Comment by tithe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tithe | Hacker News Reader

I've had a mental visualization I've used to control tinnitus flares for about 20 years now - i.e., "biofeedback".

I image the entire soundscape (what I'm possible of hearing) as a long, thin line which is warbling a bit, as I'm hearing things right now -- like the line in an oscilloscope. The present tinnitus represents itself as a sharp spike in this visualization, the location dependent upon its texture (sharp pings, or a low muffled warble).

I then imagine a giant hand (my hand) on top of that spike, pushing it down, slowly, and as I push it down, the tinnitus subsides (since I know what that subsiding sensation feels like). Sometimes I have to do this pushing motion a few times before the spike slowly attenuates by itself and it joins the surrounding levels.

The entire process takes about 30 seconds, and doesn't work every time. If after a few attempts it fails, I abandon the visualization exercise (lest my brain somehow learns the pushing motion to be ineffective).

It's not entirely clear to me how / why this works: mapping a physical phenomenon onto an abstract mental visualization / picture, and then manipulating that mental picture and thus the physical phenomenon.

I'm also very musical, so these sorts of visualizations tend to come very naturally to me.

I don't have tinnitus, but I do have this thing where when I'm falling asleep, my eyes (despite being closed and in a dark room) will start to feel like they are looking at a brighter and brighter light. This is very irritating for me.

For that I usually open them really briefly and imagine some kind of equilizer level-set thing happening and that makes it dark behind my eyes again. I wonder if there is a way to do it without opening them

These feedback things are interesting, thank you for sharing

This is actually an experience that people that engage in the tantric practices in Vajrayana Buddhism -- of which Tibetan Buddhism belongs to -- cultivate. I've encountered the instructions as part of the dream yoga practices, to cultivate it so that you actually watch yourself fall asleep and enter the dream state completely lucidly. I've only ever been able to "catch" the dream and become lucid when already in the dream. Maybe you're way ahead of the rest of us! [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_body

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga

I was able to do it once with the simple exercise of barely typing my name on an invisible keyboard while keeping the rest of my body completely still, only moving the tips of my fingers maybe a centimeter or two. Something about that repeated motion allowed me to keep some subset conscious as the whole transitioned into sleep. It was a very spooky transition! I descended until I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and whispers all around me, crescendoing to me opening my eyes to the lake in the neighborhood i grew up in. The fidelity of the simulation was very high as well, certainly beat my ability to distinguish! Eventually, as i was flying down the street a giant sand worm emerged from a darkness and closed in on me until i woke up. I could control some things but it felt like the dream telling me it'd had enough.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing that. I've gotten to the point of hearing dream sounds like you described while falling through the sleep stages, but it startled me enough to wake me up! I'll give the slight movement thing a try -- which actually reminded me of how Tesla claimed to curl his toes 100 times per foot before going to sleep [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Work_and_dining_h...

> I don't have tinnitus, but I do have this thing where when I'm falling asleep, my eyes (despite being closed and in a dark room) will start to feel like they are looking at a brighter and brighter light. This is very irritating for me.

Me too, just started happening recently too. Brains are weird.

You may be experiencing this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

I have read a few anecdotal experiences of people allowing these kinds of hallucinations to continue and they have reported that they can become quite vivid and even interactive. Maybe try waving your arms around when this happens to see if it goes away? That should indicate if it's sleep-related or not.

Sure, why not, though I fail to see much difference between that and dreaming

Oh this sounds really interesting, thanks!

Sometimes during my daily meditation practice I use my tinnitus as an object of awareness, like you would with your breath, which, coincidentally, I did this morning. There's so many more frequencies and changes going on when you meditate with it, including tones that definitely only arise when you're practicing with it. I find it helps and I'm definitely going to try it with your visualization.

Interesting, I've done something similar for headaches. I imagine the pain as a sort of toy in a claw machine and then try to extract the pain with the claw. Like you said it doesn't always work but surprised it has ever worked.

From this perspective, techniques such as Reiki are not that surprising, they may be methods of more effectively exploiting this mind-body connection: all of these techniques usually have in common some sort of visualization, and learning to associate certain colors/signs/symbols with desired effects. (Although the fact that it seems to have effects even when the practitioner differs from the recipient means there's probably more to it than just that.)

I let myself focus on pain as just a sensory signal, like pressure or a focused sense of touch.

By completely welcoming the pain signal as information I can often quiet the discomfort component.

I assume that since pain functions by being a signal to avoid, completely reversing the avoidance interferes with its normal function - in a good way. Would love to know how that was actually playing out in my circuits

My tinnitus seems to be worse when my blood pressure is less controlled.

If that isn't just a figment of my imagination, a possible mechanism for your technique is that you are relaxing (or so).

On a similar note, sometimes I feel my tinnitus as much as hearing it - it does feel like a pressure in my ears/head. It doesn't feel like real air pressure so much as the sound is pressing on the insides of my ears. Maybe a blood pressure thing like yours?

Ladies and gentlemen, it works

Crazy right? Even if it’s just suggestion, I’ll add that it worked for me the first time I tried it seconds after reading the post.

I do the same thing though I have a different mental analogy, but it works!

Could you share the visualization that you use?

Holy crap this works! I've the loud high-pitched type all evening and i've just used your method to reduce its volume significantly! Thank you!

It gives me goosebumps that this method works with others. I thought it to be very idiosyncratic...but it seems not? Either way, I'm glad it could help!

Our brains are very weird, but there's a lot of common weirdness. There's a pretty wide range of common 'weird dreams', for example driving from the backseat, mandatory test or you'll be ungraduated from high school where you haven't been in 10+ years, various flying/falling, the tetris effect, etc.

You can also try this trick which works for me

You place the palms of your hands on the sides of your head or over your ears and then drum/tap your fingers on the back of your head. After about 10-15 seconds, it will stop the ringing.

I showed this trick to a guy at work and it was really funny and cool seeing how shocked he was that it worked

Nice move! This reduced the high pitched noise, but I still sense a general overall ambient signal ready to increase.

Holy crap, just tried it and it worked! Thank you! Mine has started to get bad the last year, and especially at night. Driving me CRAZY!

I always thought that this worked by providing a really loud noise that desensitizes you to the ringing. What do you think?

In a way, this is similar to many meditative techniques.

Neat. I "see" a 3D twisting oscillating when actively listening to music and I'm also musically inclined.

I've done something similar to this to control my hay fever since I was a kid.

I ended decades of hayfever crises by breathing in deeply and repeating a mantra that I accept the cosmos. Used to get annual steroid shots since childhood, then tried antihistamines tablets for a few more years, but both had nasty side effects.

That's cool if it works for you. You mention a tinnitus "flare".

I was born with "glue ear" (diagnosed at age ~six I think). That's a lot of rubbish medical nonsense I gather. Anyway, regardless of what is the current "Medifacts" I have tinnitus and it was probably exacerbated by all the instruments that were stuffed in my ears.

I had two lots of "gromits" - tiny tubes stuffed into my eustacean tubes under general ana ... oh for fucks sake, why can't medics and doctors n that speak English. Law courts have dispensed with Latin and Greek, why can't medics?

Tinnitus is generally consistent in my experience - the surrounding environment within my body allows it to flow in and out of my conscious experience depending on what I'm up to.

For me the intrusiveness is generally related to my blood pressure and a few other things.

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