Answer
I know I say this a lot, but I’ll say it again: this is a good question. My short answer is: yes, this might be TMS.
For a more in-depth answer, however, I want to talk a bit about the origins of pain management versus the TMS approach to treating pain/chronic conditions (which is the direction that all pain management is going).
In traditional pain management, accommodations are often made to help lessen and ease the experience of pain. For example, traditional pain management can often times encourage the use of cushions to accommodate certain back pains, specific shoes for foot pain, or medications to ease various discomforts.
These are all fine options, but from a neuroscience perspective, you’re only habituating your brain to pay a lot of attention to your discomfort. For example, if I use a cushion to help ease my back pain, in the short term it will help my back feel better, but in the long term it will train my brain to not only be very cautious and careful when I don’t have my cushion with me, but also be more fearful for my back than it otherwise would be. On the contrary, if we wean ourselves off of the cushion, our brain will not focus quite as much on our back and we will eventually learn that we don’t need to be quite as cautious and careful.
At that point, your brain stops caring so much about what is going on. We learn to not care about the pain as much, and then the pain goes away. TMS achievement unlocked. J
Now, for pain/discomfort issues that are not necessarily TMS (Tinnitus, in your case - though Tinnitus is often TMS), practitioners used to think that a more traditional pain management approach would be helpful, but quite honestly that’s just not true. Training your brain to not care as much about the ringing in your ears is hugely important.
I’ve worked with many patients with Tinnitus, and most have seen great reductions in intensity, and many have seen it eliminated. An important key with all of them was to learn how to not react to the symptoms. This was true with even the patients who weren’t positive of whether or not their tinnitus was TMS.
So, regardless of whether your tinnitus is because of a neurological disorder or TMS (and it sounds like TMS to me), I want you to work with your brain and learn to care just a little bit less about it.
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