Faint Ringing in Ears Coincided with Potential Nervous Breakdown — Or Is My Tinnitus Just Anxiety?

Hi everyone,

I've been reading on this forum for the last 5 months looking for an answer, hope etc... here is a bit of a background on me...

I've always suffered with anxiety - but always managed without medication, then 2 years ago had a couple of deaths in my family and the anxiety was quite unmanageable - however I found a therapist and dealt with it and was back to me in a few months time. No meds - I am petrified of meds.

Then the pandemic happened and I can remember on a couple of occasions thinking oh my good god I don’t think I can cope with this, the restrictions the homeschooling and the prospect of losing my job, and I found I was crying quite a lot... I felt I was heading for a nervous breakdown but carried on... and anxiety was at bay.

Then in July a couple of months after I thought I might be heading for a nervous breakdown, I woke up to a slight very faint ring in my ear - to be honest with you I’d heard this in total silence many times and told myself not to latch on to it, but on this occasion I latched on and it made me panic! It wasn’t loud at all! It was just there... a week passed and I felt sick and anxious over this noise... I’d joined tinnitus groups on Facebook looking for a reason this could be happening and it scared me what I read “this is forever” and “it gets worse.” I felt anxiety like I’d never ever felt before and it was debilitating. I tried so many different medications all made me worse and the noise worse.

I had so many specialists check me over hearing was fine, no tumours, nothing was wrong except I was anxious - to me I’d told myself the noise came before the anxiety but maybe the noise was just the straw that broke the camel's back!

The noise I first heard isn’t there now... in fact all I hear is a faint beeping when my head is on my pillow or if I’m in total silence & I’d like to believe that this is just the sound of silence... I went 4 whole weeks where there wasn’t any sound but I look for it and there it is and I send myself on a downward spiral again of anxiety. Can’t eat, just about functioning and the worse of it is, it’s not even loud... I just now know what tinnitus is and I’ve scared myself!

Everyone I speak to say they hear a faint ringing in their ears at night time or in quiet or a pulse which I can hear if I’m highly stressed out from time to time!

I’d say I suffer from OCD and I’ve convinced myself I have something that I probably don’t have and I’m wondering if anyone else has ever done this? Diagnosed themselves with chronic tinnitus when in actual fact it isn’t tinnitus at all?

 

Welcome to the forum. You may not even have the kind of loud 7/24 tinnitus which have brought many members to their knees. Yes I have read that people who don't consider to have the type of tinnitus we are facing may still hear some faint ringing in silence if they try hard to listen for it. You may be just belonging to that lucky group.

So don't worry about it. Try move on and focus on other aspects of life. Don't give it any time or attention. Good luck and take care. God bless.