A valuable aid for stress and anxiety
Besides the clinical evidence, various scientific researches have validated the Tomatis method as an effective technique in the aid of anxiety and depression.
In medicine and psychology, the term "stress" is given to any cause (physical, chemical, psychic, and so on) capable of exerting upon the organism, through a prolonged action, a harmful stimulus, consequently provoking its reaction. By the same name is indicated also — and it is in this form that the term is known — the psychophysical response to stressful stimuli. Each person, moreover, responds in a different manner to these stressful stimuli. Some subjects do so with anxious manifestations that may be of a physical kind, such as the increase of the heart rate, stomach disturbances, sweaty hands, and so on; others, instead, through psychological symptoms that may comprise feelings of unease, worry and nervousness. It is normal to experience anxiety in one's own life. If, however, this experience has a significant impact upon the person's life, it is possible that he comes to suffer from an anxiety disorder.
Tomatis and anxiety
The programme with the Tomatis method, as an aid for anxiety, concentrates upon two significant areas involved in the emotions.
One of them is the thalamus. It is a nervous mass situated at the subcortical level, the receptacle of all tensions, above all those provoked by relational problems. When the thalamus is overloaded with tensions, it offers an excessive resistance to new information, so as to prevent it from reawakening the old traumas. This entails, however, that the information risks reaching the cortex in an incomplete manner. The filtered sounds, fortunately, have the capacity to traverse the thalamic barrier and to reach the cortex, vivifying it thanks to the strong presence of high frequencies and the scarcity of emotional semantics. This produces an increase of vigilance and a reawakening of consciousness. The thalamus, no longer acting as a barrier, allows the frontal zone of the cortex to be inundated with stimuli, thus giving the subject the possibility of giving the initial problems their real dimension. As a consequence, there will be a slackening of the physical and psychic anxious manifestations. This reduction of "tension" is aided by another important action of the Tomatis method upon the other significant area for the emotions: the autonomic nervous system, or ANS.
The autonomic nervous system is constituted of two parts complementary to each other:
- the sympathetic system, which has the task of managing the response actions in the presence of stressful factors. For example, in the case of an attack, action or flight
- the parasympathetic system, which acts upon the recovery of energies through sleep, rest and the digestive function
We saw earlier that a branch of the parasympathetic system, the vagus nerve, reaches as far as the tympanic membrane, thus making acoustic perception a sensitive pole for neurovegetative regulation. The improved tympanic tension obtained through listening training produces an attenuation of the vagal excitation, inducing reflexively a rebalancing between the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system, which will come to be reflected positively upon the organic and emotional manifestations of anxiety, reducing or eliminating them.
The clear and improved perception of the high frequencies and the vagal regulation are the two most important — though not the only — points of impact of the work with the Electronic Ear upon anxiety and our emotional balance. One must not underestimate that an improved perception of oneself and of the external world allows our nervous system to perceive the environment as less aggressive and dangerous, significantly reducing the automatic responses of the organism's setting under tension in the absence of objectively stressful factors.
The benefits of the sessions with the Tomatis method upon anxiety may be synthesised as:
- an increased relaxation response
- an improvement of emotional balance
- a reduction of the symptoms correlated with anxiety
- a greater openness and an improved reactivity to the other therapeutic interventions, if necessary
Research carried out in clinics and university institutes has demonstrated the efficacy of the Tomatis method in the reduction of the anxious state.
Professor Du Plessis of the Department of Psychology of the University of Potchefstroom in South Africa studied the impact of the re-education of listening upon 20 anxious university students. Half of them received 30 hours of sessions with the Electronic Ear. The other half was the control group. At the final test, the level of anxiety of the Tomatis group had decreased in a statistically significant manner, while it had not changed in the control group. Moreover, the score of the "Purpose in Life" test, administered together with the anxiety test, had increased significantly in the Tomatis group, whereas it had decreased in the control group. A follow-up at a distance of 14 months showed that the Tomatis group had maintained its reduced level of anxiety, and that of self-realisation had increased significantly. No change was detected in the control group.
The phenomenon of the diminution of anxiety and the relaxation effect obtained thanks to the Tomatis sessions were also studied among groups of pregnant women in the maternity wards of the hospital of Vesoul and of the Foch hospital of Suresnes in France. In the two maternity units, the rate of anxiety, measured with the Hamilton anxiety rating scale, decreased in a very significant manner following the Tomatis sessions.
Dr Klopfenstein, head of the gynaecology service of the University Clinic of Vesoul, who directed the research, reports in his conclusions that the Tomatis method diminishes the level of anxiety of women in labour, with a direct effect upon dilation and upon relaxation. The birth is simpler and quicker, and the women feel better with themselves and with their body.
Tomatis and depression
Depression is a lowering of the tone of mood due to various causes. It is judged not normal, and therefore of psychiatric competence, when it is of excessive intensity and duration, or when it presents itself in circumstances that, according to good sense, do not justify it.
Just as psychology and psychiatry give an explanation of the difference between melancholy and depression, so Tomatis, starting from the clinical observations carried out on thousands of patients, delineates a description of the two disorders from the audio-psycho-phonological point of view.
Depression, for Tomatis, is characterised by:
- lack of energy
- voice without modulation
- frequencies of language disinvested in favour of the low frequencies that stimulate the vestibule (the body)
- poverty of thought
- preoccupation with the body and hypochondriac preoccupations
- empty thought
- social withdrawal
- poor posture
- difficulty of concentration
- over-investment of sexuality
Melancholy, on the other hand, for Tomatis is characterised by:
- excess of energy
- high-pitched voice
- the zone of language disinvested in favour of the imagination
- delirious thought
- predominance of thought without link to the body → delirium
- absent body
- difficulty of concentration
- disinvestment of sexuality
The explanation Tomatis gives of depression is not so far from that of the classics. For him, the depressive is an unbeliever in language: it passes him by, he constantly answers "yes, but" and "I". The depressive is "deaf" in the sense that he no longer has enough cortical recharge to relativise all that is in the thalamus. He is in the situation of one whose affective reserves are polluted by an excess of information that he cannot manage to disentangle. In order for it to reach consciousness (the cortex), the information that goes from the cochlea to the cortex must pass through the thalamus. The filtered sounds traverse the thalamus and reach the cortex, acting as stimulators, permitting a taking of oneself in hand. In this sense the filtered sounds can act positively both in cases of melancholy (relativisation of the affects) and of depression (cortical recharge).
Research carried out at the Department of Psychology of the University of Potchefstroom in the Transvaal has shown how the Tomatis method may be a valuable aid in cases of depression. In particular, a study by Botes on three depressive patients showed, after the audio-psycho-phonology sessions, a higher score on the S.A. Wechsler Intelligence Scale, a reduction of depression on the Beck Depression Inventory, an improvement of interpersonal relationships, of self-control and of self-esteem on the TAT and on the Rorschach. This study also showed the importance of the listening test for the preparation of the programme best suited to the specific needs of the patient.