Click click … maybe not click

February 1, 2023

Keith here, giving Barbara the night off because it was my day that had an interesting event.

Some of you know that I’ve been dealing with an unfortunate medical condition for the past 3+ years. It started as something related to Patulous Eustachian Tube where my ears would pop/unpop with every inhale/exhale (which happens an alarming number of times a day when you think about it–and I have thought about it) and sometimes the tubes would stick open completely and I’d hear my own breathing or speaking very loudly in my head. This is enough to put anyone in an asylum, so I was lucky that after about a year-and-a-half it decided (mostly on its own as far as I could tell, but I was also doing daily TMD exercises) to get a lot better. A lot better doesn’t mean it was fixed. It means that the tubes stopped staying open and my constant ear popping was reduced to constant clicking sounds and mild popping instead. Even though this is a LOT better, it’s still rather asylum-inducing, but just in a different way. And this is where I’ve been for the past maybe 20 months or so.

What about medical professionals? Yeah, I saw them all. I saw practically every ENT (Ear Nose Throat specialist) in town. In addition, I saw allergists, audiologists, acupuncturists, and more. And most of them said the same thing, which is that there’s nothing they can do about it. A couple have suggested things and I’ve tried lots of experimental things, but to no avail. Without going into excruciating detail, I learned a lot about this on my own during this time, mostly that the annoying clicking could be controlled by me, but only with my constant, diligent attention on it, or by intense focus on something else (to take my mind off it). I learned that it was actually voluntary, but I couldn’t figure out how to permanently stop the voluntary muscular action without help and the medical profession wasn’t providing that necessary help.

So, today I tried something different. I saw a hypnotist. Hypnotism has long been a solution for many people trying to stop addictions and/or trying to avoid something in their lives. I could see how my sinus issues may fit into those categories, so I thought maybe a hypnotist could help (even though I have generally viewed hypnotism as pseudoscience, with the exception of the one time I witnessed a hypnotist help Barbara get a good night’s sleep for the first time in months, which was an extraordinary event).

The session with the hypnotist was spent discussing the history of the problem, what it may mean to “get better” or even “be fixed”, the effect this currently has on my life (a lot, it seems–nothing good), and a discussion of how hypnotism may help. We then went onto about a half hour of a relaxation session, where the hypnotist calmly spoke, got me into a relaxed (suggestive) state, and spoke generally just some positive phrases with a few phrases specific to my problem. Initially it felt a little silly, but I tried my best to put my full attention into it and give it an honest trial without judgement.

At the end of the half hour, I realized that the clicking did not occur even once during the entire half hour. An hour later, still no clicking. Now, I have been able to calm the clicking on my own for several minutes at a time, but never more than maybe 10-15 minutes tops. And here I am an hour later without a single click and zero effort on it.

More hours past and a few clicks snuck in, but very, very few. It’s now ten hours after my appointment and I’ve had maybe a couple dozens clicks in those ten hours. Let’s compare that to the couple dozen clicks a minute that I was experiencing before the appointment.

Huh. We may actually be onto something.

This afternoon after the session was done, I received a recording from the hypnotist. The plan is to go to bed every night listening to the recording. That’s it. And if I feel like it, I could listen to it another time during the day.

I think I can live with that. I’ll check in here again in a couple weeks maybe to let you know how it’s progressing, but so far this is the quietest night my head has had in over three years (well, other than my tinnitus, but that’s another story). And, well, it’s pretty darned amazing, actually.