Tinnitus Since April 2021 After Exposure to Loud Noise from Headphones

Hi,

Time to face this and write down an introduction.

I have had tinnitus in the left ear since the middle of April 2021 after having been exposed to loud noise from headphones. I've been listening to headphones for years, and sometimes at way too loud volumes.

I'm in therapy for C-PTSD and part of my treatment involves video-editing to process some of my trauma. During April I was busy editing a video that was very helpful for me, but there were some parts of the edit that ended up way too loud. I was fixing that issue the night before I woke up with my tinnitus.

It's a constant static noise at a thankfully low enough volume, but it's also accompanied by what sounds like tiny air balloons popping at irregular intervals in my left ear. It sounds a lot like somebody is constantly holding a Walkie-Talkie to my ear.

I went to my ENT and they found that I had suffered some hearing loss and that my ear was infected, both of which went away after a few days. The tinnitus, however, didn't go away and I have been trying to adjust to it ever since. Thank god, it isn't as loud as some other people here are reporting, but it's enough to bother me. I stopped using my headphones and I am no longer exposing myself to too much artificial sound, as it sounds a little bit differently now and also can cause some pain depending on what I am listening to. I can sleep through for the most part, but I tend to wake up earlier. I no longer have those nice mornings, when you wake up after a good nights sleep and as a result tend to be a little more exhausted during the day.

I think I'm still in denial about everything and can't accept that this may stay for the rest of my life. I enjoyed listening to music and podcasts to wind down after a long day and have more or less stopped doing that, because it sometimes leaves me with a bit of pain in my ear and I don't want to make things worse. That balloon popping also tend to be the most frequent after listening to headphones. It's really distracting when I'm in a quiet environment and try to read or write something. I'm a software engineer and it also causes some concentration problems, but I think I can manage.

I still hope that this might be stress related, because I'm processing some though memories that I had been suppressing for the longest time and are causing emotional stress right now. I do have a great therapist that helped me decrease my anxiety and depression during the last year, so I'm strangely relaxed about tinnitus right now. I'm not suffering from too much QoL as it is, but I do want to experience total silence one day again. Also, my therapy involves sometimes listening to loud music and I hope I can still continue with that. It would be very unfortunate if tinnitus would force me to quit those particular sessions, as they provided me with much healing and relief from anxiety and depression.

That's it for now. It's obvious that nobody wants to be part of a community like this, but after reading a bit on the forums, I've noticed that there are a lot of great people here. So I'm looking forward to taking part in the discussions.

 

I hope you get better. Do you have hyperacusis?

 

Thanks, I hope so as well!

I'm not sure if I have hyperacusis. Sometimes if I listen to my headphones, my ear hurts for a while. I need to have tests at an ENT before I know for sure.

 

So, my tinnitus has changed.

There is now a constant high pitched ringing, which kinda drowns the static. The balloon popping is still there, but less frequent. I am just living with it for now. I'm too exhausted to deal with it right now. I'm just too busy with treating my C-PTSD.

Not sure how I will proceed. My tinnitus is definitely annoying, as I think that this change is caused by the stress of dealing with some bad memories and also by listening to headphones. Music and audio-visual art are a big thing in my life and getting lost through headphones is also something that I rely on. It's hard for me to give that up, but maybe it's for the best in order to avoid making things worse. I'm still good at not getting emotional about tinnitus, as I've built up a lot of resilience and coping mechanisms in therapy. Still, I hope this is just a temporary thing.