7 Months After Onset, Today I Had My First Nightmare About Tinnitus

My tinnitus is a high pitched ringing at around 12.5 kHz that is normally masked in crowded places like restaurants and malls. I can hear it outdoors but my mind normally tunes it out and I can go for walks or ride my bike without a care about tinnitus, and after 7 months of habituation now it only becomes annoying in total silence.

But last night I had a nightmare in which my tinnitus was so extremely loud there was no escape from it. I was in some sort of venue with loud music and people chatting all around but I could somehow still "hear" the tinnitus... I didn't wake up from the nightmare, but I can feel I was definitely clenching my teeth during the night.

Is it normal to have nightmares about my tinnitus when I thought I was more or less habituated? I didn't have a single dream about tinnitus during my suicidal acute phase. In fact, sleep was my only escape from it back then. Why is this happening now?

The horror...

 

I don't think you should worry about it much.

For me it seems like, your mind is dealing with the trauma that tinnitus caused you in the acute phase.

Do you know the feeling when you are highly stressed for a period of time, you keep holding on, and when the stress is lessened and you could calm down, your body starts to behave weirdly. Maybe it's far-fetched, but I experienced it in and after exam periods. Like during finals, you keep pushing on, focus and concentrate, and when it's over and you could relax finally, then you get sick. Am I making sense?

I only had tinnitus in dreams two times. First I was exposed in my dream to a faulty speaker at a party which emitted a loud distorted sound, the other one was about a mall blowing up. Interestingly, both times I woke up to elevated fleeting tinnitus.

 

I think this goes beyond the tinnitus per se. In my teens I had a friend who one day, just out of the blue, decided to not speak to me any longer; we did not fight or anything, I think his mother deceived him into doing that. Anyway, after almost ten years I still have dreams about this person. And the last time (before now) that I consciously thought about him was maybe 8-10 months ago.

Despite the fact that you are more or less habituated, there is probably somewhere in your brain the echo of the terror you felt in the very beginning...

 

I think this is true, but honestly part of what makes me "habituated" to this ordeal is the hope that in 5-10 years it will be treatable, and I will be able to hear silence again during a good portion of my life and especially my young adult years.

Without this hope I would've already Dignitas my way out of this misery.

 

I believe that tinnitus will receive a significant scientific attention during the next years - also because of COVID-19. Few days ago, during the Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, hearing and vestibular disorders (including innitus) associated to COVID-19 were discussed. Unfortunately science is slow.