Compassion is an intention, a deliberate inner activity that requires effort. – Timothy Miller
I learned how to act compassionate as a kid, but it was always just that, an act. This week, I became more aware that I’ve got a bad case of CDS (Compassion Deficit Syndrome).
My wife Robbie got her hearing device today, part of the treatment for her tinnitus, caused by her brain tumor (non-cancerous acoustic neuroma). Her tinnitus has been driving her nuts for months now.
She’d been attempting to mask the noise in her head with a white-noise machine that makes a variety of soothing sounds: waterfall, rainfall, babbling brook, waves, etc. It helped her sleep and she began carrying it around the house during the day. About two months ago, she said to me “I wish there was a white noise machine that I could insert into my ear canal.” I jumped up and put the words “white noise” “insert” and “tinnitus” into the Google search engine and she soon discovered the work being done by the Alliance Tinnitus and Hearing Center in Atlanta.
She spent a few days there a week ago and came back extremely pleased and hopeful. The physician who heads up the clinic has suffered debilitating tinnitus himself and was very good at explaining and affirming her. He told her she’s lost the ability to experience silence, since her tinnitus is at 65 decibels, just a tad lower than the sound from a vacuum cleaner. Her brain can’t ignore it and for her to do any task requires extreme concentration, not unlike trying to write a letter and read a book at the same time. So she’s undergoing Tinnitus Retraining Therapy. It’s going to take 1-2 years before we’ll know if her tinnitus retraining therapy is effective, but for now, it really helps to have a plan that shows promise.
So it’s been hard for her to work, hard for her to be in a meeting or restaurant, hard for her to even talk for very long because the sound of her own voice aggravates her tinnitus. But it’s easy for me to forget what’s going on with her since she looks and acts normal. Put that together with my CDS and it’s easy for conflicts to come up.
This week it was me initiating a plan for a weekend dinner date with another couple, preceded by a bluegrass concert. She felt like a dud for objecting, but also felt that I really didn’t understand her condition, otherwise I wouldn’t have even suggested this. Of course, I thought I was being thoughtful, because she’s been wanting to go to more bluegrass music events for over a year.
We worked it out and she’s been surprisingly affectionate since. But the whole thing has made me wonder about compassion, so I’ve hauled out a couple of books with chapters on it. It ain’t going to be easy.