TINNITUS: Don´t Feed the Trolls

Is worrying a possible cause for Tinnitus? 

"Don’t feed the trolls" is a common synonym for someone who likes to create havoc on the internet. Trolls normally use chat rooms, posting boards or Forums to provoke and intimidate people by sending confrontational messages.  People who feel harrassed and provoked and find the time to argue with these people are “Feeding the Trolls”.

Tinnitus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s just a theory, but it can be said that once the mind is infected by worry, you are opening the doors for the trolls.

Learning how to come to terms with worry is like having to learn to fly a jet. You have to be a pilot to fly it. To be a pilot you have to learn. Sounds kind of immature to comment that anyone can learn to fly a jet if they are really set on doing so. It’s just a matter of being educated. 

You may disagree with me on this matter but I am certain you could learn to fly a jet if you really had to. It may take hundreds of hours of instruction and countless tests and exams but theoretically, you could fly a jumbo jet if someone taught you how to.

Using the information above it can be said that everyone can learn to cope with worry. Like learning to fly, you have to be taught how. 

Worry can have great power and influence if it finds a suitable candidate to feed from. Worry is an emotion which means it can be manipulated.  

Being worried is normal. It’s a way of protecting ourselves. People who do nothing BUT worry are feeding the trolls! I still catch myself feeding my own trolls but I’ve learned to keep it to a minimum. The worse thing about worry is that you can’t change the outcome of a certain situation by simply worrying about it. 

What are you worrying about at the moment? Maybe your company isn’t doing too well and the sales figures are down and people are being told to find new jobs. That’s something to worry about though isn’t it? In fact it’s not. It’s perfectly normal to be concerned about something ( or someone ), but that is as far as it should go. 

Deep rooted worrying can and will ruin your life. It will control you. 

Okay, let’s imagine for a minute you’re worried sick about losing your job. There are good reasons to worry about losing a job. No one likes to be unemployed. The reasons are obvious and don’t have to be repeated.  In fact, you can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you are nervous, aggressive…in fact you become physically sick. If you look at this from the outside, there are only two things that will happen: 

A: you lose your job. 

B: you keep your job.    

Let’s say you do lose your job. Ask yourself if your pain, anguish and apprehension could have possibly altered the outcome of the situation I will answer this for you…….NO.  No worrying in the world could have influenced the outcome of you keeping your job or not. All you did was feed the trolls. Be honest, would it have really been worth worrying yourself sick about something you couldn’t change anyway?  Let’s say you didn’t lose your job. Did your worrying have any effect on the outcome ? Let me answer this too…….…NO

In other words, you can’t trade your worries for a change in destiny. No one is going to re-write the books just because you like to worry.  I found the best way to deal with worry is to obtain the basic facts and determine what the core of my worry is. 

If you are worrying about losing your job, what is it exactly you are worrying about? If worst comes to worst, what is the nastiest thing that is going to happen to you ? The answer is: You will be without a job and have less money. There is nothing ecstatic about loosing your job, but it NOT the end of the world. 

Please don’t get me wrong and please don’t think I am ignorant ( I am facing the same dilemma ), I don’t know anyone on the Earth who dreams about being unemployed. 

But if I can accept that it’s not the end of the world then I can learn to come to terms with this situation when it arises. If I can learn in advance to prepare myself for the worst, then it will be easier for me to accept the worst when and if the time ever comes. 

I use to worry myself sick about my loss of hearing and tinnitus until it dawned on me that worrying is part of the cause. 

In fact, I fed THOUSENDS of trolls until I realized what I was doing wrong. It took me 18 months of suffering to finally wake up and realize that it was I that was causing the stress.  

I allowed tinnitus to rob me of my identity and place a firm grip on my life. Had I only known!  Everyone knows that you just can’t stop worrying at the drop of a hat or because people advise you to. You may require hours and hours of therapy. 

But you can learn to come to grips with a "chronic worrying syndrome.”  I can only speak for myself here and I know that medical world won’t agree with me on this one but I want to recap on the title of this book. I called it "Tinnitus my best friend." 

“How can tinnitus be my best friend” you say.

  

I used its power to create a new person in myself. I am using its power to create this very Article I am writing. Nothing has ever compelled me to sit down for hundreds of hours and write a book. Nothing has ever been worth  the effort. 

I learned how to register a domain, set up my own homepage and promote an e-book with the sole purpose of trying to help other people overcome their fear of having to live with tinnitus for the rest of their lives.  

Where else did I use it?.  I managed to stop smoking, I lost weight, and I taught myself to start caring for myself. I know how to keep myself fit. I know what to eat ad what not to eat.  I used its energy and made something of it. 

You can do the same. 

Looking back, it took me a long time to accept that tinnitus actually helped me change my life. Once I realized that tinnitus was nothing but a warning signal, I found ways of coming to terms with it and used its energy to help me out of this pitfall. Tinnitus helped me get my life back on track and for that I’m thankful. In fact I would probably feel lonely without it ( just kidding ). 

But I am still aware of it because I have accepted that the noise won’t disappear.  I just learned to take no notice of it. That’s the key to success. Learning to ignore. It’s a learning process that needs time and patience. 

Maybe it’s hard to explain how to ignore sounds you think you can’t escape but the trick is retraining your brain to distract your attention away from the tinnitus thus making the sounds obsolete. This mechanism is still present regardless of how long you have been suffering from tinnitus. It’s kind of hard to explain how it works but it really is very easy to demonstrate.

You will be bluffed how easy it is to ignore Tinnitus. I will explain this in my next article.