Fear Increases Your Tinnitus

Hi Guys/Gals

I always come here to help people and motivate all of you to become stronger mentally

I'll share my story for today...

I went to my brother's in-law's house and they were watching the copa america soccer games. I have full blown tinnitus (severe) and a great amount of hearing loss as well. Also, I have full blown psoriasis which has made my skin ugly and full rashes. Anyways, I go to their house and i have a cool little app on my iphone that tells me how loud the noise gets..it's a neat DB meter. Im sitting close to these people at they scream and it gets to 89 db, then at once it was at 100 db.

Point i want to make is this, we all have tinnitus and some have it very bad and its violent at times..the noise is..my tinnitus is beyond garbage. This soccer game was loud and the family was screaming and for sure it is not an environment that people like us can tolerate at all. I tolerated it and my tinnitus has not spiked or bothering me at all.

After all the screaming and chaos, i went to the yard and played soccer with their children and the joy it brings me when kids laugh and enjoy life...it brings me back to my youth when i had no tinnitus or illness.

That was today and right now I am not asleep as usual because of the medicine overdose a few years ago and my right ear is fully clogged an almost shut. Hearing is even worst . I listen to my iphone and play some low to mid level music and the iphone set the voume to max and i heard extremly loud n scary sounds for 1-2 seconds.

I feel like my hearing is a little worst right now, but i dont care..I will not cry, scream and hate myself or my life because of it.

My point is that I am no different than all of you, God created all of us and we are all able to be strong. Being mentally strong is the key to surviving life and all its hardships. Tinnitus is horrible but you have the power to ignore it and live your life.

The choice is yours, I choose to remain strong and not let anything get me down. When i was at the family house today , my face had a full breakout and i had rashes all over my face, I felt ashamed at first because my family never seen my face with rashes before but i said FK it, this is life..this is me...I cannot change this psoriasis and just accepted it.

In life if we accept things, we can move forward..don't accept things...it keeps you in the same place and moves you backward..

You can like what i say or not like it, it is up to you

I root for all on this forum, it is up to you to become stronger and be more accepting...

Be well...

 

Well I don't think tinnitus itself is bad - it's just a way for your body to tell you that something is broken inside the ear - if you have noise induced t that is.

You can try to ignore it and have it get it worse and worse but what follows is not only louder T and more hearing loss but also untreatable and painful hyperacusis for which some people even killed themselves over.

My approach is a a balanced view - if it gets too noisy I just slap my big 31NRR ear muffs on and that's it I can enjoy just about everything without causing more damages

I am mentally strong enough to not care what other people think of it and frankly I am old enough to know they only care about their own life just like I do

I don't even bother sticking plugs inside my ears most of time apart when meeting people professionally

 

I like your attitude

Keep on being that way, it seems that you are mentally strong and don't let T ruin your life...

 

This is where I'm at. Ignored and toughed out T and H for quite sometime, this was not a bright idea. I now have crippling H and constant ear pain that will not go away. It's been two years. I regret taking the advise of many people telling me to just move forward and be strong. I wish I had someone warning me, and not encouraging me to be stupid and just go out, have fun and not worry.

It's funny, when you get a head injury in sports, they put you in a quiet room immediately. But when you suffer an ear injury, the advise is just go out into the noise and don't worry about anything. And if it keeps getting worse, just keep doing it. It's like back in the 70s, if you had a your bell rung and had a concussion, it was ah just get back out there, run it off. That seems to be the way with ear injuries these days. You are told to just suck it up, don't worry about the pain and that's it's all just anxiety. I'm sure they said this same thing back in the 70s when people complained about headaches after being hit in the head.

 

So true man. So true...

 

What do you mean you ignored it? You didn't protect your ears in loud situations?

 

Yes. Things like playing hockey, pubs, etc

 

Being strong is one thing, not having your ears/health checked out is another thing. My posts are meant for people that have seen Drs and have had check-ups and done all they could do. After this, you have no choice but to be strong and accepting, if not then you will be miserable and that is not something i like to see....

 

Also, i'd like to add that my right ear is still messed up and it feels very clogged up and the hearing is much worst than I thought it would be. I have bought ear drops and maybe it will fix it, if not i will go to an ENT and then possibly get hearing aids.

Hearing aids are the last thing i have ever wanted and I want to enter the dating scene again, but Fk it, it is what it is and my ears are even poor now. I have NO CHOICE but to be strong and accept this or else i'd hate my life and say "omg i have hearing aids now" . I use to model as a teen and in my 20s and i was always scared of having hearing aids in my ears , because i didn't want to weird looks that people may give. Now, with my ears being so poor and especially after last nights episode, i have no choice and i am mentally strong enough to ignore any negativity that comes my way, if i wear hearing aids....

This is life and i am good at facing reality and accepting anything good or bad.....

 

I respectfully disagree with mentality improving tinnitus/your attitude toward tinnitus. I could be off my ass, numb, fearless no-anxiety drunk, as I am right now on my favorite bourbon whiskey; I could be sedated with benzos, anti-psychotics, or benadryl; I could be on adderall. I could be exercising, relaxing, or studying, I could be totally mindful and in the moment; I could be alone, or with friends and family while either ignoring my T or focusing on it. In all situations, I still hear my tinnitus at the exact same volume and frequency, and it bothers me (and, I'm sure, many others) exactly the same amount!

The bottom line is that tinnitus does not care how you feel about it. It is, as @Bobby B said, "a way for your body to tell you that something is broken inside the ear." It's a natural physiological response that your central nervous system produces in response to physical damage to the ear, just like the peripheral nerves in your skin would transmit a stinging pain if you got a paper-cut. Your ears are screaming in pain. But, unlike your skin, your ears don't know how to heal themselves. They didn't evolve that way, so, unlike the paper-cut, the "pain" (tinnitus) in your ears usually won't go away - most people's brains have a mechanism that just tunes it out.

I maintain the point that tinnitus has only become a major, common problem affecting about 10% of the world's population very recently in history because human beings invented things like loud machines and explosives. Before the invention of gunpowder and amplified music, the only things that produced loud enough noise to damage hearing were things like volcanic eruptions. Human beings never evolved the ability to regenerate hearing because there were no noises loud enough to damage it that occurred regularly, until recently. There was no evolutionary need to repair hearing.

The main mystery of tinnitus remains this; Some people can be exposed to gunfire, explosions, disease, SSHL, or just gradually go deaf with age, but never develop tinnitus. However, some people's brains (for instance, my own) can't handle even the slightest loss of hearing acuity at all, and their auditory cortex goes absolutely insane trying to fill in the frequencies. I lost maybe 10 dB at one or two frequencies, and, since I am an observant and bright chap, I noticed the loss right away and my brain has latched on to the noise filling the damaged areas in ever since. Us observant, sensitive, Type-A folks seem to get the worst of tinnitus, but we also would be the first to notice danger in the ancient world, before gunpowder, when things were quiet. However, in today's amplified, dangerously loud world, we're now the most vulnerable to the effects of hearing loss.

I'm sure that if normal, Type-B, neurotypical people on the street got their hearing tested, they'd have worse hearing loss than us with all of the clubbing, shooting, partying, movies, and music this society exposes them to every single day, but experience no tinnitus.

BUT I INTEND YOU NO DISRESPECT, and if this particular stratagem works for you, @fishbone, then I am very happy for you! I just like expressing my opinion on online forums.

 

The saddest part is that even ENTs aren't going to give us good advice on protecting our ears - it's just live with it and there's nothing you can do BS except that you can make it worse

 

No one said being mentally strong solves tinnitus or cures tinnitus. I have walked much tougher shoes in my life bro than tinnitus. Being mentally strong simply means ,that people don't let tinnitus ruin their lives and make them a victim.


As we speak, my right ear is 80% shut and my hearing in that ear is at it's worst, i could scream and sob and just go crazy..what is the point? What is done is done...I am like that...i accept things and don't make an issue of it. If i need hearing aids now, then i need it.

my tinnitus is not maskable and i have profound hearing loss in both ears and now even more in my right ear after lastnight. If people want to become a victim of tinnitus and hate their lives, that's their choice not mine.

My skin is much tougher than 90% of people i meet and that's a fact, we all have a choice in life..either accept things or play the victim....Up to you


Being bitter and salty and staying negative in life will just make situation like tinnitus and other illnesses just more dramatic and hard on the body/soul....

I will repeat my point one last time for people on this forum. Life can be brutal, tinnitus is horrible, hearing loss is horrible but accepting things is the key to being able to cope with all these hardships. If people want to scream and just be negative, then that's their choice..not mine.....

I'm done

People reply to me with negativity and just want to remain sour...that's their choice...and healing does not happen if people constantly want to remain a victim of tinnitus or any illness in general....

we all have a choice.....

 

I know! I also said that I'm very happy you found something that works for you. I only wanted to say that it doesn't seem to matter what attitude I adopt towards tinnitus, I still perceive it, emotionlessly, fearlessly, 24/7 as pain. I just have always liked to write (something tinnitus ruined) and my posts usually get quite long-winded.

 

Quit being so thin skinned. It's just people's views/opinions, no one is being negative, it's not big deal, it just people sharing their own experiences.

 

The human hearing system, is a marvelous piece engineering.

That is, until it f..cks up!

Guess God fogot a backup system, on these delicate little beasties?

 

" No one gets out of here alive" --Jim Morrison. Depressing but true. Afflictions are tough. Empathy for others.

 

"At the point of death, the pain is over." Jim Morrison. I guess he knows, if that's true or not?

 

"Tinnitus is a pain but more Tinnitus is more pain " . Jim Morisson

 

If a T-newbie / any anxious person would come right into this thread, he/she will worse his/her already "damaged" mood, I guess.

 

When I told my aunt ( who has T) about my T as I'm crying and just being depressed ( the first couple weeks). She told me stop being the victim, you're the survivor. Those words have stuck with me this whole time. And even when I have my bad moments I think, I'm not a victim. And I just keep repeating. Of course this won't work for everyone but it does work for me.

 

I guess he didn't plan humans would be likely to blast their ears with 100 dB+ amplifiers