A BLINKING GOOD IDEA

I was at home in my study when my accountant called for a meeting that I could not avoid. While we were chatting over a cup tea he suddenly asked 'Doesn't that clock ever get on your nerves?'.

I looked up at the clock somewhat puzzled and said 'No, why'?

'That constant tick tock would drive me mad' he said putting his hands over his ears 'If it were mine I'd throw it out of the window'. [I imagine that there are people about today that have never heard a ticking clock. Digital technology killed them off but believe me some of them were very loud.]

We had had that clock for years and throughout that time I had never been aware of it other than to look at the time. My accountant was quite right; it did have a very loud tick tock. Whenever I walked in the room after that I was aware of it and I must say it did begin to get on my nerves. I mentioned it to members of my family and their reactions were the same- they had never really noticed it.

Although it did not seem important at the time, it did make me think. I began to wonder how it could be possible for me to spend countless hours in that room and be totally oblivious of that loud noise. Those thoughts led me to a remarkable discovery.

Before I take you any further on this journey I would like you to do something for me. It is perfectly simple and it is not a lot to ask but it is very important.

For the next couple of minutes make yourself aware of blinking. Blink normally but be aware of it. Just concentrate on it for a little while. Maybe count how often you blink, say every thirty seconds. I just want you to really feel it each time.

Without letting them know or making it obvious, watch someone else blink. Watch as those little shutters go down and up time after time. If there are more people around look from one to another and watch how often they blink. They are constantly doing this [more than ten thousand times a day] without ever being aware of it. They are not even aware of the fact that every time those little shutters come down, for a fraction of a second, the light is blocked out.

Until I mentioned it you were not aware of it. It is something you have been doing since the day you were born and I doubt if you have ever thought about it. That is how it should be of course because if we were constantly aware of it we would find it very uncomfortable.

It is much the same with breathing. We breathe in and out without ever really noticing. If we were constantly aware of it we would find it extremely tiring. Our brains have the amazing ability to block out such vitally important functions from our conscious minds.

I have often wondered if, when we were born, blinking was not a normal part of our makeup and we suddenly started to blink what we would do. Would someone form The British Blinking Association? Would we form self-help groups and invent little gadgets to prevent our eyelids from going down and up?

I was told a very relevant and true story about a twelve-year-old girl. When she arrived home from school one day she was surprised to find her father there as he always worked late. He was very distressed and had obviously been crying. Her first thoughts were that something bad may have happened to her mother or that he had lost his job. He was distraught because he had suddenly developed a very loud noise in his ears and the doctor had told him that it was incurable. She asked him 'What kind of noise?'.

He told her that it was like a very loud hissing noise. His daughter looked puzzled and made a loud hissing noise herself and asked if that was what he meant. It was exactly like that. She was puzzled because she had the same noise in her ears. It had been there since the day she was born. She was never aware of it and assumed that everyone had it. Her brain had blanked it out to the point that it was no more apparent than her breathing and blinking.

In the normal course of our lives we take our bodies for granted. Without us ever being conscious of it they perform the most amazing tasks. Our brains are much smaller than a football and yet they are millions of times more powerful than even the most sophisticated computer. This includes everyone irrespective of academic qualifications or whether or not they can read or write.

These facts may not be of interest to most people but to those of us with trinnitus they are of vital importance. To rid ourselves of that noise it is necessary for us to have absolute faith in the ability of our brain to help us. How do we acquire such faith?

Consider what it takes to enable us to do something as simple as walk. For us to take one step our brain has to issue thousands of commands. A leg must lift, our ankle must flex and our knee must bend and stretch forward and back down. The length of stride and speed has to be calculated – these and thousands of other commands are given and performed simultaneously and in the correct sequence faster than the speed of light. We may then decide to walk faster or slower or to run. At the same time we can answer a mobile phone and talk or think about where we are going and what we are going to do when we get there. Although we decide exactly what we want to do, we never have to consciously think about it. Our brain instinctively knows what to do. All of this happens at a sub conscious level. I am well aware that you already know this but I want you to be aware of it. You know that you blink but you are unaware of it.

Our sub conscious and conscious minds are able to perform a multitude of different tasks at the same time. Only our sub conscious mind has the ability to block out tinnitus. There can be no doubt that your brain has the ability to arrange this. The 12-year-old girl mentioned earlier goes a long way towards proving that. Relative to the millions of complex functions being performed every second by our brains, blocking out tinnitus is an incredibly simple task.

Knowing that the young girls brain blocked out her tinnitus you are probably wondering why your brain has not already done the same for you.

The difference is that she was born with it. It was there before she learned to think. To her it was as normal as blinking and breathing. It was never on her conscious mind.

Your tinnitus is a new development. It is not normal and because it bothers you it is constantly on your conscious mind. It becomes a vicious circle – while it is on your conscious mind you cannot become unaware of it.

The question now is what to do about it.

It is absolutely essential that you understand and accept that tinnitus is just a noise; nothing more, nothing less. It is not dangerous and it cannot harm you – unless you allow it to.

Do not do what I did.

From the very beginning I was dealing with everything at a conscious level. At first I hoped the noise would go away on its own. Next I relied on the pills prescribed by my doctor. Then it was a visit to my consultant and then waiting for an operation. I was constantly waiting for something to happen. I seldom thought of anything else and lived from one disappointment to the next. My entire life was spent trying to find a solution. I was totally self-centered. Everything was about me. I never really considered how my behavior was causing distress to my family.

I had blown the problem out of all proportion and I was doing the opposite to what I should have done. I was so self-centered that I kept tinnitus at the forefront of my mind instead of treating it for what it is – a harmless boring noise. Had I allowed myself to get on with my life and do the things that interest me instead of avoiding them, my conscious mind would have had better things to think about and given my brain a chance to blank out the noise.

Your brain is capable of doing this. If you are still in any doubt let me acquaint you with a few more facts to illustrate the incredible power that you have within you. They were extracted from the ‘New Optimum Nutrition Bible’ written by Patrick Holford – one of the world’s leading authorities on new approaches to health and nutrition.

‘Your body consists of around 30 trillion cells, most of which are repaired and replaced every year.

Before you were born you created neurons, the brain cells that communicate with each other at the rate of 15 million per hour.

When you first emerged into the world, your 100 billion neurons were primed to organize themselves in response to your new environment.

Your mind and body is interconnected and designed to adapt. Throughout your life your neural networks reorganise themselves in response to new stimuli and learning experiences. This body/mind interaction is what stimulates brain cells to grow and connect with each other in complex ways. They achieve this by extending branches of intricate nerve fibres. These are the antennas through which neurons receive communication from each other. A healthy neuron can be linked to tens of thousands of other neurons creating more than a hundred trillion connections each capable of performing more than 200 calculations per second.

Your mind is so fine that even in this advanced digital age it would take a computer the size of England to match its ability’.

In the scheme of things for your mind to blank out tinnitus is a very minor task.

It is important for you to get on with your life. From now on do things that you enjoy. Never complain or even talk about tinnitus. Let your friends and loved ones assume that you are cured, and never do anything to make them think otherwise. It will make them feel a whole lot better and it will do you no harm. But do it with conviction and not in a halfhearted manor, which makes people think that you are just saying it for their benefit. You are not doing it to become a martyr. Do it with conviction and it will lead you towards a wonderful new beginning.

Never do anything with the sole purpose of taking your mind off your tinnitus. If you do, you will keep checking to see if whatever you are doing is working, and that will be counter productive. Do things because you want to do them. Watch TV, listen to the radio, read a book, meet and talk with other people, go for walks. Do anything and everything that you enjoy. Allow the noise to be there. It will only bother you if you let it.

The more you do to occupy your conscious mind the easier it will become. Right now could be the start of your new life. You can set foot onto a new path and you now have a more positive purpose. You have that noise in your ears but you now know that it is not important. As your journey progresses you will become less conscious of it because there are so many wonderful and enjoyable experiences to discover. For a while the sound will continue to remind you that it is still there. Do not object to it or feel disappointed. Even listen to it for a while. It means you no harm and gradually you will be become less and less aware of it as it finds its new permanent home in your sub conscious mind.

You have not yet had sufficient time to really digest what I have told you. You may even be feeling disappointed. I am quite accustomed to that type of reaction. Twenty odd years ago after I had found the solution to my own problem a few people [suffering from tinnitus] got to hear of it and asked me what I had done to rid myself of the noise. I more or less told them what I have told you. Their initial reaction was not at all encouraging and I became quite expert at reading what lay behind their strange looks. The more I tried to convince them the more their scepticism grew. Most of them thought I was talking rubbish and there was not even a near convert in sight.

As I had only recently cured my own problem I could not be sure that what had worked so well for me would work for other people. I adopted the attitude that I was back to enjoying a normal and happy life and if other people wanted to decry or make fun of what I had done that was their prerogative and they would have to go on suffering.

I soon discovered that those same people had started to recommend me. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. When I questioned the new ‘recruits’ I was told that I had completely cured their friends. This was news to me [very welcome news] as I had not heard anything from any of them since our talk. I was not looking for pats on the back. It was sufficient encouragement for me to know that those people were no longer suffering.

Throughout the following years people’s initial reaction has been much the same. For a long time this used to frustrate me. I did not know what they expected. Did they think that I was going to hypnotize them or poke some new invention of mine in their ear and that they were going to go away suddenly free of the noise or what? On the other hand I know that what I was asking them to do, to achieve such a positive result seemed too good to be true. Time and experience taught me to be patient. I allowed people to think that I had been talking rubbish and go away feeling disappointed. I was happy to wait for the inevitable telephone call or personal visit to thank me for what I had done.

I have often wondered if it would be better for me to devise some sort of program for people to follow over a period of time; Something more tangible than telling them to do nothing. If I did I am sure that many people would find that more credible. They would have more faith in something they had to learn or to work at. Any such program would of course be counter productive as any such effort would keep their tinnitus at a conscious level.

I have been asked countless times what one has to do to stop tinnitus being on the conscious mind.

If I asked you not to be aware of your left foot or the toes on your left foot what would happen? You become aware of them. Suddenly they become a prominent feature on your body.

To allow you to be unconscious of such things I must not mention them. If I do your conscious mind becomes involved. Therefore to allow you to remain unaware I must do nothing.

Obviously you are already aware of tinnitus and it occupies a large proportion of your conscious mind. This does not mean however that you have to allow it to become a major part of your life. It is just a noise; a harmless noise and if you allow yourself to willingly listen to it for a while it becomes a boring noise. It really is not that important. Instead of trying to fight it or allowing it to upset you, accept it. Leave it where it is. Carry on with life regardless. Never talk about it. When you want to go to sleep at night listen to it. It is so boring it will soon send you to sleep. It really does beat counting sheep and it is effortless and it works every time.

At first you will experience brief moments when you are unaware of it. Gradually as your confidence grows it will bother you less and less. On those occasions in the future when you do become aware it you will automatically ignore it because you will know that it will soon be gone.

Having read this far your sub conscious mind now knows that you wish it to blank out that noise and it will do it for you. Please do not try to help it other than by getting on with leading a full and interesting life and allowing the noise to come with you.

I have travelled along that very same path. Although you do not know me I hope that I have done enough to enable you to feel that you can trust me. Follow in my footsteps with an open mind and allow your mind and body to do the job for you. All you have to do is enjoy the journey while the work is being done for you.