The Quiet Path
Learn what tinnitus is and how it can affect the lives of those affected. If you suddenly hear a ringing, buzzing, or whooshing in your ears, it could be tinnitus. These constant companions in everyday life can end the silence. In her article, Karina Lübke describes how these annoying sounds have impacted her life. Read more now about tinnitus and its effects.
By Karina Lübke
Silence was my favorite sound. That I haven't been able to hear it for over twenty years is one of the misfortunes in my life that I had to come to terms with but never accepted: I mourn the thick, downy evening silence. Delicate summer silence in the countryside. Snow-muted winter night silence. Big city silence early in the morning just before four. The floating silence between the last note of a concert and the bursting applause. The highly intensified silence in a group's meditation. The sacred silence in the chapel of an old Cistercian monastery in Provence. I live in silent memory of all of them but can no longer experience them. Because before the entrance to silence, my tinnitus rushes like an electric waterfall, around which there is no way through or around.
18 million people in Germany suffer from ear noises at some point in their lives, of which 3 million are chronic - meaning lasting more than three months. The trend is increasing because the triggers stress, noise, and overload are also growing stronger and are the basis of the "modern" lifestyle. There is a permanent buzz that one can filter out for a long time - until suddenly one can no longer do so. Because our totally anachronistic auditory nerves are simply not made for the constant overload from stimuli, alarm signals, and information. Ears are always alert and open, while eyes can be easily closed to something. In this respect, tinnitus is THE symptomatic disease of our time: there is no cure, at best relief by "not listening," positively reinterpreting or ignoring the constant alarm. "You have to live with it" currently applies to many things. My environment can certainly live well with it without suffering, because the overactivity of the auditory centers in the brain is neither contagious nor visible from the outside.
But why me? WHY? My path to tinnitus was not predictable: I always liked the quiet sounds; I was never one to dance in front of the speakers at concerts. I wasn't a drummer in a punk band; I avoided firecrackers, firearms, and fireworks. I only knew that droning in my head when I came out of the disco as a teenager, where people shouted sentences into each other's ears while dancing and waited for the last bus at a stop in the silent night. Then that roaring in the ears - like the entry stamp on my hand - was a badge of honor. Signs that I had been there. Rock 'n Roll. And just like the stamp, it reliably disappeared the next day.
"..At least you can occasionally buy some pain relief with tablets for pain.
"There is no pill for silence. Nevertheless, I have tried almost everything..."
"Good luck!"
At least you can occasionally buy some pain relief with tablets for pain. There is no pill for silence. Nevertheless, I have tried almost everything - aspirin, magnesium, ginkgo. Over the years, I have certainly spent the equivalent of a mid-range house on alternative glimmers of hope in the form of autologous blood treatment, bioresonance therapy, healing hypnosis, homeopathy, acupuncture, dental splints, osteopathy, Reiki, and even a tabletop fountain. It drove me not only further into madness but also constantly to the toilet. In our modern times, when artificial hearts are transplanted and we fly to Mars, tinnitus remains incurable as in the Middle Ages: Get used to it. But HOW? And haven't the methods to minimize the body's own background noise been absolutely taboo for at least a generation: tuning out, suppressing, ignoring? Whoever can't manage that – well, their own fault. No pressure!
Silence is definitely contraindicated for tinnitus, and "do yoga, meditate" in the acute phase is probably the worst advice. I knew what powerless despair was the moment everyone else was blissfully resting in the silence of their hearts during meditation, while the high-voltage line buzzed through my head louder than ever. I was sure you could see my head vibrating from the outside! The ENT doctor recommended a six-week treatment at a specialized tinnitus clinic - but who would have looked after my two very small children for that long? My son was still a baby! It seemed easier for me to stay. To forcibly ignore the alarm. One of the big mistakes, seen in the rearview mirror of my life, because the tinnitus remained. I hoped back then it would quiet down again. Unfortunately, it hasn't, but at least it's much better. Bearable to unbearable. With the surf noise "Rocky Beach" from my ZEN Tinnitus app, I wash over stressful moments. Couldn't the health insurance just pay for me to have a house by the sea? Unfortunately, I can no longer hear only tones that lie exactly on the same frequency as my phantom sounds - like cicada chirping on a summer night in the south. There are worse things.
When I listen around, many of my friends and acquaintances have tinnitus. People don't like to talk about it. Because advice like "you really need to relax properly!" is something we really don't want to hear anymore. Also, there is the concern of being seen as less resilient in this high-performance society because we need more quiet to compensate for the lack of silence. No, we are not bulletproof. So what? But if someone were to permanently blast terrible music at our house as a wear-down strategy like once at dictator Noriega's, we would be the coolest. Because we just tune it out.
For me, tinnitus is now like an overambitious janitor driving a vacuum cleaner between my ears. At first, I felt stuck with him in a one-room apartment while he vacuumed full blast around me. Nothing could pull the plug on him. What worked over time was to mentally keep expanding my head, adding floors, turning the small room into a huge castle. I mentally pushed him out to vacuum in the hallway, then one floor down, until he finally tinkered far down in the ground floor. It got quieter and quieter; sometimes I really have to listen carefully to see if he's still there. We've gotten used to each other; he's become much more considerate, and I am actually more relaxed. Most of the time, I just have better things to do than listen to what he's up to. But the silence, which I have loved in all its forms, I will probably only find again with eternal rest.
Karina first studied design, earned a diploma in fashion, and then completed the Hamburg School of Journalism with Wolf Schneider. She subsequently became an editor and columnist at TEMPO and then wrote freelance for several magazines. Her monthly column "Bitte recht feindlich" in the magazine BARBARA has a large fan base and will be published as a book early this year, as will her next novel. In between, she got married and raised a daughter and a son. You can learn more here.