How to Master Your Mind to Sleep with Tinnitus and Anxiety
The 4–7–8 technique
The 4–7–8 technique
It’s been over a year since my ears started ringing and they haven’t stopped.
Not for a single moment have I known perfect silence since January of 2022. I can hardly remember what it means to be perfectly quiet anymore. It may seem like a small problem, but remember people can be tortured by playing loud and constant sounds. I promise it was, indeed, torture when it first started. For the first 24 to 48 hours, it’s simply annoying, but I managed to get by with weed and wine. Eventually, however, distractions stopped working and my mind broke. I started to hear the ringing over everything else — music, the wind, TV shows, cars. Those didn’t matter because my mind could only focus on what it heard.
The worst aspect of tinnitus is it doesn’t go away. Doctors told me it’s caused by nerve damage due to infection, loud noises, or any dozens of other causes. After two weeks of hardly sleeping, I took a medical leave of absence from work to deal with my now roaring anxiety and constant panic attacks. I sank into a deep depression for about two months and the only thing I could do was watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and stay up until 3 am every day. Eventually, my body would give out and I’d fall asleep for a few hours. I averaged three hours of sleep per night until mid-February.
With no signs of a cure or fix in sight, I pivoted from trying to “wait until it gets better” to “finding a new normal.” First on the list was anxiety meds — 150 mg of venlafaxine. My panic attacks stopped, and I was able to resume a normal day without bursting into tears at loud sounds or sudden movements. Second on the list was learning how to sleep.
For two weeks I took medications for insomnia and while I did eventually fall asleep, it felt like I hadn’t. So, as the meds began to run out, I remembered a breathing technique my Taoism teacher taught me a few years ago called 4–7–8.
Originally taught as a meditation method, it was helpful in reducing my heart rate which lowered my anxiety and stress. Well, no one was more stressed out in my house at that time than me, so with nothing left to lose, I began practicing the pattern every evening. Here is how it works.
Four
Breathe in completely from your stomach through your nose and count to four. For all of the classically trained musicians out there, set your metronome to 100 bpm and use the clicks to count for you. Keep in mind these are not seconds, but a slightly faster beat.
When you use your nose to breathe in instead of our mouth, your nasal cavity filters the air which causes a richer, more purified, breath of air. Allowing your stomach to expand rather than expanding your chest causes a deeper, fuller, cycle. As a parent, I’ve watched my children sleep as babies and they all breathe through their stomach. We learn how to chest breathe as we age, therefore, if we want to return to a more natural state (less anxious) then we need to use our stomach to breathe instead.
Seven
Hold the air in for seven counts. This allows your body to absorb more of the oxygen in your lungs and forces your heart rate to slow down. If you’re constantly breathing in and out, your heart rate will speed up in an attempt to keep up with the air flowing in and out of your lungs. Remember, this is not seven seconds, but a faster count. If you start to feel like you can’t breath then speed up your count.
Eight
Slowly, exhale the carbon dioxide from your body and take eight counts to do so. Make sure you take all eight counts to reach an empty state. If you exhale to quickly you’re holding your breathe again with no oxygen and you’ll begin to feel like you can’t breathe, which speeds up your heart rate and counters the exercise. You should time your count so you reach empty just as you begin the cycle over again with a new four.
Before tinnitus, it took 20 to 30 minutes of laying still to fall asleep. I worked on clearing my mind and waiting for terrible unconsciousness to take over. I watched my wife fall asleep in seconds, yet I was forced to ponder the mysteries of the universe for half an hour every night and it seemed like punishment. I believed clearing my mind of thoughts was how everyone fell asleep and my mind was just to busy to do so. Maybe, I thought, I had undiagnosed attention deficit disorder, but by practicing 4–7–8 I was able to fall asleep much more quickly than ever before. My heart rate slowed, my mind calmed down, and before I knew it, I was asleep. Yet, breathing was only the first half of my solution as there was a trick I discovered too — I stopped trying to clear my mind.
As an over thinker and my mind constantly races from topic to topic. But attempting to clear my mind caused more anxiety because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay empty for more than a few seconds at a time. So, losing the battle to tinnitus, rather than fight my natural tendencies, I embraced them. I began to tell myself stories in my head and allowing my mind to run through as many topics as it wanted all while keeping my breathing steady.
Both of these practices combined caused my body to drop into a deep, relaxed, state and fall asleep within minutes despite ringing in my ears. I even tested this method on vacation more than once and it continues to work no matter the location.
In the year since silence died, I have overcome so many obstacles I never thought I’d have to handle. I’ve mentioned several of them, but I could go on for pages with a dozen smaller situations and problems. Life comes at you hard and sometimes you’re the only person who can help you. During my struggles, my mom told me I had two choices, “Fall apart or overcome.” So, what was I going to do? Would I allow my children and wife to suffer the consequences of my broken mental state?
No, I had to move on and overcome. There are so many with far worse circumstances than missing sleep and ringing ears. There are people with war, famine, and poverty that can’t be fixed with meditation or breathing. Even if I lose my hearing altogether in the future, I’ll still be here fighting for those I care about and sharing anything I learn along the way with everyone I can.