Tinnitus and trauma

I rarely mention it to anyone–I only told my kids in the past few years–but I have had tinnitus for many years, often in both ears.  It’s not something I worry about, or spend more than a few moments contemplating in an average day, but I made a decision a while back to incorporate some POSSIBLE solution into my daily routine some years ago.  I’ll take some pill most people say doesn’t work for a few months, and it doesn’t work.  Currently, I am taking the pharmaceutical grade Gingko Biloba.  I may stick with it since it seems to have other good properties too.

But I also recently picked up an interesting pamphlet, https://www.amazon.com/Tinnitus-Tyrant-Friend-Ringing-your/dp/1515102440/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1512918907&sr=8-2&keywords=tinnitus+books .

In it, he describes curing himself of tinnitus by treating it as a outcome of nervous system dysregulation, specifically chronic “alarm bells”, chronic activation of the fight or flight response.  As such, there is a clear and fundamental homology between tinnitus, in this description, and PTSD generally, and I am reading the book as such.

One point he makes often and clearly is that most “tinnitus people” (he describes a type, with many of the typical characteristics applying to me) rarely take time for self care, for finding things that genuinely make them happy, make them feel warm, make they feel relaxed.  I certainly have long had trouble with this.  I am good at making lists, doing half of them–although often many of the hardest things on it–then collapsing emotionally and getting drunk.  That I have long experience with.

In his telling, and I think he makes a good argument, tinnitus is then a barometer of the state of internal hyperarousal.  It is a thermometer for inner systemic tension.  Curing tinnitus is then nearly the same–perhaps exactly the same–as curing PTSD.

I am going to try and be kinder to myself.  I am certainly long practiced in being cruel.  I am going to try and find things that do make me deeply happy.  Nothing is coming to mind at this moment, but starting to look is a first step.  This is the beginning of a move from mere survival to living.