How Stress and Burnout Cost Me My Hearing

Oman, 2010

We take our senses for granted—until one's gone.

Walking through my apartment in July 2009, I noticed that the normally raucous chorus of birds in the tree outside my window sounded muffled like an out of tune radio. I assumed it was the hangover from the night before until the light switch was something I felt but didn't 'hear'. Dread sank into my guts.

In the shower I waited for the familiar hiss of the water hitting the tray. That was replaced by a vibration I felt rather than hush of falling water I could normally hear. My own voice sounded far away and jagged. Already deaf in one ear, 'losing' the rest of my hearing was one of my deepest fears.

No doctor or specialist contemplated that stress could have been behind it. Hindsight tells a different story.

The Before:

I was a decade into my bid and proposal career and had recently switched industries. Eager to please, I continued working from A&E at the Melbourne Eye and Ear Hospital while waiting for that first diagnosis of sudden sensorineural hearing loss, which should have been a red flag.

My early career was defined by late nights, adrenaline-fueled sprints across Melbourne to a 'Tender Office' or mail room with minutes to spare after countless rewrites and a printer breakdown that habitually coincided with every major deadline.

I didn't see it as life in the fast lane then. The switch in gears from one industry to the next only ramped up the pressure when flights to Sydney were replaced by FIFO charters and long drives into the 'outback'. The stakes were higher, the days were longer, and my drive home more precarious given fatigue was more likely to get me than the few cars still on the roads that late.

I accepted stress as part of the game. It was the trade off for more money, a better title and the chance to do work that I absolutely loved. At the time I was outwardly living my best life. You've probably made the assumption that all my stress was work related, or that it was something about my work that was entirely responsible. It's never just work for anyone.

The pressure I felt was a confluence of things. It was the career I chose with its relentless pace, high cognitive load, unreasonable deadlines and the chance for adventure. It was also a relationship meltdown and sudden financial pressures. Any one of those is enough to test your nervous system, but we all know what happens when more than one sphere in our life starts spinning out of control.

Everyone has more than one thing happening in their lives, yet we mostly focus on what happens at work when we talk about stress and mental health.

The Fall:

Since my hearing returned gradually over the next three months, I put it down to a random event. But when losing and recovering my hearing became a semi-regular event between 2009 and 2012, it pointed to something else. No one had any answers.

I thought a new city would renew my focus and reset my life, but instead I ratcheted up the pressure with a move to Dubai where the stakes were higher, the deadlines less forgiving, and my work requiring that I go to active theatres of conflict and post-conflict humanitarian missions in some of the world's most dangerous places. No-one forced me into this career. I chose it, and I loved it, but the recurrent bouts of sudden sensorineural hearing loss became more frequent.

Each time it happened, I was thrown into a panic cycle of what-ifs and a deep fear of not being able to get hearing aids (my left ear deafness is incompatible with current technologies, so I worried about my right ear). I stopped going out because the sounds we take for granted—like vehicle engines, wind or background music turned into painful noise or overwhelming tinnitus, depending on the stage of the illness.

I struggled in meetings and conversations, and at its worst I'd wobble on my feet out of nowhere, off balance in every possible way.

This led to me over-indexing on my work, placing even more pressure on myself through a deep fear of losing the career I had painstakingly built. I worked harder, chased bigger goals and said 'yes' when I should have said 'no'.

The Turn:

Doctors had no answers, so I started to look elsewhere.

A meditation retreat in Bali cracked me open to a whole new world of self-care and exploration that sparked a decade-long quest down the proverbial rabbit hole. India took me deeper into my body through a month long immersion in yoga. I took courses and went on retreats in far away places like Peru and Guatemala, where I found new clues that fueled an almost endless search.

I didn't know where I'd end up, or what I'd discover, but I was prepared to do anything, and go almost anywhere that promised a new insight. Everywhere I looked, breath and breathing were woven throughout—hidden in plain sight.

The answer sought was a strength I was yet to tap.

The Rise:

Five years since my last loss/recovery, a test showed a slight increase in bone-conductive hearing in my permanently deaf left ear and normalised hearing in my right ear. One answer had come from Ayurvedic doctor in the lower Himalayas who shed light on the link between my work, my burnout and the toll it was taking on my body.

The quest I'd embarked on all those years before was more than a search for lost hearing, but that's a story you'll read in my memoir. I ditched the worst of the grind mentality from the work I pursued, and set stricter boundaries for myself. Getting civil partnered helped shift priorities too.

By 2020 I'd turned to breathwork and had qualified as an instructor, which I credit what people describe as my 'calm' outward appearance to a consistent practice. Breathwork on it's own is only part of the answer, but what I have learned shows me that it's the foundation of everything.

No breath, no life.

Correct breathing = better health.

Poor breathing = poor health.

Beyond the physiological, breathwork plays a major role in how we change and adapt. It's the edge of potential most people miss.

It's an edge you can discover too.

If you'd like to know more about breathwork can help, drop me a comment, send me a note, I'd love to hear your story and send you some simple techniques. If you're feeling courageous, drop into a Breath Mastery Lab throughout April - it's free.