@tniuf It took me about 3 months to not care about tinnitus even though I still hear it throughout the day. I don't know if other afflictions take attention away from the previous ones. Terminal cancer might be so much worse by comparison that it adjusted my frame or reference.
I hear people say all the time here that they wish they had their older tinnitus back but I bet they said it was bad in the beginning. I will tell you that these techniques got me to stop caring about severe back pain and I did not have all this other crap back then.
I had a bad spike in the middle of the night that terrorised me, I was still in shock the next morning as I struggled with it the entire time from the moment it woke me up. I was horrified, how do you handle situations like this? I tried to put something to listen to in the hopes my brain will reduce it but it didn't work.
I remind myself that this will not hurt me, that my mind has made up these sounds and that this spike like all spikes will go back to baseline. I must remain calm.
More sound for me makes it worse so I protect up and then go work on a project with a positive outcome. The work distracts me and then every spike is associated with a positive outcome
I also think back to anything that may have caused this so I can avoid it. Foods, medicines, stress, sleep, etc.Is there something in your routine that you can modify to help?
It can be hard, these sounds can be shocking but I try to relax, accept them and tell myself that I can make this less important. I visualize what I want in life a lot, working towards that makes this less important
@tniuf night time can be hard but I just get up and get to work on something but I can go without sleep more than most people. It’s hard to ignore sometimes that’s why I try to give my focus something positive.
This last part may not be for everyone but it’s me. Sometimes I think oh there you are my friend what’s up (got that one from my brother), other times when it’s being cranky I think ya fuck you, you can’t have my good day today, you will not be important to me. Every time you flare up I will accomplish something.
Lastly, one thing I thought a lot about in the beginning was how do people flock to live in a big noisy city like New York. Jackhammers, construction, yelling, etc. it’s because they love the city so much that they push the noise into the background and make it unimportant. They can make loud annoying sounds that they have no control over unimportant. Then so can I
I know they don’t have pain hyperacousis but some “regulars” can’t sleep in a room with a ticking clock never mind all that city noise and yet others are like, what noise? That mechanism inspires me
Like that scene in the Blues Brothers where the little apartment is right next to the elevated train tracks. Well before Carrie Fisher blew it up anyhow.
These spikes are not really caused by something, the only thing I can think of is stress. It's basically just the brain amplifying the signal in the middle of the night, as it's monitoring for sound stimulus. The only way to go down is by focusing our attention somewhere else like you describe; problem is at 4 in the morning while being sleepy it's hard to shake it off. So it gets magnified. .
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