A really big yes, is my answer to this question. So, so, so many of my private clients over the years have been women going through menopause, or perimenopause, and really facing changes within themselves, and within their body. And I think where neuroplasticity helps is when we use conscious neuroplasticity and the Rock Steady process, the Rock Steady program, the path is to pause and listen to the body with a sense of reverence and grace and loving awareness. And we’re listening in order to respond in a supportive way to the body. And that’s not just going to impact the vertigo and tinnitus symptoms or sensations, it impacts us as a whole person. So it impacts us with how we set our boundaries, and how we prioritize giving time to ourselves. It can help really nurture and nourish relationships in our family, and with our intimate partners. It can help us stand up at work and speak up for ourselves. So there’s been so many ways that these skills and tools help our behavior and help us understand our body and what we are wanting and needing as this new chapter in life is upon us.
I think what happens without neuroplasticity conscious awareness and without the Rock Steady skills and tools, my clients are often really burdened with old patterns and habits that may have worked okay and served them 10 years ago, but now they’ve outgrown them. It’s not working anymore. Their capacity and resources are feeling stretched. They’re no longer happy and perhaps they need to negotiate new agreements with themselves and with the people they’re living and sharing their lives with. So, it is a new chapter — we’re rebirthing into a new person. It’s a very exciting and beautiful time, especially if we give ourselves the space to listen, to pause, to respond, to support ourselves and above all, to bring a sense of loving kindness in, as we feel through those changes.
And that’s where we have a direct impact on our nervous system and the nervous system is impacting the release of hormones. So the more we can move away from the stress responses, the more we can get healthy, balanced hormones acting on our behalf while we rest, repair, digest, and investigate more of those pleasure pathways — which is a really big part of Module 4 in the Rock Steady program — the better off we’ll be in navigating these changes. So, it’s a pretty long answer. But as our body is changing during menopause, our nervous system is changing alongside it. Our hormones are changing — that definitely goes hand in hand with increases in all forms of symptoms, not just menopausal symptoms, but also anxiety, depression, chronic pain, tinnitus, vertigo — whatever’s lying there in the background is likely to amplify. Using the Rock Steady skills and tools to lovingly listen, respond, and support ourselves helps to tone down the nervous system, balance out the hormones, and help us think more clearly as we navigate a more graceful transition through menopause.
Here is a question from a community member, about tinnitus:
My tinnitus is very inconsistent, it varies in intensity and loudness, I take the no big deal approach but my question is, I wonder, will it ever completely leave my conscious mind, return to my auditory brain and quietly store away for eternity?
First of all, great job that you’re taking the no big deal approach. That is a really the core, the most important rock steady skill and tool to remove that emotional loading of your tinnitus. It’s totally normal that it’s inconsistent, that it comes and goes, that it changes intensity and loudness because all of that will change depending on what you’re doing, your circumstances, your situation, your mood, even what you’ve eaten or how much you’ve slept. There will be many biological factors that change the quality of the sounds we hear in our body.
The piece about your comment that I feel like is perhaps unhelpful for you, so I’ll bring it to your attention, is this ‘for eternity’ piece. What we see when people heal and recover from tinnitus using neuroplasticity, is that rather than the tinnitus sounds being locked in the front of their attention and their awareness, and them being present all the time, is that they learn to distract the brain and teach their brain to filter the tinnitus sounds out. And while technically the tinnitus sounds might still be firing in the background, it’s not in the awareness so they’re not hearing them — they’re not perceiving the sounds. And I think more and more moments of that will come to people who use these Rock Steady tools to resolve their tinnitus. But it doesn’t mean it will never, ever come back ever again.
So, this idea of eternity or needing rigid certainty that the tinnitus sounds won’t ever come back, it almost, to me, feels like saying, “Well, will I start my car one day and I just won’t hear the idle sound?” Well, when you start your car, there is sound. It’s like fighting reality. The body does make sound and it’s okay to hear that sound from time to time, but what we want is that hearing these body sounds is coming in and out of our awareness at a really healthy pace and that we’re not getting upset if it pops in, when of course it’s welcome and it’s normal. But we then want it to just as easily pop out again of our awareness. So, I think the overall answer to your question, I think, is yes, we can have a situation where it does leave our consciousness, it leaves our perception, it leaves our awareness, but it’s also okay if it comes back again. It doesn’t need to be for an eternity. It’s actually really healthy and normal to hear our body sounds from time to time.
Some tinnitus sounds are anatomical — they’re coming from movement within our musculoskeletal system, around our chest, shoulders, neck, jaw, teeth, and the temporal mandibular joint. And of course, within the ears themselves, we have small bones, muscles, and tendons. So, there is changing blood flow, contractions and relaxation of muscles and movements, and all of that can change the sound and mechanical sounds that are produced within the body and then perceived by the brain.
It’s very normal and it’s very common to have changing body sounds that can come and go in various positions. My recommendation would be to not worry about it. For sure, you can bring loving awareness, curiosity, and play to how your body sounds might be changing with different head positions or neck positions or jaw positions. But I certainly wouldn’t be overly worried about it, shaming it, becoming obsessively vigilant about it, etc. It is a phenomena, it does happen, and you don’t need to find meaning in it.
If you do notice any particular stressful areas that you feel you want professional support relieving stress throughout your head, neck, or shoulders, then that could be a pleasant experience for you, but it could also change the tinnitus sounds if it’s a part of your body that’s overworking and therefore creating more mechanical sound as a result of that excessive workload. The Rock Steady path and approach can be beneficial in meeting these sensations with a healing mindset, using neuroplasticity healing tools.
This is one of those questions which is akin to how long is a piece of string. I would say the earlier you get onto using Rock Steady style principles for healing and listening to your body and honoring where your body is at, the better. The symptoms your body is giving you is your body’s way of talking to you.
The sooner you move into that responsive, healing, neuroplasticity-based approach to life, the quicker things will resolve. That’s what I’m seeing. People who ignore their symptoms and develop hatred and fear and blame and rejection towards what they’re sensing and feeling in their body, their symptoms tend to get stuck and last longer, so there’s a longer recovery time if they recover at all.
So, if you’re feeling worried about your dizziness following a COVID vaccine and it’s just going on too long and it’s starting to become a bigger deal for you, early intervention is recommended.
Try the Rock Steady program and implement daily strategies that can reverse that panic and that catastrophe cycle, so that you can build a new normal. You can harness neuroplasticity, and you can really craft the kind of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual structures that you want to build on, using neuroplasticity. Whatever we want to feel, we build by feeling it more often, and that comes back to having a really clear intention and a clear strategy for how you’re going to resolve your dizziness.
As far as I know, that’s not really a question that anybody can answer yet, but one thing you could do is to tune into your body and listen to your body and ask, “Something’s not right for me. My body’s screaming at me. I’m hearing this tinnitus and I’m not enjoying it,” and asking your body physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, “Body, how can I support you? Body, what things can I do to help you feel safe? Body, what can I do to help you feel heard and listened to?”
So, we can’t necessarily control the 5G that’s outside of our control, but what we can control is our reaction to what we’re sensing and feeling in our world. By all means, if you feel that you really need to take a break from being in a 5G area, maybe take a weekend away and see how you feel. But really listen to your body and work to support what you can control rather than trying to externalize and blame things outside of yourself, which will very rarely lead to happy outcomes. Doing that puts us in a powerless position. But as far as I know, I haven’t heard anything about 5G causing tinnitus, so I can’t speak to that at all.
Look, everybody is so different. My instinct is to say no, but, I mean, maybe it’s possible for somebody out there. I think the better thing to do here would be to pause and ask your body, “Body, is caffeine serving me? How much caffeine is healthy for me?” For some people, having a cup of coffee a day is absolutely no problem, and for somebody else, they might have a severe reaction to caffeine where the body genuinely overreacts, and perhaps dizziness is one of the side effects of caffeine.
So, I think the question is not about caffeine, it’s about you and your body and learning to listen to the information your body’s giving you, because the symptoms you experience are your body’s way of saying, “Hey, listen to me. Something doesn’t feel right. I’m feeling dizzy, I’m feeling off.” So then we have to troubleshoot, and this is basis of the Rock Steady path. This is the Rock Steady process.
How can I pause? How can I take note? How can I be kind and listen to the information my body’s giving me rather than shame my body or ignore my symptoms and try and get rid of them? How can I use those dizzy symptoms as valuable information to figure out how I return to balance and how I really become that new normal and that better version of myself? These are all important questions to ask, to begin healing with neuroplasticity.
