Experiencing Relapse: Any Success Stories?

Hi, my name is Anke and have found this wonderfull forum a few months ago when my first relapse started. Before my relapse I was having a good 2 years of being fully habituated but then due to school stress I fell into this relapse. It has been 4 months now and I was wondering if there are people who would like to share their succes stories with relapses? It would help me a lot because everything seems so scary now. Thank you so much for reading this!

 

@Anke Sorry to hear you are having a relapse. I had a relapse in Oct last year and hyperacusis also gradually came back though I am not sure if it was because of the over plugging or just pure anxiety. I went through the whole anxiety fueled cycle of plugging and protecting myself from most noises. I really believed that that my life would stop there.

Almost 10 months on, my ears can tolerate noises a lot better now and I stopped reacting to the ringing. The plugs are slowly coming off too. Someone in this forum said to measure our response to the ringing and I thought that was very helpful.

Take heart. You will habituate again. Do whatever that makes you feel comfortable now but you will cross this hurdle again, as you have done before. Take care.

 

Tg
UOTE="shan, post: 61470, member: 2813"]@Anke Sorry to hear you are having a relapse. I had a relapse in Oct last year and hyperacusis also gradually came back though I am not sure if it was because of the over plugging or just pure anxiety. I went through the whole anxiety fueled cycle of plugging and protecting myself from most noises. I really believed that that my life would stop there.

Almost 10 months on, my ears can tolerate noises a lot better now and I stopped reacting to the ringing. The plugs are slowly coming off too. Someone in this forum said to measure our response to the ringing and I thought that was very helpful.

Take heart. You will habituate again. Do whatever that makes you feel comfortable now but you will cross this hurdle again, as you have done before. Take care.[/QUOTE]
Tg

@shan Thank you so much for replying it means a lot to me I am happy that you are doing better and hope to be doiong better soon as well!

 

Anke
I had 4-5 relapses in my first year; until habituation. Since habituation I've had a couple (one has actually moved my baseline up). Basically, when I got through whatever stress or anxiety I was experiencing then everything would settle back down. However, this last time my baseline adjusted upward (but not too much, nothing that I really care about -- I fully expect it to settle all the way back down). For me, success came when I dealt with the stress.

Mark

 

It appears there is a cause and effect when it comes to relapses. Since my onset of T I've had three relapses. Two I attribute to stress. The current relapse I believe was caused by a virus. My ringing got louder and I had vertigo for four weeks. Happy the vertigo is gone. People talk about their 'baseline'. How do you determine your 'baseline'? I can only discern every relapse is loud and troublesome. My current relapse is in the fourth month. I 'usually' habituate 12-18 months. It is mental torture. Habituation is an amazing process and long, looking forward to that time. God bless and we we all habituate and realise we can live with "T"!

 

@Anke , I suppose it depends on the nature of your "relapse". For example, do you perceive an increase in your T level (AKA "baseline") that you can attribute to some factor like noise? Or is this more your emotional response to the same T you've had for 2 years? I agree with @Mark McDill that relapses and spikes, etc usually abate when stress, if present, is resolved. As for me, I had a nasty increase in T as a result of noise and stress about 6 months ago. But the good news is I've either habituated one again to a slightly louder T level or it's dropped back down to the old level. Hard to tell. Like many would, I suspect some combination of the two.

 

My story is the same as @MikeA . Been a T sufferer for 7 years. 100% habituation for 7 years. My first habituation process took 6 months and was very difficult. In May, I took some meds that increased my T a lot. My baseline (the volume at which the T was for the 7 years prior to that) has changed. It has definitely increased. The good news is I'm habituating once again. I feel like the volume has gone down since May or maybe, it has gone down to what it was prior to that. I couldn't tell because from 2007 until 2014, my T was a non issue. I never monitored it, never cared, never "heard". It may have spiked, I don't know... Of course, when I "looked" for it, I found it, but it happened 3-4 times in 7 years. Otherwise, I didn't give a...

So it is very possible to habituate to increased T. In May-June, I felt like I was back to square one, the misery I felt in 2007 when it first started...

 

@ampumpkin 'I feel like the volume has gone down since May or maybe, it has gone down to what it was prior to that.' As for my relapses I have no idea what my baseline is. What happens is my "T" gets loud. I don't know if this time it is louder than the last time..... It does take me awhile to habituate(12-18 months) from my onset. I'm on my third relapse and only in my forth month. How does one measure so called 'baseline'? Before this relapse I had a good 12 years. Now back to square one, with more knowledge so I don't freak out as much.
I'm glad to hear you are making progress.

 

@Ken219 it is hard to say if my T is back to baseline or not. From 2007 to 2014, I never monitored it..it was always there of course but my brain paid absolutely NO attention to it. For what it's worth, it could very well be the same as it was before but I wouldn't know, I don't know what to compare it to...

What I can tell you is that it didn't bother me before and now it does, even if the sound is the same... I am glad to say that I have more good days than bad days now. Like you, I am acquainted enough with THE BEAST and I'm not freaking out as much.