TL:DR
How setting up a new phone shows that letting go of long-held habits offers radical tinnitus relief (and helps make other helpful life-changes)
I got a new phone in December. In a perfect display of procrastination it took me at least 3 weeks to psych myself up to switching from my old phone to this new one. I was not looking forward to this process.
I’ve switched from a Samsung to a Pixel, so I’ve been facing a double whammy: getting to know the new phone and transferring my life from one phone to another.
It didn’t go well.
From the off, things did not happen in the order Google said they would. Immediately my tech hackles were up.
I started huffing and tutting and chuntering to myself as I tried a million different ways of making the thing happen that was supposed to happen. My husband wondered in a hopeful voice whether I might want to do whatever I was doing in a different room. My dog slunk (slinked?) under the coffee table.
I gradually became aware of my posture; hunched over as I stared at the two phones that should have been talking to each other, but were stubbornly incommunicado. I noticed my neck ached, my jaw was tight, and my teeth clenched. My breathing was shallow (and, in truth slightly panicky!).
When I was working as a corporate solicitor my team took the Belbin test of team roles. My scores showed me to be a “completer-finisher”.
One of the attributes of a complete-finisher is that, as the name suggests, they are very focused on completing projects. In a team situation, this might show up as holding team members accountable to deadlines and be very useful. In a personal situation, for me at least, it shows up as a strong need to finish what I started. And that isn’t always helpful.
With my entire being I wanted – no, needed – to sit with these two phones as long as it took to make sure everything was transferred across, and the new phone was ready to use. And yet my body, with its pain and shaky breathing, was telling me very clearly that I needed to take a break.
It was stalemate.
Until I remembered that this desire I had to stick with the job in hand until it was finished was a habit that I could choose to follow…or not.
So I unstuck my bum from the sofa and made a cup of tea (an Englishwoman’s answer to any tricky situation!). As I pottered around the kitchen I could feel the tension draining from my jaw and my neck, and my breathing become deeper and steadier. Brew in hand, I was able to face round two with the phones with equanimity rather than rage.
I had a lot of content I had to transfer from one phone to the other – and most of it I had to do manually.
My initial reaction was screaming frustration. What an enormous waste of time and effort when there were much more interesting things I could be doing! But as I started to download my apps onto my new phone I started to gain a new perspective.
Because I had to download these apps, and add contacts manually, this gave me a choice. I could try and replicate my old phone as planned, or I could think more carefully about what I added to the new phone.
Tempting as it was to enter all my contacts into my new phone “just in case” I paused at each name and number and made a conscious decision whether this person needed to be in my phone. In a process that was liberating and, at times, sad. I didn’t transfer details of the many people I hadn’t been in touch with for a while. That included my Dad who died in 2022, which was really hard. But the time felt right to remove his number.
Next, I reviewed what apps were useful to me right now. Among the apps I chose not to download is Facebook, even though I use it for my Hearing Coach account. It’s not unusual to find me posting on my Hearing Coach social media at 9 or 10 at night. And that’s not healthy. When you run your own business and work from a home office, boundaries between home and work become increasingly blurred. A good portion of that is through habit. Contrary to what my brain tries to tell me, I don’t actually need to be posting on work social media at that time of the night!
How does all this translate to tinnitus relief? When we’re trying to manage the mental and physical challenges that come with tinnitus it can be easy to get trapped into habits that served us well in the past. Suppressing our fear and emotions is a classic habit that some of us have, endlessly distracting ourselves is another, and heading down research rabbit holes in a desire to learn as much as we can about our situations is yet another. All of these are habits we can change. But how?
Awareness is key to tinnitus relief. Practising mindfulness helps us to notice our thoughts, emotions and behaviours. When we pay attention to what we are doing, thinking and feeling we can a) recognise whether they are helpful and b) work on changing them if they are not.
Is it time to let go of those habits, and any others that don’t offer tinnitus relief? Have you noticed any habitual ways of thinking that are making things worse, not better? Or any habitual ways of behaving that you no longer like in yourself?
I am NOT a fan of New Years resolutions. Tinnitus can be stressful enough without adding more pressure! But maybe we can find a little bit of space in our lives to pause and ask ourselves whether there are some habits we could leave behind.