Does Anyone with Normal Range Hearing Feel Like They Can't Hear Over Their Tinnitus?

It is so hard for me to figure out what is tinnitus and what is hearing loss. My basic understanding has always been that the sound of tinnitus is basically a replacement sound for the amount of sound that you have lost.

More recently I have had times where I feel like my own voice seems muffled or not as loud and times where I feel like I cannot hear over the tinnitus. To me it feels like I have lost hearing but have had my hearing tested and it is still "normal". I can't figure out if this is because I only hear out of the one ear, if this is some sort of phenomenon with tinnitus, or if I am in fact losing my hearing.

 

My ears have been terrible for the last eighteen months. I felt like my hearing was up and down. To summarise, reactive tinnitus, tingling and blocked feeling in left ear, low hum in right. I have a 40db drop in left ear and a slight reverse slope in each ear. I was diagnosed with hyperacusis by a U.K. NHS hearing therapist two months ago.

I've been wearing a pink noise masker in hyperacusis ear for 10 hrs a day plus noise enrichment at night.

What a relief, it's working. What I thought was tinnitus caused by hydrops, early menieres etc, turned out to be hyperacusis. My ears had become over sensitive listening out for and measuring the tinnitus the whole time. Some are anti TRT/noise therapy but it seems to be helping me.

For the moment, I've stopped believing that I'm going deaf.

 

Thanks for responding. So good that you have found some relief. What a terrible condition this tinnitus is. Even a little relief goes a long way.

The thing with me is that I don't have hearing loss at least what drs consider a hearing loss which is loss below 20db. I also don't have hyperacusis yet anyways, which I am grateful for since so many people here seem to have it. If I could be in loud noise all day to drown this out, I would but I know that would just damage my ears further.