Feeling Like I Can't Do This

TRIGGER WARNING: Please don't read this if you are a newbie. This won't help you. I have been told that people that struggle with T the worst are the ones who have been through trauma so if you haven't you probably won't struggle liker this. I have PTSD for other reasons so T and H for me is worse.

I try so hard every single day. I distract distract distract. I am so tired and by the end of the day I have to drink wine just to cope.

I think the T has gotten worse and right now the H is really bothering me. Everyone's "S"'s are shrill to me and make me cringe. Trucks tires make me cringe. I hear almost any constant noise (like an air conditioner)as a ring.

Someone said on here to stop masking and I thought maybe all my masking was making it worse so I slept last night with no masking and today it's all worse than ever.

Now I can't even blow dry my hair without dealing with the high pitch much louder for a while.

I'm 7 months in and I'm supposed to be better and I feel like I'm worse. I've gone to every doctor. I've done TRT, CBT, breathing exercises, distraction exercises, hypnosis, eaten ginger, klonopin, acupuncture. I stopped the klonopin because I was so scared it would make it worse.

I'm scared of any cold, ear infection, tooth infection, medicine that could make this worse. I get horrible headaches from the wine occasionally and I won't take an advil because I'm so scared.

I cry to my husband and he is so good to me but I just think I can't go on like this. He tells me I have no choice that I have stay here and get through this. It feels unfair. I wish I could have gotten something at least that I know there is an end to but there is no end to this.

I just don't know what I am doing to make it worse.

 

You should NOT blow dry your hair without hearing protection.

 

When did you get off the klonopin? Did you take it long? Did you taper off? I'm took Xanax for a month before I started to taper, and each taper my T gets louder, but so far, each time it has settle down after a couple of weeks. On the Benzo Buddies site they note T getting much louder if you go cold turkey, and it can hang around a while. It's an individual thing, so hard to predict. By the way, each time I taper, for some reason my ears also seem more sensitive to sounds ... things seem much "louder", but again, so far that has resolved itself too. Good decision to get off the Benzos, and I wish you the best.

 

If I use blow dryer I'm spiking for a month. Wine would spike me for a day. Cars irritate me for a day. My AC use to do same thing to my ears when my ears were frustrated. I wore earmuffs at the beginning of the summer to block out noise of AC. I decided Id rather have H than T. I don't have a bad case of H, just a touch, and the earmuffs did not make it worse. After 3wks of taking a break from that irratating sound of the AC I was finally able to tolerate it. If my AC starts ringing again I will put them on.

 

Stopping the klonopin and starting wine is not a great strategy.
Alcohol can be a major trigger for t (for some folks). Not to mention it basically does what kpins do.
Sorry for your troubles, i don't have any solid advice, having an understanding husband is a good thing, let time do its thing.

 

only a couple weeks and not all day. It was like at the most .25 2x a day and mostly I would just take 1 a day . If it did make it worse I hope it isn't permanent. The dr SWORE it wouldn't make it worse.

 

so what do you do to mask the T?

 

Cricket sound machine on my pillow. Right now the solid tone T doesn't bug me. I get the hissing pulse during bad weather and I break down till it stops. What is T stealing from you?

 

Just spoke to my husband. He has T. for a long, long time (more then 20 years). He never spoke about it but he has it bad, really bad. He said that after two or three years things got better, his ear and head pain dissolved.

His strategy was not to talk about it and to find distraction as much as possible. He tried to give it as little fuel as possible and after a while started meditating to the sounds. His sounds are still constantly changing he gets pulsating tinnitus that comes and goes. But there is no emotional connection for him anymore. He couldn't care less.

It might sounds like he's Gandy, but he's not. There is something about the 2 to 3 year periode. I've heard it so many times before. I try to hold on to that. Today I have a very bad T + H day too. After two good days it hits me like a brick wall. I get sucked into depression again. I can relate that T + H are harder to deal with if you've got other issues going on. But it will get better. Maybe not the sounds, but the way we cope. All we need is time and hope.

Hang in there Marie.

 

Yes I have spoken to a few people who were like that. 2 years most of them say. I mean I really have no choice but to hold on. I am way to much of a chicken to hurt myself. I just hope in the meantime it doesn't put me in a mental institution.

 

I know it can be overwhelming. The tinnitus I have (I REFUSE to call it MINE) has been hanging around for 1 yr & 7 months now, was due to a car accident. I keep thinking if it started suddenly due to injury- it will eventually heal. Time does help so much -I can stop and deep breathe for 2 minutes and focusing on my breathing reduces the sound - or maybe just reduces my attention to it...but whatever the pathway; it helps! What drew me to this website was "almost clicking BUY on the Tinnitus Terminator site". So thank you to all who had shared about that snake-oil! Two things more I'd like to share: First- while researching Seaton's claims I also googled "UCSF tinnitus" and the University actually does have an extensive tinnitus program- seems worth checking it out, and audiomonics IS one of the therapies used there. Secondly: you mention having PTSD. So did I for a non-car-accident issue that had ruled my life since I was 10 years old. I highly recommend researching an EMDR certified therapist- and doing the sessions. EMDR is Eye Movement Desensitization Reprogramming- and cleared the PTSD in 7 months when YEARS of talk therapy, psychotherapy, cognitive/behavioral therapy only scratched the surface. I was in the middle of my EMDR sessions when I was in the car accident and we focused EMDR on those issues too (the panicky feeling when a car seems to be coming at you when you get that adrenaline response!) Again- it changed my life and the VA is also using EMDR for Veterans. Check it out and good luck to you. 90% of living with T/ PTSD/ any chronic health issue is based on your own self-talk. Whatever we say to ourselves all day long is usually what we get more of. I try to make my self-talk as positive as possible.

 

Same here. Too scared to kill myself. Thank god. I'm visiting my psychiatrist on Monday. My psychiatrist....never in a million years did I ever expect to be writing those words....

Now if we could only push fast forward....

 

Benzos (including klonopin), allow the body to more efficiently use GABA, but also causes the body to down regulate GABA receptors over time. That's how tolerance builds, and your need more drug to get the same effect. In any case, its my understanding that unless you've taken it a very long time (decades) at high doses, you should recover quickly... so I doubt it did any permanent damage. I wouldn't worry about that, but just be careful with that class of drugs.

 

I want you to know I understand your struggles. The more and more you talk about it, the more people you can find that can relate to you. Depression is a serious illness, that many people including me have. It runs in my family.
My father has PTSD and Gulf War Syndrome. He has been through so many unfortunate experiences. When he was younger his friend died while playing at a lake with him. When he enrolled in the military he did it with two of his friends and they both died because they couldn't hear everyone calling them to step away from the planes. My dad has had 3 strokes and at one point he couldn't even walk.
He had to retire at 38, 2 years after getting his dream job. He was a principal for an elementary school. This put him into a deep dark depression. It lasted for years. He used to lie in bed so long there were indents in the mattress. Sometimes he's too sick to get out of bed.
I'm not telling this to make you feel bad. When I got T my depression hit me HARD. I'm proud to say that my dad was there for me the whole time. In everyday he could. We even made a list of things we can do to make ourselves feel happier. We both promised that if the other felt bad about something then we would have to tell the other, because it'd be wrong to go it alone.

When I asked my dad how can he still pray while all of these horrible things have happened to him, he told me " Well I can't just sit in bed all day doing nothing. It hurts more to stay still, than it does to get up."
I take this as him saying that although it hurts him physically to get up, it'd hurt him more to stay in bed because that way he'd be weighed down mentally.
When I got sick my Paw Paw told me "If you pray don't worry, and if you worry don't pray"

I live by these two sayings. I want to be known as someone who perserverd and worked her ass off in spite of the pain. That is heroic. The statistics say that millions of people in the US have T, yet I only see thousands of us on T Talk. If millions of fucking people can brave through their day because they got shit to do, then so can I. I'm too young to worry about T.

 

@Marie79 Hi, so many things you said in your post I can relate to. I am or have gone through the same things. You are not alone. Take care of your ears especially around loud sounds. That is something I am very careful about. I feel your pain. The other day I went swimming and got water in my ears. still in there. It's in my left ear which doesn't have T. Now I'm afraid that this will cause an infection or something in there and give me T on the left side. Once we damage the ears they are never the same. Take care

 

You should not put any time frame on your recovery!!!!
Tinnitus is different for each person!

You will recover in your own time

 

it took me a lot more than two years to return to some semblance of normal.

 

Have you had your ears tested for hearing loss,,if you do have loss hearing aids will be a godsend to you , it would knock at least 50% off your T

 

Maybe now is the time to go back to those reputed ENT and audiologists you met who told you can improve H and T by exposing yourself to more louder noises to make the ears less sensitive - obviousely this did not work

 

Especially to one who said that everyone has tinnitus!

 

But if people got better, why would they keep coming back?

 

Well from the thread her T and H got worse...

 

My point exactly.

(I'm being a little facetious here, I don't think doctors tell her that for nefarious reasons.)

 

It's a shame that even the docs aren't able to give good advice - you don't go back under the sun after a bad sunburn either so why do it with you ears ?

Ears can take 2 - 3 years to heal

 

I didn't get T from noise damage. And Ive never had a dr suggest I go into damaging levels of noise without protection.

Most of the doctors I've been to have suffered themselves and rely on their own treatment and medical research.

 

No hearing loss. I have hearing aides and it doesn't help

 

that is very true and not just one doctor that said that. You can research that yourself. Nearly everyone I have asked on this fucked up journey has told me that in complete silence they hear some sort of ring or sound. It can't be that hard to research anyway.

 

Marie that's a wide spread opinion within medical community to cover their own incompetency or inability to understand or help tinnitus sufferer.
It's based on some stupid experiment from 1953.
Imagine if the rest of medicine was still stuck on findings from 50's!!!!
Personally, I lived in total silence for 38 years and no one can tell me that I've always had tinnitus.
Ask your family or friends if they hear anything when they wake up at 3am?

 

IN COMPLETE SILENCE

=

ANECHOIC CHAMBER

HERE ANYONE WILL HEAR BODILY SOUNDS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...etest-place-chamber-Orfield-Laboratories.html

so.........

NORMAL COMPLETE SILENCE, DURING NIGHT, ETC...

MOST PEOPLE WON'T HEAR RINGING!

 

The 2-3 period is when it becomes an unimportant issue for many people.

After 18months I got a lot better at dealing with it. I'm over 3.5 years in now. Over the last year it has become something I barely notice at all.

I went nuts the first 18 months. Tried everything to stop it...ever supp,vitamin, drug you can think of.

Nearly killed myself, with sleepers and benzos and many other things mixed together...long story.

I thought I'd never habituate to it...but I did. And now I don't know how the hell it nearly send me to my grave.

I never talk about it anymore except the odd time here. But I never mention it to my wife and family anymore.

I find if you just push it into the background of your perception it doesn't intrude as much.