My Anxiety, My Tinnitus

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It does this.

Everyday.

No, it's not painful. Just annoying.

It's a constant reminder of a recent burnout, stress, and anxiety. Tinnitus

So I'm in between a rock and a hard place as they say. On one hand I have to provide for my family and eat everyday so I continue to try to work. Duhh. This constant workload is continuing to build up on me without any time for recovery. Most of the time I feel like I'm getting up for work because I have to not because I enjoy the heck out of it. Don't get me wrong, my job as an ESL teacher has it's moments and I enjoy helping people but I don't always feel gung ho about it. Then on the other hand I want very badly to go on a hiatus so that I can properly recoup my spirit, mind and body. (Dear Steem, please keep booming) I'm taking baby steps by doing these things now albeit very slowly. However, I know that at this point I'm not financially able to do so with a clear conscience. There's a sense of feeling trapped. 

"Yea, it's tough, so what...?"

                            

                                                   At least this is what it seems like

So What?

Normally I consider myself an overcomer and I've always found a way to keep going in spite of. But dang, this time around things feel different. All the stress and anxiety tends to really steal my thunder from time to time and in this round of life it has been more commonplace than I want it to be. To put it plainly I worry. I worry about many things but mainly I tend to worry about how my life actually will play out according to what my ideals are. I don't seek perfection in my life but I fight for what I believe in and when things are not going that way I tend to get very discouraged and frustrated. This leads to more anxiety and stress. Just being honest. Trust me I try to live in the moment and not think about all the stuff coming up in the next hour or the next day but it has gotten harder and harder to accomplish. I'm fighting now for sure but I have very little motivation right now to do so. It takes so much mental and sometimes physical energy to put myself into beast mode to handle the things I need to handle. As a matter of fact my very first post here on Steemit was about this.                          Burnout is a Mutha... 

Burnout is like a prison. You can leave your jail cell thinking "wow that's better" but you still have prison guards to contend with. Once you get passed the guards, you have to find a way to get through steel doors. Get through those and now were talkin'... wait there are more guards and they have weapons this time. Ok that was a bit harder to deal with but no more guards. Finally you have to climb  the 25 ft concrete and barbed wire wall over there just to make it out. You're free now... or so you think. You are being hunted and you are scarred from you're prison break wounds as a reminder of what you've been through. Yea that was a pretty traumatic experience.  

Lastly, do remember that there will be some to tell you to go through this experience all over so as to "live life to the fullest". 

 "Theatricality and deception are powerful agents to the uninitiated... but I am initiated" !

                                                         Even Bane gets it

Burnout is a multi-layered issue 

It happens to impact multiple areas of a person's life. I won't go into the other areas but the very reason I chose to open up about all of this was to discuss anxiety and tinnitus. I mentioned anxiety early but wait...does anyone else hear that?

Oh, I'm the only one that hears that.

Tinnitus. It's annoying. Sometimes it gets fainter depending on how much rest and relaxation I get. Other times it sucks because it is a constant reminder of what I had to go through and how it still impacts me. I've done numerous searches of the cause of my ears ringing and I've found that it's caused by stress, anxiety, or it could be a disease. I'm hoping it's not some sort of disorder but I haven't been to the doctor to do any kind of thorough eval. 

Once I went to a 24hr emergency center and I was told that I had an ear infection that basically caused fluid to fill in my ear. They told me this is what lead to the ringing. They wanted to inject me with some weird looking substance. Once the lady told me what was in the substance along with the appearance of it I said,  thank you but no thank you. 

So I did my best to take a holistic approach to the issue. I've done ear candling which, as much as I like having gobs of wax removed from my ear, didn't seem to help. And then enter ginkgo biloba which I thought would be just what I needed to stop my ears from ringing. Ummm... sadly I haven't noticed any results from it.

                                                           ginkgo tree                                                                                                                      extract tablets 

I really am trying to figure out what to do. Idk. Maybe it's just me. Like I said earlier I am taking steps to get my health back on track and hopefully over time this will solve the issue. If not I may need my ear drained of the fluid instead of allowing the fluid to leave on it's own. 

If this is something that will help you, you can also read my very first post The Beauty of Burnout.

-a human named Earl