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185 points gregsadetsky | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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plaidfuji ◴[] No.44058336[source]
I “got over” mine after many months of “tinnitus meditation” (there’s a short book on this written by a guy who has some crazy disease that causes extra-bad tinnitus). Basically, you meditate by purposefully focusing on your tinnitus. It starts to flip your brain’s response from one of fear to one of relaxation. Even within the first session, you’ll find that when you try to focus on the noise for as long as you can (use a timer and start with 5 mins), you eventually get distracted and think about something else, even if just for a moment. Then you realize that your brain isn’t “forced” to notice it - and the more you practice this, the better you’ll get at noticing it and gently pivoting your attention back to.. the rest of the world. The noise never goes away, your ability to ignore it just improves over time.

The book is a quick read and helpful: https://a.co/d/ckOzbSq

I no longer meditate as often, but when I do, it’s actually still quite effective. I now see it more as a “retreat” of sorts - I can just kind of dissociate and let the ringing take over. Reading this article brought it back, incidentally.. but I’m ok with it. Once you fully surrender to the noise, you can start to let go of it. It’s the mental resistance that makes it hard to deal with.

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1. tyleo ◴[] No.44061034[source]
It reminds me to the intro to Odesza’s “A Moment Apart” album where an astronaut is up in space with a ticking sound and decides he has to fall in love with it for his sanity.