Anxiety's Relationship With Tinnitus

The top three complaints with people with bothersome tinnitus are anxiety, depression, and sleep difficulty.

Now, concentration problems is a close fourth, but in my experience, I believe that anxiety, depression, and sleep difficulty can certainly cause concentration problems.

And so the real focus of my work when I'm working with patients, and the real focus that should be with the patient themselves, is looking very closely at anxiety, depression, and sleep difficulty.

Now, one thing that I think often gets overlooked in finding ways to manage tinnitus and, you know, shift it from bothersome to non-bothersome is what I think is the primary culprit of tinnitus, and that is anxiety.

Okay?

Now, anxiety can be something that people have dealt with their entire lives.

In fact, it could go back generations.

You know, anxiety is actually a very healthy emotion to have, but too much anxiety can keep us locked and loaded and trapped.

And so the person with bothersome tinnitus comes to me with excess anxiety.

And they—some have found ways to manage it over their lifetimes, but for whatever reason, perhaps it's an introduction of stress or, obviously, the introduction of tinnitus has made their anxiety spike again.

And so why I think that anxiety is the one to really focus on with a person with bothersome tinnitus is that a person who is anxious for a really, really long time, it can be very depressing.

And certainly anxiety and depression can create sleep difficulty, which can increase stress and, you know, the confusion in the brain and the misunderstanding of tinnitus.

And so when I'm working with patients, I'm primarily looking at anxiety.

So, again, tinnitus being right here is the benign body sensation that people come into my practice with.

And yes, that is what brings them in to see me.

But what they don't realize is that what's really below tinnitus, or the fuel that is keeping tinnitus alive and locked and loaded in the mind's eye, is a picture of anxiety.

And so while, again, patients come to see me because of tinnitus, it's really—we don't want to get too locked and loaded on tinnitus.

That is a benign body sensation.

But if we start to look under the hood, or look at the fuel that's keeping tinnitus bothersome and alive, we start to look at anxiety and ways of managing anxiety that then create a situation where tinnitus is shifted from bothersome to non-bothersome.

And the person is now finding ways to manage anxiety that will help them in any number of ways in their lives.

And so, again, we have to start looking at anxiety with people with bothersome tinnitus.

And in other videos, I'm going to talk about ways of managing that anxiety that I've found to be very, very helpful in shifting people from the bothersome to the non-bothersome area of tinnitus, and also living their life with less suffering when anxiety is managed.