How a Chronic Disorder Exposed my Fears and Helped me Heal

A constant ringing has filled my head for the last two years, broken my sleep, shattered my sense of control, and stolen my peace. In the end, it revealed new life and possibility. This is that story.

In October 2023 I noticed a ringing sound in my ears at night, and in quiet moments at home. It was the same ringing in your ears that happens after you’ve been out somewhere loud. I ignored it. Inside, I ran from it because it scared me. What was this? Was it permanent? What could I do? Would it get worse? I don't know how to handle it. It became louder over the next few weeks, I began to hear it in the car and while working. Insidious fear was rising in me as the volume of the ringing sound also rose and filled my life. It was constant and persistent inside my head. What could I do about this? This wasn’t a broken bone I knew how to treat. This was something unseen, untouchable, inside me.

By Christmas 2023, the scary sleepless nights had begun. I would lie awake, unable to escape the noise inside my head, made worse by rising existential fear. Time slows when you are trapped in fear, suffering from something you cannot control. It felt like a torture device made of sound had been implanted in me and was being gradually turned up. Many nights I was still awake at 2am, the ringing deafening, my body exhausted, my mind on high alert. I felt alone in a kind of suffering no one else could hear or see. One desperate night I drove myself to the hospital. I do not remember the traffic lights, the drive, or parking. I just remember the utter exhaustion and desperation for peace. I waited for hours in emergency, and eventually I was given a bed, and fell asleep. Surrounded by noise and people, I finally rested. That was when I realised part of the fear was not just the sound, but from my reaction to stories I was telling myself. This was a huge surprise and very interesting to me.

🎯 Takeaway: Life has a way of cracking us open. Often, after we resist. In that rupture, we are able to meet parts of ourselves we have long avoided. Our problems are our gifts. Our obstacles are the way.

We Suffer Our Thoughts, Not Reality.

Amidst the fear, exhaustion, and endless medical tests—MRI, CAT scan, ENT, audiologists, GP, chiro, osteo—I remained curious about one thing. That night in the hospital, I finally slept. And when I called a friend in the middle of the night for support, just fifteen minutes of connection brought deep peace. Why was that? The sound had not changed, but I had. I began to look at how I was relating to the disorder, and more importantly, to my thoughts about it.

I noticed in moments of deep existential dread, it was not the sound itself that overwhelmed me, but my mind racing ahead, predicting the worst. Permanent damage. Never finding sleep or peace again. Constant struggle. These thoughts were so automatic, so constant, that I did not even recognise them as thoughts. They felt like facts. It took many frightening nights to begin to see them clearly, but once I did, I could take back some power. I moved into my heart. And in that space, when I truly surrendered, I touched moments of peace so deep they felt ecstatic.

I became aware of how I had been relating to the noise. My response had been fear, resistance, aggression, denial. Gradually, I softened each of these. As I did, the situation itself began to settle. This shift was profound. Even the word “problem” carried rejection and judgment. I began to see how much suffering comes from how we relate to our experience. While resistance still flared up at times, the inner war had eased. The symptoms would take months to shift, but the fear loosened its grip almost immediately.

It is one thing to read a quote or words like this. But if you have lived through something similar, you know exactly what I mean and how visceral it can be to learn these lessons directly.

🎯 Takeaway: It is not the experience that breaks us, but the stories we believe about it. When we learn to see thought as thought, not truth, we reclaim peace. It can take time and work to see this, but it is true.

Surrender Is Strength

At some point, I became aware that I did not trust my body to heal from this. I did not trust it to find balance, to restore itself. And deeper than that, I did not even trust life. I was highly suspicious of life.

But, I want to trust life and my body. To rest in them both and be at peace. So I did. I loosened my grip. I let go of the fear that had wrapped itself around every part of me. And I allowed myself to fall into the care of my body, into the intelligence of life itself. In those moments I learned to surrender something greater. Not better than me, but greater in scale. I decided to trust life, to trust the healing power of life, which runs through my body and my life. I surrendered. I surrendered. I let go.

This surrender did not arrive in one grand moment. It came through dozens of sleepless nights, ringing piercing through my skull, no relief possible, no pill exists, no surgery exists, there are hundreds of potential causes and all are medium to long-term at best. So, it's just me, the sound, and my fear. Parts of me wanted to leave my body. Some even said, “If I have to live like this, I am done.” But I stayed. I breathed. I placed my hands on my heart and I let the fear be there and let myself fall. Fall into life. I'd never done that before.

It looked like nothing from the outside. But inside, it was everything. It was life or death. I surrendered control to life. Let life hold me, and all that it entails... accepting cycles, blooming and fading, fragility, vulnerability. These are always present, but we try to iron them out. We try to stay younger, stronger. Cosmetic surgery, clothes, cars, titles. It is not wrong. It's part of our collective growing up and it's how we learn. I was learning a lot as I lay in my fear. And it was beautiful.

🎯 Takeaway: Letting go is not failure, it is strength. Trusting life softens the fight and reveals a deeper current already holding us. We can then powerfully co-create with life.

The Body Holds What the Mind Creates

I saw dozens of medical specialists. Nothing definitive from any of them. The one recurring theme was tension, especially in the jaw and surrounding muscles. But none of them had any real suggestions. Eventually, I found an osteopath who worked specifically with the jaw. Secretly, I hoped she would fix me. I wanted relief. I wanted saving.

It was fascinating to watch that in myself. How quickly I handed over power. How deeply conditioned I was to outsource healing, to assume I have no power. I was learning something much larger than how to treat a symptom.

She did not save me. But over the next 18 months, I became increasingly aware of the connection between my thoughts and the tightness in my body. The tension was not random. It followed the shape of my fears, my control patterns, my desire to hold everything together. Beneath it were beliefs I had never questioned: beliefs that I had to manage everything, carry everything, be everything, get it right, and that it was not safe to be myself. My nervous system had been bracing for decades. I felt deep gratitude for all it had carried me through. But now, it seemed my system had had enough and was speaking to me in undeniable ways.

Eventually I began to see the movement: thoughts appearing in my mind, then migrating into my body. I could literally see it happen, and still can. Beliefs I had carried for years were etched into my jaw, my shoulders, my breath, my posture. My body had been speaking all along. I had simply not known how to listen.

As my body softened, so did I. I began to relate to myself differently. Gentler. Slower. More honest. For decades I had been in a silent war, and this was my first real ceasefire.

🎯 Takeaway: Our bodies carry what our minds creates. When we begin listening to the body, we can reverse engineer the beliefs shaping our pain. We can track down to the root.

When the wound is willing, the medicine appears

Today, the sound is still faintly there. But it no longer defines me. I have even missed it a few times, almost afraid to lose it. The noise led me inward. It brought me to doors I had spent a lifetime avoiding, I still had to open and step through them but at least I wasn't alone. Doors to my body. To trust. To presence. To life. In hindsight, this medical fright was a profound spiritual process.

I would not wish this experience on anyone. But I would not take it back.

It brought me to a deeper truth: that healing is not about chasing answers, fixing symptoms, or waiting for something external to rescue us. It is about becoming willing. When I stopped resisting the pain and began meeting it honestly without trying to escape, reframe, or suppress it something shifted. I became available to healing.

There is an old saying, “When the student is ready, the master appears.” But what I have come to believe is "when the wound is willing, the medicine appears". This is a cornerstone belief in my coaching work, we always work with that's present at the surface. The medicine may not look how we expect. It might arrive as a difficult conversation, an unexpected ending, a diagnosis, or other events you would prefer weren't happening. But when we stop outsourcing our power and start holding our pain with care, life begins to move toward us. Precisely, lovingly, with what we need.

I now see my experience not as a punishment, but as a perfectly timed form of medicine. The sound, the fear, the unravelling, it has been nourishing and freeing. Not comfortable. But deeply nourishing. When we can hold our wounds in the light, when we stop turning away from them, something remarkable happens. We remember who we are. Not broken. Not wrong. Just human. And whole.

🎯 Takeaway: When we become willing to meet what hurts, life brings the medicine. Healing begins not by fixing, but by fully facing what is.