For Those Who Want to Know What to Expect Now That You Have Tinnitus

Guys, girls, I know your pain. Let me give you my most sympathetic feelings that I cannot put into words. The feeling is terrible to know there’s a chance that chime / buzz / ring / bell is in your head for years upon years or even forever.

I made my account here the first week I had tinnitus - first week of June 2018.
Today is March 14, 2019, and I want to let everyone struggling hear that there is hope that the noise that plagues you is not invincible. It HAS the ability to be blocked out by your brain. It’s not just “here say” you read from people being optimistic. It’s a very real possibility/ result for our brains to overcome this noise, and you don’t need to try or anything. Just live with it till your subconscious decides to help you out!

This is you:
There is a demon on your shoulder... telling you that you aren’t lucky enough. You are different from me or that other person - you will never get better like them.
Remember what is telling you that. A little demon. Your heart knows it can go away. Fight for that feeling and hold onto it.

My long story short:
I was ignorant... I didn’t wear hearing protection and I shot over 9 55 gram rounds in quick succession from a .45 handgun. No hearing protection. My ears popped as loud as the gunshots. I actually thought it was an external noise at the time. I noticed 10+ min after... the noise had not subsided whatsoever. I could barely hear a thing. I was so confused. Once I researched what had happened, went to the doctors, and continuously got let down of any pure good news... I was in a bad place like many of you reading this probably are right now and will be for some time.

My course of action
I didn’t take anything other than Magnesium supplements and after several months - they didn’t make any noticeable difference and I stopped taking them. (By all means, take them, it’s better than nothing, but I don’t believe after the first several months they were going to fix or bring anything back to me. Their magic (if any) had subsided and the ringing in fact had lowered some).

Around August or October, I had began to notice (or rather not notice) the ringing daily. I’m NOT saying that it was gone. At that point my brain had began training a subconscious “ignoring” effect. Which was amazing to realize and I felt like just that much relief was 40lb lifted off my chest.

Fast forward to today, and I am happy to give you the confidence that it has become a very very small detail of my life. It’s at the point that it is in fact still there, but unless I hear a loud 80 dB+ noise it’s not a part of my day to day thoughts. Yes it comes back occasionally, yes it SUCKS. But at this point it’s like a scar. It’s healed and no longer can be a crutch from day to day like your experiencing!

If you have gotten this far; take this with as much effort as me, a stranger, on the internet, wanting to make other strangers see there is a good hope / chance for happiness, you have a great chance that time is going to be your savior!

Give it months. I want you to know that there’s a good chance it will not be life altering past the first few months. Just like a broken leg. It will get better! It will heal! Trust this stranger on that note!

It’s bad. Nobody can relate to you on your level... not all people can be sympathetic as you’d like... IT’S FINE. One day they may encounter this much of a hit to their happy lives and finally feel your pain. (Never wish this on anybody).

Let me be clear on this. Something you’ve heard before but you need to understand right now. You could have had your sight lost, your sense of touch, you could be brain damaged, lose your dependent hand (right or left) or heck both, could have seen a your family be hurt, a child die in front of your eyes. Life can get so much worse than our ear elevator music.
When you feel weak, think about how lucky you are that you can still hear your child or your parents’ voices AT ALL.

To all good luck, don’t let the demon on your shoulder telling you I’m lucky or an outlier get in your head more than the tinnitus already is!

Oh yeah, while I have you; I use closed captions on the TV now. It’s very helpful and you will quickly and even become a much better reader on a funny note! People are astounded how fast I read now haha.