is the cause of tinnitus physical or perhaps psychological?

Is there perhaps a psychological connection?

The very exciting field in the world of hypnosis is the field of Psycho Neuro Immunology (PNI). The core principle of PNI is that any physical challenge may have a psychological origin and if the psychological causes behind the physical challenges can be detected, it may be possible to heal the challenge on a psychological level.

I am by no means trying to say that there is no place for medical sciences. On the contrary, medical sciences are much older than psychology and so much more advanced and I will always recommend the medical route as far as possible. You may with the assistance of medical care, consider some alternatives.

Keep in mind that you have a subconscious and conscious mind. The conscious part of your brain is logical, rational and understands reason and symbolism. However, the conscious mind does not understand emotions and feelings.

The subconscious mind on the other hand has the focus on survival as its primary function.

Analogue thinking

Analogue thinking means that a symbolical meaning of a word becomes literal to the subconscious mind, and it represents itself at a physical level.

Analogue thinking means that our subconscious mind is substituting some abstract thinking into something concrete.

Consider the following:

• a person breaking out in a rash, may be itching to break through limits and transcend them;
• some people who feel they cannot stand up straight, may have back problems;
• if you can’t get rid of the proverbial shit in your life, you may develop problems with constipation.

For more information on Analogue Thinking, you might visit my website, www.jorganharris.co.za and click on: The power of your mind for a more comprehensive case study and explanation of Analogue Thinking.

Tinnitus and Analogue Thinking

According to Analogue Thinking, tinnitus might prevent you from hearing something that you do not want to hear. I wonder if you’ve had the same experience I did as a child, which many of us might recall from our own childhoods. We:

• got into a quarrel;
• did not want to hear our sibling’s argument;
• covered our ears with our hands not to hear their voice;
• started chanting, singing or talking loudly in order not to hear their argument or opinion.

What is it that you don’t want to hear?

Three case studies

• Megan* is a teacher. Her class is disorganised and noisy. She finds it difficult to maintain discipline and as a result could not control or tolerate the noise in her class and started to become anxious. She shouted at her class in desperation. Consequently, a child attacked her with a knife and she was slightly wounded. Megan was traumatised and developed tinnitus.

• Britney* is a mother of a boy who was being bullied at school by another child. She was also concerned that he was not doing well at school and feared that he would fail. One day she became so upset and felt a fluttering (anxiety attack) while she was busy showering. She started screaming and crying and her voice was echoing throughout the bathroom. She began experiencing a noise in her ears the next day as her anxiety worsened. She had an onset of tinnitus shortly after that.

• Mary* also developed tinnitus following her mother’s death a year earlier. Just before her passing, Mary’s mother urgently contacted her at work, breathless and desperate for help.  Mary, due to her work circumstances, couldn’t go to her mother at that moment.

Later on, Mary called the hospital to learn that her mother had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). After a while the hospital phoned her and informed her of her mother’s passing. Mary couldn’t reach her mother in time.

Faced with the hospital’s message she didn’t want to hear, Mary’s subconscious tried to block it all, resulting in tinnitus that prevented her from hearing bad news.

The similarities between these three case studies

During all the mentioned three cases, they:

• heard something that caused them great stress;
• heard bad news, which caused a feeling of powerlessness.
• experienced anxiety and their tinnitus got worse as their anxiety and stress levels increased;
• made efforts to push the bad news out of their mind and out of their memories.

It’s almost as if the subconscious mind is trying to replace traumatic messages with a noise so that these words won’t be able to ruminate in their mind.  Just like we did as children by making a noise or chanting, claiming to not hear the other one. People with tinnitus may unconsciously do the same in order to prevent hearing the intense negative messages coming from trauma. Tinnitus also forces you to shift your attention to your own inner voice to pay attention to what you really feel and to what is happening in your life, rather than what other people expect of you.

After treatment, tinnitus in all three cases had drastically decreased or even disappeared. Treatment with hypnosis included the following:

• desensitisation of the negative messages that they heard, helping them to find peace with what has happened;
• anxiety was being addressed;
• a sense of helplessness is addressed, converted into a sense of empowerment;
• a creation of a connectedness with their own inner voice and to get in touch with their feelings and to reframe these messages (to see it in a different light).

Milton Erickson’s observation

Milton Erickson is widely seen to be the father of modern hypnosis.  Even after Sigmund Freud rejected hypnosis, Erickson managed to revive hypnosis.

It is still unbelievable to realise how powerful your subconscious can be.  Just as your subconscious can create challenges, it can also help you overcome them.  Everyone has the ability to change, adapt, and overcome difficulties. 

Erickson utilised this principle brilliantly. As an inquisitive student, he came across a factory where boilers were being manufactured.  One morning, on his way to campus he decided to go inside the factory. Once inside, he realised that the noise of pneumatic hammering was deafening. He could not hear a word that the employees inside the building were saying to each other. Yet, it appeared to him that the employees were able to talk and could hear each other.

Trying to understand this phenomenon, he asked the factory manager if he could sleep inside the factory that night. The surprised manager gave him permission, and Erickson spent the night sleeping in the factory amidst the noise. He got used to the noise and managed to fall asleep.

To his surprise when he woke up the next morning, he was able to hear every word the employees said to each other. At that moment he realised that if you are able to relax into the noise and the negative messages you receive from them, is when you are able to ignore the noise and start to focus on what your silent inner voice is really trying to tell you.

When you listen past the noise is where the noise is going to stop and your tinnitus can start healing. 

* Not their real names