Jorgan Harris
(Clinical Psychologist
Tel: (021) 982-2554 / (021) 981-1781
Tinnitus is a noise or a ringing sound in your ears. This can often ring a high tone for them, that it can feel like you going to get mad. It's a constant ringing in your ears that just would not stop. It comes and goes, but becomes worse when you get tense. You have seen so many doctors and specialists, and they tell you that nothing could be done, because some of the cilia in your ears have collapsed and there is nothing they can do about it. It makes you mad, and sometimes it feels that suicide is the only way to get rid of this noise in your head. It does not matter what you do – nothing helps. The doctors can't help you.
Perhaps there is a psychological answer.
There is a very exciting field in the world of hypnosis - the field of Psycho Neuro Immunology (PNI). The basic principle of PNI is that any physical problem may have a psychological origin, and if the psychological causes behind physical problems can be detected, we may be able to heal it on a psychological level.
This by no means am I trying to say that there is no place for medical sciences. On the contrary, the medical sciences are much older than the psychology and so much more advanced, and I will always recommend the medical path to walk as far as possible. But you can along with medical care, use some alternatives.
Keep the following in mind: you have a subconscious and conscious mind. Your conscious part is logical and rational, and understands arguments and symbolism. When I tell you that you have an ugly nose, you can believe it's actually my problem, and you know it is not true, and that nobody else has told you so. I have probably only meant it symbolically.
The subconscious is a different story. Sometimes I think about the difference between the conscious and the unconscious as an old-fashioned ship. The subconscious is the captain on the deck, and he can view the reality. The subconscious is the men that sit below sea level and rowing. They cannot see the reality, and can only respond to commands from the captain. When the captain shouts that he sees an iceberg, the crew takes it literally, then panic and begin to cut back. The captain may have misjudged it with a layer of mist or have confused it with an iceberg, or he may have just made a joke. But the crew has had to interpret it literally and went into panic.
It now becomes very interesting when you see what messages we give these men below sea level where they can't see the reality. These guys are literally driving our behaviour.
Let your thoughts just go for a moment. It happens so often that someone tells me they cannot stay upright, and then has back problems. Or that they can't go forward, and then they have problems with their feet or knees. Please look at the article I did on my paper in Krakow (Poland) on PNI and Autoimmune Diseases. This woman has suffered from the extremely rare disease, Schleroderma. Schleroderma is a disease where your body produces too much collagen, so everything is blocked. Your skin is thick, there are clogs in your arteries, and even your tear glands and other glands are clogged. These patients cannot cry tears any more, skin is thickened and they eventually die because there is no medical solution for it. I once asked this woman (on a subconscious symbolic way) if she is thick-skinned. After this question she told me her whole history has shown how she had become thick-skinned. Feel free to read the article.
It may be that tinnitus prevents you to want to hear what you do not want to hear. Maybe you did as a child, which my sisters and I certainly did - when we did not want to hear the other's argument, we had our ears pressed or started singing songs or talking out loud to not to hear the other argument's.
So what is it that you do not want to hear?
Consider the following three case studies.
* Megan is a teacher. Her class was disorganized and noisy. She was confined to her discipline, and could not control her class. She could not tolerate the noise in her class. Her turning point came when she could not control the noise, and became anxious. She shouted at her class in desperation. A child has attacked her with a knife and wounded her. Megan subsequently developed tinnitus. After that attack was Megan traumatized and anxious.
* Britney is a mother. Her son is being bullied at school by another child. Furthermore, it was not going well with his school work, and she was very concerned that he would fail. He one day became so upset that Britney had a fluttering in the shower. She started screaming, crying and speaking that echoed throughout the bathroom. When she got herself back, she was sitting on the ground. The next day the screaming in her ears began, and her anxiety was worse than ever.
Mary* has tinnitus. Her mother has died about a year ago and Mary around that time started getting tinnitus. Her mother stayed with her. Since her mother's death she was anxious and struggling to fall asleep, and she had a fear that someone may break into the house. Mary's tinnitus, however, has started before her mother's death. There were three of her most traumatic events. Shortly before her death, her mother Mary's mother phoned in breathlessly, begging her to help her. Mary could not remove these helpless begging memories on the phone from her head. Later, the hospital phoned to say her mother was in intensive care, and shortly thereafter she received a call in which she was told that her mother died.
What are the similarities between these three case studies?
1. In all three cases they heard that something greatly upsetting for them.
2. In all three cases, what they had heard, caused a feeling of powerlessness.
3. Anxiety is in all three cases observed, and the tinnitus was worse when their anxiety increased.
4. In all three cases there were efforts to put out of their minds what they heard.
It's almost as if the subconscious mind is trying to replace traumatic messages by a noise so that these words can't continue to ruminate, as we did as children – to make a noise claiming to not hear the other one. Tinnitus sufferers do unconsciously the same to prevent hearing these intense negative messages. Tinnitus also forces you to shift your attention to your own inner voice, and to pay attention to what you really feel and in your life.
After treatment, the tinnitus in all three cases had drastically decreased or even disappeared. Treatment with hypnosis includes the following:
1. Attempts are made to desensitise these negative messages heard - to help the person to find peace with what happened.
2. The person's anxiety is addressed.
3. We work with the person's sense of helplessness, and to change it into a sense of empowerment.
4. The person gets helped to hear his or her inner voice and to get in touch with their feelings, and to reframe these messages (to understand it differently).
It is still amazing to realize how powerful your subconscious is. Just as your subconscious can cause problems, so your subconscious can help you to overcome it. Everybody is changeable and adjustable. The father of modern hypnosis, Milton Erickson, has spotted this principle beautiful. He, as an inquisitive student passed one day a factory where boilers were manufactured. And the day he enters the factory, the noise was deafening. He could not hear a word that people say. Yet, the people who work there, talk to each other and hear each other. He could not understand that. He went and spoke to the manager of the factory and he asked if he could sleep the night in the factory. The surprised manager gave permission and Erickson that night slept in the noise. The next morning when the workers returned to work, he could hear every word they say.
That's when you relax into the noise when you're going to hear what other people and your inner voice really say to you. When you pass beyond the noise, is where the noise will stop.
* Not their real names