Mary Schiller has had severe tinnitus since childhood with no cure. She learned to "listen past" the constant ringing, a practice that helped her reframe intrusive thoughts and dissolve PTSD-like patterns. She applies this to hearing your deepest desires: you have to listen past the mental chatter that obscures them.
Hello, bonjour, it's Mary in Paris but not in Paris. I am recording this video from Oxford. Oxford, where I am visiting family and really enjoying some lovely weather, which is nice and unusual, I have to say. But it's sunny and beautiful. And what's funny is that I had intended to talk about a completely different topic as I was coming outside to film this for you, and then I was suddenly inspired to talk about something completely different. So That's what I'm going to talk about, and I'll save the other topic for a different video for you. So, I have a condition called tinnitus or tinnitus. I'm not actually sure how it's pronounced, but it is a ringing in the ears. You may have heard this term before. I have what I think is a fairly severe case of it. I have 3 sounds in my ears all the time. I have a low hum that's sort of like the traffic I can hear in the background here. I have another sound that varies up and down between a whole note, if you're familiar with music. And I have another sound that's just a constant, constant ring, ring, ring, ring like that. And it usually corresponds to like my heart rate or my blood pressure or something because it will go faster. Like if I'm exercising or something like that. And then I have another sound that comes and goes mostly in my left ear that is kind of like a squeal. It's very annoying, which is why I'm glad it's not there all the time. It's kind of coming in and out right now as I'm talking to you. And it's really interesting because I didn't even know that I had this until I was in high school. I grew up thinking everyone had it. I didn't know there was anything weird about it. In fact, the only time that I realized this was I was in high school, I was having a conversation with my mom, and she mentioned that she had been diagnosed with this condition herself. And I said, really? Because I've had that ever since I can remember. And so, um, I've ever— I've never actually gotten officially diagnosed with it. I've had all of the normal hearing tests over my lifetime and everything, um, and no one ever asked me about it. So, you know, now that I'm getting older, I do think it might be getting a little bit worse. It's hard for me to tell sometimes, but, you know, I have learned an important lesson from having this condition, and that's really what I want to share with you in this message today, which is that I have learned to listen past it. So there's no cure, there's no real treatment for this ringing in the ears. You kind of have to learn to live with it. And I have to say, that lesson of listening past it has been extraordinarily important, and I'll tell you why. For many, many years, I had symptoms of what's called post-traumatic Post-traumatic stress disorder, and I had a lot of thoughts that were telling me that something was terribly wrong with me, that I was sick, that I had this incurable condition, not unlike the ringing in the ears, but except it was an emotional and mental one. And when I realized that all of the thoughts and feelings that I had that had been labeled PTSD were normal and fine and okay, and I could kind of listen past them and feel past them, all of those problems that associated with that just left me. I didn't have any more of those kind of PTSD episodes. They dissipated very quickly because I realized that there wasn't anything wrong with me. I was simply, simply labeling those thoughts and feelings a certain way that looked like they were problems. But they weren't problems. And that's exactly what tinnitus— tinnitus, however you say it— has taught me, which is that I can listen past it to the fact that there's actually nothing wrong with me. I may have those sounds in my head, but that doesn't mean that they are a problem. They don't have to be a problem. I can listen past them. I can hear past them. So many people come to me with the same question, which is, Mary, how do I hear what my deepest desires for my life are? How do I listen for that? And my answer relates to what I'm saying, which is you have to listen past all of those thoughts and ideas that tell you you can't hear them. That tell you there's something wrong with you if you can't hear them. You can hear them. You absolutely can. And not only can you hear them, but you are hearing them all the time. I've talked before about how most of us are afraid to listen to those deep dreams and desires because we think we might be disappointed if they don't happen, or We might even be afraid of what might happen if they did come to fruition. And my whole attitude around that is that you and I are fully equipped to handle anything. There is no challenge that is too great for us. There just isn't. We always know what to do. We always have an answer. We are never ever in a position where we don't have a million ideas for how to take care of something. So if you are feeling like there is a fog between you and your deep dreams and desires, you can listen and look past it. Just kind of allow yourself to relax and know that there's nothing wrong with you, and know that those deep dreams and desires and wants and goals and all those beautiful things are there. All you have to do is listen past what you typically are listening to. Listen through it. So like right now, I am listening to what is calling to me to say to you. I'm not listening to the ringing that is going on in my head. I'm listening to my heart and I'm speaking from there and I'm allowing that to come to the fore. And you can do the same. Just listen past what you're normally listening to.
