This case involved a 53 year old female who was complaining of moderate Tinnitus in both ears. Her intake form suggested that her Tinnitus was mostly not related to age based on some key factors that suggest other reasons.
During the intake discovery session there were no indications of damage related to prolonged high sound levels and the Tinnitus onset came in a short period of time. Her work was mostly office work and she did not find herself in loud places very often short of the occasional concert and motorsports.
The first step was to isolate the frequency of sound she was hearing and that turned out to be around 14000 Hz. The next step was to check on any illnesses she had recently that could cause a sudden onset of Tinnitus. Third was to check on any recent sudden loud noises like something falling or an explosion.
After ruling out external factors that could be attributed to physical damage with the exception of one possible incident at a restaurant where a tray of dishes crashed to the floor a few feet away, there was nothing to suggest it was anything other than she was expecting and looking for the sound.
The first few sessions we probed for thoughts that would increase the sound and stop the sound. If was found the Tinnitus was more intense when she was inward thinking and non-existent when she was outward thinking processing tasks or enjoyable memories like a wonderful getaway.
The fact that the Tinnitus could be turned off when her mind was distracted confirmed that it was not age related or injury related, and that set the path of the therapy to be retraining not to look for the sound.
Once the proper hypnotic suggestions were identified, recordings were made to retrain herself not to expect the sound. Sessions were reduce to every other week and then once a month with tweaks on the suggestions in the recordings as needed.
The eventual outcome after 22 weeks was the elimination of the Tinnitus. The therapy in this case was similar to erectile dysfunction therapy where the anticipation of failure caused the failure. By replacing the anticipation of failure with the anticipation of success is the core of erectile dysfunction therapy.
