"It's Not This Monster on My Shoulder" - Learning to Live Well With Tinnitus

Last updated: 27.01.26


If you're reading this shortly after being diagnosed with tinnitus, you might be feeling overwhelmed, frightened, or wondering how you'll ever cope with the constant sound. Perhaps you've been told to "just learn to live with it" without much guidance on how. Or maybe you've been living with tinnitus for a while and are searching for something that might help.

We brought together three women from our community who've been exactly where you are now.

Shannon Phillips, from the Breathworks team, and Debbie Cane — a Breathworks teacher and audiologist — met with Helen, Penny, and Heather to talk about their experiences living with tinnitus and what has helped them find peace.

Helen has lived with tinnitus for six years following an acoustic neuroma diagnosis. Penny has managed it for 14 years alongside hyperthyroidism and sarcoidosis, with the tinnitus becoming worse after contracting coronavirus. Heather has always experienced a high-pitched tinnitus, but following the loss of her sister, experienced a new variation that bought a lower pitch, more 'menacing' layer to contend with. 

Their journeys are all different. What helps each of them is different. But what they share is this: transformation is possible — not because their tinnitus disappeared (for most, it didn't), but because they found ways to respond to it differently.

In this blog, they share what actually helped: managing stress, changing their relationship with the sound, which meditation practices worked (and which didn't), and what they wish they'd known at the beginning.


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Does Stress Make Tinnitus Worse? 

Whilst the group's onset and experience of tinnitus differed greatly, they shared one thing in common: stress made it worse.

Tinnitus UK highlights how stress and tinnitus influence each other in a bidirectional way. It's common for tinnitus to start during times of high stress, and existing tinnitus often worsens during stressful periods. This happens because stress affects our attention: when stressed, we focus more intensely on perceived threats (including tinnitus), which makes the sound seem louder and more intrusive. This creates a vicious cycle where tinnitus causes stress, stress increases attention to tinnitus, which makes it seem worse, which causes more stress.

🔗 Click here to learn more about Tinnitus & Stress | Tinnitus UK


Audiologist Debbie Cane explained that breaking this cycle means first means first acknowledging that the tinnitus is a ‘perceived threat’, and then building a personal 'toolkit' for soothing the anxiety and stress that can worsen symptoms these toolkits look different for everyone.


Penny: Finding a place of safety & rest

"The emotional stress plays into it enormously," Penny explained. "After a bad bout of Covid, I was tanked up with cortisol and had blood sugar all over the place. But I told myself I had got better before, and I knew how to do it. I calmed down, got in a taxi and went to stay with my friend in Cambridge for two weeks."

In that safe space, Penny was able to regulate her nervous system:

"My friend let me do what I liked. I stayed in my room. I ate. Did odd meditations. I had a bath every day, lay in it for hours, just putting down all the pain and the fright. And I'd look at the sunset. It does gradually go down when I do the self-soothing."


Helen: Hypnotherapy & daily meditation

Helen's toolkit includes weekly hypnotherapy through the British Acoustic Neuroma Association (Brains Trust) and a daily meditation practice.

"I take part in weekly hypnotherapy. That tends to be around creating a space where you feel relaxed. For me, it's always on top of a mountain or going down into a cave—just something where I can go in on myself a little bit."

Helen also uses meditation before potentially difficult situations:

"If I've got a busy morning—say I was going to the supermarket or hospital—my tinnitus has the potential to go up. Even on a windy day, I tend to notice it can get quite loud. I used to find it quite alarming, going outside and suddenly hearing this piercing sound."

Her daily practice "brings everything down," helping her cope when her tinnitus increases. "I've got this toolkit for being able to deal with what has the potential to become a crisis."

But Helen's clear this took time to build:

"I think it's not something that you just pick up—for me, it does require ongoing practice. I think of it like brushing my teeth, just making it part of my daily life. When I do it less, I always feel that it comes to bite me on the bum. Things become more difficult."


Heather: Unpacking Trauma & Learning to Self-Soothe

Heather went to a hypnotherapist, originally hoping he would "wave a magic wand and the tinnitus would be gone."

What she didn't expect was that the work would take her somewhere else entirely - into addressing emotional stress from her childhood, including sexual abuse.

"I went to my hypnotherapist to work on the tinnitus, but we sorted my childhood out! Once I got my anxiety levels down, the tinnitus became more manageable."

Looking back, Heather realised: "I was never told how to self-soothe. All my self-soothing was external—other people. All the answers were outside of me."

What she learned through that process became a guiding principle:

"Anxiety and tension and tinnitus make lovely good bedfellows. And if you can't do anything about the tinnitus, you can do something about the anxiety and the stress you're feeling. You can work with that bit, and then just allow the other bit to just do what it's gonna do. Know what you have control over, and work with that. And be gentle with yourself. Be compassionate with yourself."

 

💡 Summary - Creating Personal Toolkits for Stress Reduction

Stress and anxiety can make tinnitus worse—but when each woman learned to regulate her nervous system and reduce stress, the severity of her tinnitus decreased.

Self-soothing isn't something most of us naturally know how to do; it's a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. The key is finding what genuinely helps you—and practicing it regularly, not just reaching for it in crisis.


Changing Your Relationship with Tinnitus

In the previous section, we saw how stress and anxiety can worsen tinnitus. This can happen through a vicious cycle: catastrophic thinking about tinnitus ("this will ruin my life") triggers anxiety, which leads to constantly monitoring the sound, which makes it feel more intrusive, which fuels more catastrophic thoughts. The struggle to suppress, avoid, or control tinnitus paradoxically makes the distress worse.

Read more about Tinnitus & Stress here | Tinnitus UK


One of the most striking themes in the focus group was how each woman had fundamentally changed the way she thought about her tinnitus—breaking out of this cycle.

This shift in how we relate to an unwanted experience is one of the key practices we teach on our Mindfulness for Health and Mindfulness for Stress 8-week courses: coming to terms with what we cannot change and choosing a response that feels skilful and kind to ourselves. 

Mindfulness graphic illustrating acceptance and resistance for tinnitus


Helen: Not a monster, but a companion

Helen's reframing journey began with advice from a tinnitus support worker she met six years ago:

"The one thing that I remember her saying was, 'if you can make friends with it, that will go a long way.' I think I really used that. If you can make the noises your friend rather than 'I want it to go.'"

Over time, Helen developed a vivid way of understanding her tinnitus:

"It's not this monster on my shoulder. I can kind of see it as almost this thing that sits to my side. Like a companion that would sit next to me. Visually, it's distinct from me. I can't say I like it, because obviously I would far rather not have it, but I think I'm very comfortable with it now."

But Helen wanted to be clear — this transformation didn't happen quickly or easily:

"People said to me 6 years ago, 'you will get used to this.' I thought they were absolutely off their heads! I thought, 'you are crazy — I know you've got it, but you clearly don't get it.' But with time, and I would say it took a good few years, I did."


Penny: A warning sign, not a threat

Penny found a completely different reframe — one that gave her tinnitus a purpose:

"I see mine as telling me something — a warning saying, 'rest a bit.' When it's coming louder, I think 'oh, it's telling me that I need to rest.' So that's how I've befriended it. I'm grateful because partly, it's telling me to rest. It's protecting me — and I know it will get quieter."

This reframe helps Penny respond to increases in volume without panic. She also uses imagery to make the sounds less threatening:

"I see mine as an aeroplane coming to land a lot of the time, and then the hissing, it's like hundreds of little tinkly bells going..."


Heather: Just the body making a sound

Heather's reframe is perhaps the simplest and most direct:

"It's ok, it's ok. It's just the body. Tinnitus is just your body making a sound."

This matter-of-fact acceptance came from her broader mindfulness practice, where she learned to respond to all bodily sensations — pain, discomfort, tinnitus — with the same gentle acknowledgment rather than alarm.


📚 Beyond the focus group

The transformations Helen, Penny, and Heather described aren't unique to them. In a 2020 study, researchers interviewed nine people six months after they'd completed an 8-week mindfulness-based therapy program for tinnitus. Every single participant — without exception — reported the same fundamental shift that these three women described.

Before mindfulness, participants were "at war" with their tinnitus. They fought it through constant attempts to control, suppress, or avoid the sound. This fight involved catastrophic thinking ("this will never get better"), fear-based monitoring (always checking: is it still there? is it louder?), and exhausting strategies like constant distraction or masking. Paradoxically, all this effort to control tinnitus made the distress worse.

The core change that helped was learning to stop fighting and start allowing. One participant's words captured this so perfectly that the researchers titled their study "I Wasn't at War With the Noise."

This didn't mean the tinnitus disappeared—for most people, it remained. But the relationship with it transformed. By allowing tinnitus to be present without resistance, the suffering decreased dramatically.

Importantly, this shift took time. As one participant in that study noted — echoing Helen's experience — it took "a good few years," not weeks or months. The transformation was real, but it required patience, practice, and often support from others who understood.


🔗 Click here to read the full study: "I Wasn't At War With The Noise" (Marks et al., 2020) 

💡 Summary - Why Resistance is Futile

Fighting tinnitus — trying to control it, suppress it, or make it go away — creates suffering. Reframing involves finding a different relationship with the sound: not as an enemy to fight, but as something that can be allowed, even accepted.

This shift from resistance to acceptance doesn't mean liking tinnitus or giving up hope. It means recognising that the struggle itself causes much of the distress. When that struggle lessens, suffering decreases — even if the tinnitus remains. This transformation takes time, often years rather than weeks.


Which Meditations Work Best for Tinnitus?

One way in which we can strengthen our 'mindfulness muscle' and begin to build a more harmonious relationship with tinnitus is through meditation practice.

When it comes to meditation and tinnitus, there's no one-size-fits-all approach. The three women in our focus group each discovered different practices that worked for them—and, importantly, what didn't work. Here's what they shared...


Penny: Tone of voice matters!

"I find specific meditations about tinnitus make me think about it," Penny explained. "Whereas I don't want to think about it particularly."

Instead, Penny gravitates toward guided meditations centred around broader themes—patience, compassion, acceptance. These take her somewhere else entirely:

"The meditations I like grasp a sort of psychological truth. It's like a word will sink into my head and that will sort of echo and put me in an almost hypnotised state. For example, Julia the other day was talking about patience, and I suddenly realised that I'd become an awful lot more patient. Because I go almost into a hypnotic state — I'm not hearing the tinnitus anymore. It just goes."

Penny was careful to add context: "But bear in mind, I don't have tinnitus to the degree I think some people have it."

Listen to Julia's 'Space to Breathe' session on Patience here 


Helen: Creating a bigger container for difficult experiences

Penny wasn't alone in finding that tinnitus-specific meditations didn't help. Helen, too, discovered that turning her attention toward certain problem areas during meditation could be disturbing rather than soothing.

"It's taken quite a long time to find things:  that work," Helen began.

Before discovering Breathworks, she found support in Tara Brach's weekly talks and guided meditations. "I've always found tuning into that talk a really helpful distraction. Sometimes I'll listen to it multiple times over a week. I particularly like her RAIN meditation—Recognise, Allow, Investigate & Nurture."

But not all meditation practices felt supportive:

"I'm less keen on body scans when I have to kind of go into the body. I actively avoid those meditations that turn inwards. For example in the body scan, when invited to focus on my head, I'm thinking, 'that's where this tumour is.' I can find that quite disturbing, and want to move out of my body."

Instead, Helen gravitates toward practices that create distance. She loves a Buddhist "empty body" meditation: "You recognise all your body parts but then you strip your body bare, so there's just nothing there."

Try Tara Brach's RAIN meditation here

Try the Empty Body meditation here


Heather: Noticing without catastrophising

Heather, who's now a Breathworks mindfulness teacher, initially came to mindfulness through managing chronic pain rather than tinnitus. 

"Whenever I have any body problems or pain, at first I might freak out and say 'oh no! I've got something else!' But then I just say 'it's ok, it's ok. It's just the body.' It's the same with the tinnitus—it is just your body making a sound."

Heather also noticed something that Penny and Helen had both mentioned: paying attention to tinnitus could make it louder. But for Heather, this wasn't distressing—it was simply the natural result of where she placed her attention:

"There's not much difference when I meditate unless I focus on it. When I'm thinking about it, it can become louder. It's like when I went to the audiologist and she asked me to fill out a form for two weeks—well it got worse for two weeks, because I'm looking for it! My mind's obsessing and fixating on it. But if I can just take the fixation out and remind myself: 'it's ok, it's always there.'"

Breathing with the Tinnitus: Meditation 

Sometimes it can be helpful to meditate in a way that distracts from the tinnitus, as we saw with Penny. Other times, it can be helpful to begin practising being with the tinnitus, so that over time, we can become more comfortable with it. This helps us to build a more harmonious or neutral relationship with it (as we spoke about here), and reduce our stress response.

The meditation below, recorded by Debbie Cane, offers a chance for you to practice this. At first, you'll be invited to bring your full attention to your breath, which can be very soothing and grounding. If it feels comfortable, you will then be invited to gentle expand your awareness to include the sounds from your tinnitus. This is not easy to do and takes practice so it is important to go at your own pace. If at any point the tinnitus becomes overwhelming or distressing, you may find it helpful to guide your attention back to the breath alone. 

💡 Summary - Which Meditations Help Tinnitus? 

There is no right or wrong way to meditate. Different meditations may support us at different stages of our tinnitus journey. If your tinnitus feels very overwhelming, meditations that take the attention away from the breath may be soothing. 

However, meditations that help us 'sit with' the tinnitus in our field of awareness can help us reduce fear and gradually shift our response from resistance to acceptance.

Meditation is not always easy and it can take time to find what works for you. However, all three women report the benefits of a regular practice. 


Words of Hope: What Would You Say to Someone New to Tinnitus? 

At the end of the focus group, we asked Helen, Penny, and Heather what they might say to someone experiencing tinnitus for the first time — someone who might stumble upon this blog feeling alone or overwhelmed.

Helen

Don't be hard on yourself. Don't come at meditation with huge expectations. It takes time to build a practice, and even when you're practiced, they're not all perfect—far from it. Just go with it. Be kind to yourself. But keep going. It's worth giving some time to. Hopefully, if you can build a practice, then with time, it will help. It'll be a big help.

Heather

Connect with others who understand what the heck you're on about. I used to often call the Tinnitus UK helpline. It won't always be this bad. And when you have good days and the sound suddenly comes back, don't think you're back at square one and it's all blasted out the water. It will come, and it will go.

Penny

"Impermanence, really. It changes. Sometimes it's quieter, sometimes I completely forget about it. It's become a sort of thing that's in the back of my life. I'd like to know the sound of silence ever again, but I can still hear things—I can still hear birds, and people's voices. So... gratitude. Gratitude and impermanence. That's helped."

💙 We're deeply grateful to Helen, Penny, and Heather for generously and bravely sharing their stories in the hope that they might help others.


Support & Resources for Tinnitus

Audiologist, Debbie Cane, explains that if you are experiencing tinnitus, it is important to visit your GP. This is so they can rule out any medical conditions that may be causing or contributing to your tinnitus and signpost you to the most appropriate follow-on support, if available.

As there is little that can be done to reduce tinnitus, with no reliable 'cure', once other factors have been ruled out, your healthcare professional may advise self-management. Whilst this can be frustrating, there are things that can help you live as well as possible with these symptoms, one of which is mindfulness: 


🛎 8-Week Mindfulness Courses

Mindfulness for Health and Mindfulness for Stress are evidence-based, 8-week courses teaching mindfulness and compassion practices in an accessible, beginner-friendly way, with an emphasis on either managing stress or chronic health conditions.

These are offered on a sliding price scale based on what you can afford, with a limited number of 'pay-what-you-can' places on each course.

These courses are trusted by our community. In recent feedback from 250 course participants, 98% felt they gained something of lasting value, and rated the experience 4.8 out of 5 stars. Why not try it for yourself today? 

Explore Mindfulness for Health

Explore Mindfulness for Stress


🤔 Which course should I choose? 

Both courses will help you work with difficult experiences, including stress and resistance to things we do not want. The Mindfulness for Health course places a stronger emphasis on working with physical health challenges & symptoms, whereas the Stress course gives more time to anxiety and everyday stress. Both courses would be supportive for tinnitus, so choose one that best fits your schedule, or teacher preference!

Debbie Cane


🌀Tinnitus & Dizziness Collection

A self-paced additional resource, created by audiologist and Breathworks mindfulness teacher, Debbie Cane. This is designed to act as a support to the 8-week mindfulness courses, offering guidance & adaptions specific to managing symptoms of dizziness & tinnitus. Available via our Community of Practice. 

Throughout February 2026, you can save £10 on this collection. 

Usual price: £75 | February 2026 price: £65

Explore the Tinnitus & Dizziness Collection here


💬 Free Discussion Board for Mindfulness & Tinnitus

Debbie Cane also hosts a dedicated Discussion Board, within our free Community of Practice platform, for people to share their experiences of mindfulness and meditation for the management of dizziness & tinnitus. 

Join the Discussion Board here


💙 Tinnitus UK - Charity with Support & Resources


📞 Helpline: 0800 018 0527

🔗 Website: tinnitus.org.uk

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Author: Shannon Phillips

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