You Don't Have to Learn to Live With It: Tinnitus, Sound Sensitivity, and the Neuroplastic Connection

For most people who experience tinnitus, hyperacusis, or misophonia, the message from the medical system has been some version of the same thing: there is no cure, learn to cope, this is just your life now.

Dr. Marcia Dewey has spent her career pushing back on that narrative, and in this episode she sits down with host Daniel Lyman to talk about why.

Dr. Dewey is an audiologist who founded the Tinnitus and Hyperacusis Program at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin. After discovering neuroplasticity-based approaches through the Curable app, she began integrating PRT principles into her work with clients experiencing sound-related symptoms, and what she's seen since has changed the way she practices.

What Daniel and Dr. Dewey cover:

What tinnitus, hyperacusis, and misophonia actually are. Tinnitus is any sound you hear from inside your body, not just ringing. Hyperacusis is sensitivity to sounds based on loudness. Misophonia is an intense, often visceral reaction to specific sounds, usually made by other people. Three distinct experiences, but with more in common than most people realize.

Why tinnitus is a symptom, not a disease. Just like pain, tinnitus is a signal, not a diagnosis. And just like pain, what you believe that signal means has an enormous effect on how your nervous system responds to it.

How fear and attention keep symptoms alive. Eighty percent of people who experience tinnitus are not bothered by it. The difference between that group and the group that suffers is not the sound itself. It is the relationship with the sound, and that relationship can change.

Somatic tracking for sound sensitivity. Dr. Dewey uses somatic tracking, which she calls sensation observation, with clients on their very first visit. She also uses imaginal exposure for hyperacusis, having clients imagine triggering sound environments and track what they notice in their bodies, before ever approaching the real thing.

The misophonia piece. Often dismissed as hopeless or untreatable with exposure, Dr. Dewey makes the case that the same neuroplastic tools apply, just applied carefully and starting from the mildest end of the trigger ladder.

Hope as a clinical intervention. One of the most moving moments in this episode is a story about an early tinnitus client who cried for twenty minutes when Daniel told him recovery was possible. He hadn't felt hope in six years. Shortly after, his tinnitus was mostly gone.

If you or someone you love has been told to just live with ringing, sensitivity, or sound reactions, this conversation is worth your time.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Way Out by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv
• Tinnitus: From Tyrant to Friend by Julian Cowan Hill
• Demystifying Misophonia by Shaylynn Hayes-Raymond
• Dr. Marcia Dewey on YouTube
• Dr. Yonit Arthur, The Steady Coach: thesteadycoach.com (free tinnitus course available under Resources)
• Dr. Annie Smith on YouTube

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