In this wide ranging and very hope-filled conversation about my work with tinnitus patients, I sit down with Louis Korczowski who is the CEO of Siopi, a new app designed to help tinnitus sufferers find new treatments.
Louis and I discussed many topics including:
- My personal struggles and journey with tinnitus and Meniere’s
- How and why I became a tinnitus coach
- The importance of medical treatment for any treatable underlying causes of tinnitus
- Why doctors say there is nothing you can do about tinnitus
- How support groups and googling tinnitus can sometimes make your suffering worse
- Powerless as the core emotional challenge of tinnitus
- What it means to habituate and why it can be so difficult to achieve
- The obstacles preventing successful habituation
- Why trying to ignore tinnitus often makes it worse
- Active vs natural habituation
- What percentage of people achieve natural habituation
- Why I believe every tinnitus sufferer can actively work to habituate and find relief
- Why doctors rarely ever talk about habituation
- The challenge of “relapsing” out of habituation
- The treatable physical causes of some types of tinnitus
- Patients falling through the cracks in the system
- My advice for new tinnitus sufferers
- A detailed breakdown of my habituation strategy
- How bothersome tinnitus closely resembles PTSD (and how tinnitus spikes resemble PTSD episodes)
- The challenge of coping with tinnitus spikes
- What progress with habituation looks like
- So much more!
