Friend Is In Denial About Having Tinnitus: Believes Neighbor Is Running a Machine 24/7

Hello all. This is my first post on this forum. I have tinnitus myself but not to a debilitating degree and am quite able to cope.

I need some advice concerning a friend. I believe this friend is in denial about having tinnitus. She believes that her neighbor is running a machine at all hours of the day and night specifically to annoy her. The same thing has happened at other places she has lived.

I have tried to counsel her that she might have tinnitus and she should seek help for that but she gets angry with me when I tell her that. She gets angry with her neighbors and does things that get her in trouble.

Any suggestions on how to convince her to get diagnosed and where to go for that? Thanks!

 

Tell her to record it and then play it back in another location.

 

A little more info. She describes the noise as a buzzing sound. I was at her place one time and she asked me if I could hear it and I couldn't hear anything, but she could. This has been going on for a few years and she refuses to believe it could be a medical problem and is thoroughly convinced it's her neighbors. I'm actually surprised there aren't more similar situations being discussed online. I did find a few things, but not much. She is having a lot of difficulty sleeping.

 

Well, it's pretty easy: ask her to plug her ears.
"Do you hear it?"
Yes -> it's in your head. You have tinnitus.
No -> it's outside your head, you don't have tinnitus. Maybe it's the neighbor, maybe it's something else, but it's not tinnitus.

 

Unless this is the "machine" she hears
http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/arti...de-also-known-as-the-hum-or-the-taos-hum.html

 

Can't she find out whether what she has is tinnitus by going to some quiet place (e.g., a wilderness lake away from highways or a secluded municipal park)?

 

I believe that @GregCA has already beat me to the punch, but plugging her ears is truly the simplest and easiest way to settle this.
I cannot believe that she hasn't done this on her own?

 

Most normies here can't accept loud noise gave them tinnitus, this person takes denial to a whole new level.

 

That machine doesn't fail the "plug your ears" test. As stated in the article you link, it is Tinnitus.

 

Not to downplay her suffering from tinnitus, do I dare suggest that there may be more going on with this woman than tinnitus? There is a long standing denial for the truth that may be beyond her ability to comprehend. In my honest opinion, she appears to be in need of professional help not only from an ENT but counseling.

 

No, it does, vibrating tinnitus which stops when moving head left-right and when speaking usually also stops during the "plug your ears" test. I don't know what she has. It's just, if she has this, she won't have it while her ears are plugged.

 

Honestly she sound pretty dumb or is mentally ill. Nothing hard about plugging your ears to check if its external.

 

I'm just going to throw this out there. When my grandmother was alive, she had Alzheimer's. She was sure that the neighbor was singing all day. She even knocked on their door and asked them to stop.

Not saying your friend has Alzheimer's, but it's pretty strange to be in denial about tinnitus. Most sufferers are in denial about the severity and life impact it can have, but not actually having it.

 

For some, denial equals their "flight" response: it feels easier to deny the problem than to live and deal with it. Which still doesn't make sense of course, complaining to every neighbour won't make your life any better.

As @Bill Bauer mentioned, it might be useful to take her to some ultra-quiet place, and just drop the question there: "Do you hear the sound now?". Keep in mind she might not like the reality of it though.

 

Your friend seems to have a mental problem or a really low intelligence/IQ and it's no wonder there is not more similar stories because this story is quite unbelievable.

 

If it helps your friend to cope better with tinnitus, I think this is fine to blame it on the neighbours machine. This is actually what TRT is saying: Take your tinnitus as another kitchen appliance.

 

This sounds like your friend has schizophrenia. And probably can’t distinguish between reality.

 

wow


there seem to be a whole lot of people in this thread who do not know that it's very, very well documented that in some places there are industrial or other processes which create constant, low-level, deep bass sounds that some people can't hear at all, and others find completely intolerable. In some cases, this has been linked to specific devices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

This is incorrect; none of this suggests schizophrenia. I've seen a lot of videos made by schizophrenics with tinnitus and this stuff doesn't even come close to that bar.

In fact, when presented with a constant annoying noise, the logical thing to do is to first look to external sources, since that's what our audio system does. Someone then being in denial to some extent about actually having an unfixable chronic problem isn't a sign of severe mental illness.

What? No it's not; denial is one of the basic phases many people go through after experiencing any negative life changing event.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...12/5-stages-experienced-those-chronic-illness

@PKay either you actually live in a place where "the hum" is a thing, which you can figure out pretty easily because there are websites which track noise complaints globally, such as https://thehum.info/

It's certainly also possible she has low-frequency tinnitus and is to some extent denying that; figuring out which of these things is happening is important. If the latter, then she is in the same boat as the rest of us; if the former, then she has super sensitive low-frequency hearing and may not be able to solve this short of moving further out.

 

I had "the hum" for years before I recognised it as tinnitus. Every time I went away on holiday and it was still there, the penny gradually dropped a little bit further...

Most people probably think of tinnitus as a high-pitched ringing in the ears, rather than a low hum. Maybe show your friend this video and see what she thinks. It turns out that David Letterman has pulsatile tinnitus whilst Pete Townshend has the high-pitched ringing. Note that both can be noise-induced as in my case.

Pete Townshend Speaks about his Tinnitus

 

Some people are lucky enough to have both! Ask me how I know.

 

Me too! Low hum on its own for 12 years, then high ringing/hissing since last year. Both noise-induced.

How about you, and which one bothers you the most? For me it varies. The hum seems to get worse as the day goes on.

 

I've had the high pitch ringing since the early days of otosclerosis, most likely because the disease didn't just attack my middle ear, but it also attacked my cochlea and is therefore responsible for my sensorineural losses, which obviously didn't get fixed with my surgery.

6 months later I got introduced to this hum, which varies in intensity, as if it pulsated, except with a longer period than my heart beat.

The one that bothers me the most is the high pitch one. First, because it's piercing. Second, because it doesn't get masked by any environmental sound, due to the fact that environment sound frequency distribution doesn't go very high in frequencies, and my volume is fairly high (nothing masks it, not shower, not fireworks, not an F-22 Raptor's afterburner).

The low hum blends fairly well with noisy environments, so it's most noticeable in quiet settings. That bothers me less.

My T is fairly constant through the day/week/year. I don't have good/bad days. Or to be more accurate, I don't have good days.

Eagerly waiting for regen tech!

 

@GregCA Yes the air conditioning in the office used to mask the low hum really well, but working at home I notice it a lot more.

 

Oh man, there is a house in my neighborhood that is down one of the walking paths, and there is a loud high frequency tinnitus type sound coming from the backyard at all times. I would lose it if I was their neighbour.

The first time I went by, I thought I had a temporary spike, but sure enough it wasn't me.