Unlinking Sound From Fear

Ears love to hear. That's what they do for a living.

Okay, I've learned that ears are the first sense to perk up in our mother's womb, and it's the last sense for us to go when we take our last breath and die. And so, in between that period, from the moment our ears perk up in utero to the last moment of our lives, the ears are always working. The ears never shut off.

Even when we're not aware of it, we could be sleeping and not aware of what we're hearing, but believe me, your ears are working.

Okay, so that's my way of saying that, you know, ears are designed to hear, and they love to hear. In fact, in the absence of sound, they create sound, which, you know, in previous videos we talked about how that really is the problem with tinnitus: the brain is searching for a sound that it's no longer receiving.

And so sound is healthy. Sound is wonderful. Sound is just—it's one of the most important senses that we have. All are important, but it's also our way of taking in information from the external world so that we can process what's happening around us.

So ears love to hear, and so I say to people, "Let your ears hear."

Now, there is a problem that some patients come into my practice with, and it's—they come in with what is termed as hyperacusis. Okay? And I've learned that, for people with bothersome tinnitus, 60% of people with bothersome tinnitus complain also of hyperacusis.

And this is when, essentially, it's when everyday sounds feel too loud.

Okay, and so let's talk a little bit about why that would be.

Somebody with tinnitus, you know, all of a sudden they become incredibly focused on their ears—or, excuse me, on their brain, in a sense, because tinnitus actually isn't in the ears; it's in the brain. But they get very, very hyperfocused on the—on listening and hearing, on our hearing mechanism.

And they're running scared.

People with bothersome tinnitus are really scared. They oftentimes don't even know what tinnitus is. They don't know what causes it. And when we are in a scenario like that, you know, we get very tense around it, and damned if we're going to get ourselves into a situation that makes it worse.

And so oftentimes, people erroneously connect sound with making tinnitus more bothersome, or, excuse me, making tinnitus worse.

And now, that can feel like what's happening, but ears love to hear. That's what they do for a living. And you could argue that the absence of sound is what's creating this bothersome body sensation to begin with.

And so what ends up happening is we become very, very astute and very, very sensitive to our sound environment. And what erroneously happens, and what unfortunately happens, is that we start to be afraid of sound.

And what happens when we become afraid of sound is we tense around it. And so then we have a scenario where people are hyperfocusing on decibels, and they're hyperfocusing on the frequencies around them and the sounds around them.

And, you know, noises that they used to be able to even enjoy can become overwhelming and even sometimes feel painful. And so that is what we call hyperacusis.

And now, again, we have a situation here where the brain has connected—erroneously, in error—the brain has connected sound with fear. And that's a shame because that is a connection that never needed to be.

Remember, you know, ears love to hear. That's what they do for a living. I mean, you know, how can they be afraid of sound?

But after somebody goes through the trauma of experiencing tinnitus for the first time—for many people, it's traumatic—they will then do everything in their ability to protect their ears.

And with that comes a tensing around our sound environment and, you know, even a tightening of our focus on sound, which can be overdone and create the sensation of even pain in people for really everyday sounds.

And so it's hard because, again, our subconscious brain has thought it was doing us a favor by keeping us safe, when in fact what it has done is it has erroneously connected fear with sound.

And so, much like we do with tinnitus, we're trying to unlink tinnitus from fear, and with that, we also want to unlink tinnitus from sound.

And we do that by feeling less anxious about sound, but becoming educated about sound and really fully understanding that ears love to hear. That's what they do for a living.

In fact, in the absence of sound, the brain freaks out and searches for a sound, right? That's what we know causes tinnitus.

So give your ears something to hear. Don't be afraid of these sounds.

Now, it's much more easily said than done. This process of unlinking fear from tinnitus and unlinking fear from sound in general, which is the source of hyperacusis, can be a very difficult, difficult process, but a necessary one.

And we can do that by reducing anxiety, by becoming an expert in what tinnitus is, what sound is, and how healthy it is for the brain; misappraising or reappraising these myths about tinnitus that go out there; and, importantly, reducing stress in our lives.

Oftentimes, by using a mindfulness meditation program or, you know, at kind of more of an extreme, maybe even using medications to help reduce the stress so that you can start to reappraise tinnitus accurately.

So by doing that, we, over time, and by using non-inflammatory language around sound and really finding ways to relax and take in sound as it's meant to be taken in—as something that is wonderful—that is the way in which we, over time, are able to unlink tinnitus from fear.

And we can do that by coaching ourselves, by using language. I've spoken about languaging before regarding tinnitus, and the same applies for hyperacusis.

When you're hearing a sound, instead of getting tightened around it, or if you do get tightened around it, using your prefrontal cortex, using your knowledge of what sound really means to say, "Oh, wait, wait, wait. There I am getting anxious around sound. I can take a deep breath, and I know that this is really uncomfortable, but I am safe."

And again, you know, you can come up with your own words. I'd like to use the word "paper tiger," or "This is benign," or whatever helps you calm your mind and uses accurate language to reduce the amygdala, to reduce the stress that is keeping tinnitus and hyperacusis and sound linked with fear.

Always remembering that the ears love to hear. In the absence of sound, the brain creates sound.

And so allowing your ears to hear is the real goal here, but without fear and without anxiety, so that the brain can take in what it can otherwise find as pleasant and not have it feel like it's creating intense suffering for you.