Not Coping. Thinking of Ending It All.

I can't any more . This t the way it's changed and got louder with several tones in each ear has ground me down. Knowing I caused it crushes me. I've a family, a 3 yr old beautiful girl and a baby boy of 4 months. After a difficult birth things went haywire and I became obsessed with mastubating which then caused tinnitus. Knowing I've caused it, brought my family down and having to live with the noises is too hard .
How can I ever be happy for them and for me with this?

 

Penelope it's too soon to know if it's permanent, have you tried putting on music all day long ?

 

Dear Penelope! I believe recently Tessa wrote that T is caused by spinal leaking? In this case this could be the cause and perhaps the masturbation was just a trigger? Do not blame yourself - it is not your fault. Also, even if it was from the masturbation you didnt know that it could have caused T - so it is definitely not your fault. Your children love and need you. I believe better times will come for you. Is there perhaps a local clinic where you could go and speak about your troubles to a trained professional?

 

Thanks for replying, I'm just so low. I'm having cbt and have a crisis team in case of emergency which my husband found from doc referral today . I just see no escape and since it's got worse it's so hard. I hate all the things i used to love - silence, sleep, my cosy bed, relaxing .... I know my children need me but I so awful to be this wreck around them that I feel they'd be better not to see me like this . When I was leaking spinal fluid after the birth if my baby, I had a generator noise in my head for 3 days and echo hearing until my leak was diagnosed nd repaired with a blood patch. All the noises went, my hearing returned to normal and I was so happy. I should have left it there. Instead I got anxious about my body from the blood patch and had an mri scan. Following that , I started to have panic attacks and then depression and began pleasing myself as I was a ball of mixed up emotion. Stopping breast feeding messed up my hormones too so I think I felt redundant and was trying to replace that oxytocyn hormone some way. Crazy times......

 

I am glad your husband is supporting you. Maybe he could with some therapy as well? I know how you feel. My T is probably not as bad as yours but I also panic and cry every day for several hours. But I have a strong belief that life will go on no matter what. I also beat myself up because in my case a major contributor was me myself (loud Mp3... ) but blaming ourselves is only gonna make it worse! We all make mistakes. Life is unpredictable and we never know what will come. Suffering is not always logical - it is often the good people who suffer the most. All we can do is hope for the best and live one day at a day. Also, emotional stress is a big triggerer for T. Im sure that if you start to calm down you will feel better. Maybe you could benefit from some sleeping pills and sedatives as well (the ones which do not make T worse). Remember - you are not alone. It is not only the T sufferers who feel for you but also millions and millions of people with conditions just as bad.
Also, maybe camomile tea might help? Calms down the nerves, contains no caffeine.
We are here for you Penelope and we think about you.

 

Thank you Stina and Karen. Words and your time to reply are very appreciated.
Just in the thick of everything. I had started to habituated to the milder noise before it spiked . Set back and devastated.

 

Yes music and noise essential. However I don't want to band aid it too much...

 

Im glad you are feeling somewhat better. It is necessary to go through the different stages of emotions and speak about them - i guess thats the process of habituating. Im no expert but in medicine they say that strong painkillers are less damaging for the body than the pain itsself. Therefore I dont think that listening to music while you are upset is in anyway bandaiding Give yourself some time to recover.

 

Thank you

 

@Penelope33 : It sounds like you have post-partum depression. I know it's a taboo topic among new mothers but you need to seek help for this. It can and will pass with a bit of help. If you had a doctor you saw during pregnancy they should be able to assist you.

 

I agree with Liesel. Consult with doctors and treat the post-partum depression which can complicate things. Your tinnitus being so new you are now in the 'shock and trauma' stage of tinnitus suffering, which is the first and most difficult phase. You are reacting in the 'fight or flight' mode and your nerves are controlled by the limbic system which can amplify our emotional suffering, that things look or feel much worse than what a normal person perceive for the same stimuli. During this phase of suffering, the brain is often having distorted thinking, something called 'cognitive distortions' in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Here is a list of the common cognitive distortions:
http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153

During our suffering, the mind can be distorted to think that the tinnitus is a catastrophe (called Castastrophizing), or that we blame ourselves for the misfortune (Blaming or Personalization), or focussing continually on one bad thing to exclude all other good things (Filtering), etc. etc. You may want to check out more about this so you know that your situation may not be so bad as the distorted thoughts seem to paint it.

It is prudent to give the tinnitus some time to habituate, keep calm, relax a bit and hopefully your nerves are back to normal. Then you can make more sound judgement of the situation at hand. Tinnitus is beatable if not curable (as yet), and there are many people who suffered very severely and then got well, like me.

 

There is no reason why you shouldn't use whatever means you have available to help you get over the rough patches. Music and noise help take the focus away from tinnitus. Lots of people have low points regardless of whether it's due to tinnitus or because of other issues. Whether it's counselling or support from family or friends or it's a case of healing yourself it shouldn't matter how you get there but that you do get there.

 

I wish is was just depression and not t I had to deal with . I would have been able to be treated . I can't take the noises since they spiked. It's like my actions of self satisfying has brought them all out and new tones too . Praying for habituation

 

do not ever blame yourself, that is the worst thing to do - you got a disease and it was not your fault. have your blood pressure checked, and even you can take some hormones that will make you not want to do anything sexual at all, just ask you doctor. Play constant quiet levels of music, especially New Age type music, and CD of Restful Rain. You will definitely be fine. right now it is very rough, and for me 4 months ago was very rough and I also thought I would be in a pine box very soon. so you need to mentally "accept" that you have a disorder, that is the way it is going to be, and you will learn to train your brain to habituate to it. I use "notched" music, which I find works well with me. you can find "notched" music on the treatment forum here, and on the internet.

 

I really hope T gets better for you, you seem like a very sincere person that has been wronged by our imperfect body. Stay strong, coming from me this sound silly I know, my mood can range from suicidal to meh in the course of a few hours.

 

Penelope,

Time is the great "healer" for those of us with intrusive, bothersome tinnitus. It is a "healer" in the sense that you will become accustomed to it, and pay it no attention whatsoever. The vast (and by vast I mean an overwhelming majority) of tinnitus sufferers reach a point where they are habituated to the sound and most consider it to not be an issue in their lives. I have been to that point before in mine. You just need to give it time! When you first have tinnitus, it seems like the world is caving in, nothing will ever be the same, all hope is lost, etc. You find it hard to believe that you will ever be able to live a normal life comparable to yours before the T. The truth is, almost everyone gets to that point where they are not concerned about tinnitus. Of the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have tinnitus, only a very small percentage has a difficult time adjusting to the sound. The beginning is the hardest part though. Keep that in mind and hang in there. Keep yourself busy with those children of yours, and you'll be surprised one day when you realize you don't give a damn about your tinnitus.

 

Thank you all for your replies, means a lot to me. I'm trying to take all the positive suggestions on board. Makes me upset that just one month ago when t was not too bad and only in one ear I was able to sleep without sound machine on and now it spiked in having to play music loud and cling on to husband for dear life.

 

How are you doing?

 

Hi there, you are is lovely thanks for checking in on me . I'm doing not great but not bad if that makes sence. Trying to be happy around my children but eves and night is the worst time. Trying to be busy too , doing all the things I should have been doing instead of what I did to cause this terrible tinnitus :-(

 

Keeping busy is probably the best remedy I can imagine that a screaming baby will do that for 48/7! Btw - I read somewhere that the sound of a baby crying could reach up to 110 (!!!) decibels.
Im sure in time when the stress levels go down you will start to feel a lot better.

 

Hi @Penelope33 , not sure if you're still around on here, but I just wanted to say that I also had a blood patch for a presumed spinal leak, as I'd had a chronic headache for a few months at that point, which no drugs touched. My tinnitus came on immediately after the procedure and has 3 different tones. It's so loud and high pitched even traffic noise doesn't block it out.
So I think it might have been your blood patch that caused it, I'm sure you didn't cause it yourself so don't beat yourself up about it. It's a pretty harsh procedure, well mine was anyway, felt like an explosion when the fluid was pumped into my head.
I also ended up with severe burning face and teeth pain on the same side as the tinnitus, which no drug takes away unfortunately.

 

Thanks Karen,
My face and teeth nerve pain is near enough constant, but just recently due to trying yet more new drugs I'm finally getting some relief from the original headache, the pain isn't anywhere near as bad as it was. Nothing totally takes it away, I haven't been pain free for over a year now. It's mad, before this happened to me I never knew there was pain that couldn't be helped with a drug. It's like the burning feeling of root canal, but in every tooth and my face. And the tinnitus is also a constant deafening reminder.

I've been through a lot of doctors, it's a long story. Part of me wishes I'd just left it all alone and stayed with the original headache. Been through a few epilepsy drugs with terrible side effects, some of them have stayed with me. I now shake loads and look like I have Parkinson's because of one of them, I hope it's not permanent but it's been months since I stopped taking that particular drug.

Sorry that was a bit long... It really has destroyed my life though, just over a year ago I was an active girl in my 30s, spent most of my weekends away in my little camper van. Now I'm practically housebound.
And it all started with a minor bump on the back of the head...a silly accident. Very scary how something so small can change everything.
Kelly

 

YEESH, @65vwbus ... it scares me to read this! I'm in the middle of visits to a neurosurgeon, who says I may have a spinal column leak. I have to go back in November for another MRI, and if things look the same or worse he's going to test my spinal column fluid pressure. I already have multi-tonal tinnitus and hyperacusis, plus fibromyalgia. So you would say now, from your experience, stick with the headache and leave well enough alone??

Wishing you all the best and hopefully healing,
Della

 

Hi @Della, sorry to scare you!
No, I wouldn't say leave it alone. I think he's doing the right thing suggesting to check the pressure first. In my case, my spinal fluid pressure wasn't checked before pumping more fluid into my brain, and my MRI didn't show any sign of a leak.
If you really do have a leak and there's clear evidence it will be the best thing to do. Don't live your whole life in pain if you can help it, it's not nice.

 

Hi @Karen my first doctor ditched me soon after, another couple of doctors said I'd never had a leak in the first place...
Apparently, sometimes when you bump your head it can set off a pain cycle in the brain that just can't switch off. I guess it's kind of like tinnitus really.