Case Study – Tinnitus: Anne

 back

disclaimer: results may vary

Also including: plantar fasciitis, panic, headache, driving nervousness, foot pain

Anne’s interview, recorded during one of the On-line Tutorials:

Suddenly, Anne began to feel as though her heart and her stomach were swelling, she felt hot. Gasping for breath, her fingers were tingling, and the world was spinning in front of her eyes – vertigo. She had to get out of that place. This was Anne’s problem, a combination of many feelings that could be described as a panic attack.

It might happen in a high place, on an escalator, or in an airport. She might be driving on a motorway.  She might be in her local supermarket; the busier the shop, the more likely it was to happen. The feeling appeared in places where she could not simply exit at any time.

And then there were the frequent headaches, linked to a neck and shoulder pain. Thankfully, they had calmed down from the migraines she had once suffered.

Anne began to use the Resolution Programme for Symptoms on her painful shoulder, and her headaches. The sessions were usually directed all across her upper body, encompassing the shoulders, the neck, and the head. Whenever she felt the slightest stiffness, ache or pain, she did a 2-minute session every couple of hours.

Within two months, there were many improvements. Anne usually began the day with a session, and then she was free from physical symptoms all day.

Once underway, Anne also began to use Resolution Magic on unwanted feelings. The feeling of discomfort on the escalator, or in a busy shop, could be difficult to work on. So Anne waited until she was at home, later in the day, and did Retrospective Rehearsal exercise after every event.

Anne deliberately planned visits to places where she had previously avoided, like shopping arcades, so she could practise Resolution Magic.

Lately, every journey she made in the car had been a feat of courage. There was never a time when she could jump into the car without overcoming invisible hurdles. She began to work deliberately on this unwelcome feeling too.

Gradually, the anxieties attached to many ordinary events in life, diminished.  Shopping trips and journeys began to feel like ordinary events, instead of mammoth tasks. One day, after many months on the programme, Anne found herself on the very long escalator in the underground in London. This was really ‘pushing it’, she thought.  But she was fine. Under her breath she did the mental exercises.

Anne had now learnt how to re-train herself to take everything in her stride. Life was changing, and her anxiety levels were reducing all of the time.

Anne continued to work on her shoulder, reducing the frequency and the intensity of her shoulder, neck, and head pain. At each telephone coaching session, there was steady progress.

One day, Anne said that the only thing she had been suffering that particular week was a loud fluttering in her ears. It had been a permanent feature in her life, so ‘ordinary’, that she hadn’t thought to mention it before.

Anne directed the exercises at it, but this didn’t seem to make a dramatic difference, but she kept on at it, hoping that perhaps it would eventually work. Meanwhile, there were other symptoms to work on.  Moving around her body, the wave of neurological activity affected many areas from time to time.

In the late summer of 2009, Anne had an excruciating pain coming from her foot.  While she was sitting, it would suddenly dart down into her foot, a really sharp, stabbing pain. Sometimes the pains came so frequently, she hobbled around for most of the day. She began to aim the exercises at her feet every day for a couple of weeks, and then Anne’s foot pains disappeared.

She was winning, and one day, Anne realised that while she had been busy reducing her anxiety, and all of her physical symptoms, her tinnitus had quietly disappeared. Occasionally it made a short reappearance, and then disappeared again. Perhaps it was because the wave of neurological activity had reduced to such a level that it no longer caused a host of symptoms, including tinnitus.