Any Others with Reactive Tinnitus / Hyperacusis Watch Movies on Mute?

I'm thinking of watching a movie tonight but it's going to be on silent so I'm just going to have subtitles on and read while I watch it with no sound on because my tinnitus is really reactive and competes with voices on TV so it's too distracting to watch with sound.

It might not be as enjoyable without sound but I miss watching movies.

I get no physical pain but I hear reactive tinnitus and hyperacusis are connected.

Anybody on here with hyperacusis or reactive tinnitus that watch TV or movies with sound off and only read subtitles?

 

I often watch movies without sound because the movie sound often sounds weird and the voices off.
Also, in some movies, I can hear the voices, but the background music just rasps in my ears.
The tinnitus rarely interferes with the movie, however the hyperacusis has increased in the last year and I often have to watch with only subtitles.
I really hope you find a comfort zone with this.

Jai

 

Nah I just browse Reddit all day.

 

I used to watch movies with sound on, even with very bad hyperacusis. At that time I could understand perfectly what was said setting minimum volume, but the soundtrack or sound effects would be bothersome, so I would just mute for a brief moment.

Over the years I developed some hearing loss and now I watch the movies with sound but also with subtitles on, because I can miss parts of the dialogue, or conversations can be masked by noise or sound effects, or overlap and make me lose track.

 

Some are worse than others. I've been watching Lost recently and what really drives me mad is the orchestra which the show was so proud of, blaring dramatically at the end of every scene. The trombones were the worst! So I often watch that with next to no volume and subtitles, or with my finger over the volume control.

 

I have been bothered with reactive Tinnitus since onset of my tinnitus 3,5 years ago. It varies from day to day but has gotten worse and worse with time. I cannot say that I am suffering from hyperacusis

For example driving my car has become a pain lately as tinnitus reacts quickly and stays loud for a long time afterwards. I also have issues watching TV, longer phone conferences (as my job consists of a lot). It also reacts quickly on physical activity but here it disappears rather quickly after a couple of minutes rest.

Strangely for me it works much better watching TV/Movies from my laptop with headphones at low volume.

If I could get rid of this element from my tinnitus I would be at a much better place

 

I agree with Bjorn, that if the reactivity part went away it'd be much easier to cope with the regular tinnitus. I feel I'd actually be functional. I can't work or do anything because of it now. Social life is completely dead and I haven't opened my mouth to talk to anyone in a month.

It is depressing that I'm in my 30s and I've had to resort to watching 1920's/30's silent films, because I don't feel like I'm missing anything when watching them. It's very difficult for me to watch movies without sound while following the captions. I googled films without dialogue and watched All is Lost recently, so that was a nice treat and wish there were more recent movies like that which I haven't seen already.

 

As someone who once aspired to become a film composer, it sickens me to the core not being able to watch a movie without sound. I therefore don’t want them anymore at all. The most I’ll watch are captioned video podcasts or anything else educational, such as documentaries.

 

I've been watching a lot of shows on mute since my condition has deteriorated. Sometimes I do listen on low volume, when I'm more confident, and the spikes are less severe.

It's rather funny when you've watched a show on mute from the beginning and imagined the voices in your head, and when you listen afterwards it's like totally contradictory to what I had imagined.

 

Do fan noises spike your tinnitus while asleep and wake you up? It seems I have to cover my ears when sleeping.

 

I don't watch anything without subtitles. As for the volume, it just goes up, down and on mute sporadically throughout the film/movie (for the Americans)/tv show. That's why I prefer to watch TV on my own, I'd drive a normal person up the wall.

Also, thank god I love foreign films (making a reference back to the subtitles comment there ).

 

What kind of sounds do you have going on in your ears?

 

Hmmmm, not sure how to answer that really. For me I've found the best way to cope is to no longer monitor or pay attention to it.

But to the best of my ability: I have reactive tinnitus that's bilateral and multi-tonal on both sides. Far worse and incredibly intrusive in my left ear, and not particularly bothersome in my right.

Reason for this is: the right ear is just a not-too-unpleasant hissing with some morse code interspersed, while the left ear is a complete cluster f*ck of loud seashell noises and someone playing those stupid glasses filled with water, scraping the rims with their finger, but being too incompetent to play more than one glass.

 

Lol, I just realised you asked @Stacken77 this question, but why not have two answers anyway @Matchbox!? Just for the hell of it.

 

I sleep with earplugs, so I don't listen to a fan. But I can say that a fan would spike me up severely.

In the left ear, I hear a lower frequency pure tone and a weird higher frequency oscillating sound, both of which sounds incredibly close to the ear. As for the right; a sound which transitions between a saw and a old telephone ringing.

The right ear is by far the most difficult to handle. It is rather loud in silence, but I can usually fall asleep without any meds. Pretty much any sounds spikes all tones up for hours, so I'm forced to listen to it 24/7. I know that there are those that have a much worse baseline, as a 30 dB fridge humming masks most of it, but the reactivity(not to mention hyperacusis) is what's making this debilitating.

 

All good. Everyone has their own brand, but the similarities between causes is what I'm curious about for diagnosis reasons.

If everyone with noise-induced versus hydrops versus otosclerosis could be compared, maybe what it "sounds" like would finally matter to doctors.

I seem to be some quirky salad of a mix of your two noises wise.

 

One thing to note is that I've developed these sounds over time since my initial acoustic trauma. At onset I only had a single pure tone in my right ear. But as I got hyperacusis, and suffered subsequent minor traumas, I've developed more tones that have come, gone and stayed.

I may be completely wrong on this assumption, but I got a feeling that a "hiss" is more related to cumulative noise exposure over time, while a more tonal tinnitus is more associated with an acoustic trauma incident.

 

Hey, this is such an interesting theory. Can't imagine how you connected the dots leading to it... unless you've been collating data on each individual sufferer here at Tinnitus Talk (if this is the case, I take my hat off to you).

But yes, in my case this sounds very plausible: you see the quite easy listening "hissing" started in my right ear when I was around the age of 14 and became more prominent as I got older (with every live music event I attended). The extremely intrusive tinnitus in my left ear on the other hand, began after a particularly bad ear infection when I was 21.

So just wow at how on the money your theory is (in my case). (Had to change my rating of your post from "agree" to "genius" I'm afraid.)