Had It For 7 Years, Successfully Habituated, Then It Got Louder :(

Hello everyone,

After lurking around this forum for a good week, I've finally decided to sign up and join the community.

I first had my T in 2008. Being an amateur musician, I was playing around with a feedback looper at home, and I had a sudden burst of extremely high frequency. I quickly reached for the volume dial, but 0.5 second was long enough to give me a permanent T.

I'm sure most of you here are familiar with the famous "you will just have to learn to live with it" quote and the devastation that comes with it. I was very devastated. Never being able to escape from the hissing sound. The thought of living with it for rest of my life. It was very hard. But funnily enough, after a few months of winging, I became habituated. I rarely thought about T, and was a happy chap for the past 7 years.

Thought it was the end of my T horror story.

Fast forward to couple of weeks ago. I went to Mogwai concert. I have a habit of wearing some sort of hearing protection every time I go to a gig, but for whatever reason I didn't this time around. And boy were they LOUD (with heaps of high frequency content). I had muffled ears and a tonal T for a couple of days, which luckily disappeared, but I noticed my original T became a lot louder.

Now I hear it at work, in my room, before & after I sleep and wake up to it at 3am everyday. I thought I was T free, but now 7 years later it gets into my nerves all over again. I recently had an irreversible injury (hip joint issue) which makes me very depressed, and on top of that the new & louder T is making me extremely anxious.

I hope I could be habituated again, although this time around it is considerably louder. I'm trying out DIY Acoustic CR® Neuromodulation and DIY Vagus Nerve Stimulation, but not sure if it will work as my T is more of a hissing sound rather than a single tone. I was advised to take anti-depressant to cope with my injury, and I'm wondering which anti-depressant I should take so that 1) it wouldn't make my T worse, and 2) hopefully my T could be attenuated.

This is probably my lowest point of my life, and starting to realise how important health is. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Hope everyone in this forum find their peace. And hopefully in a few years time Autifony would cure us all.

 

If you are habituated once, you'll get again ! Several people here have become accustomed to strong T.It just takes time. Courage !

 

Thank you for your support! I really hope to habituate again... ASAP

 

Welcome bmguitar,

If you're really stressed out, go to your doc and let him know what's up. Maybe he'll give you a short term med, to help you get over the hump. My doc gave me Xanax, which helped me initially.

Keep busy and protect your ears! Loud music and noise is a killer bro. To bad you didn't walk out of the concert immediately.

Like Lena C said, you have habituated once, so you should be able to do it again. Hang tough for now.

God bless,

Sailboardman

 

@Sailboardman
Thanks heaps. I've been taking 5-HTP for a few days to help me regulate my mood but not sure if it is working yet. I want to be a bit careful with anti-depressants due to side effects including tinnitus getting worse. I hear good things about Remeron (Mirtazapine) in this forum. Which anti-depressants are recommended?

 

Hi bmguitar. Very similar to my experience. Like you I thought I had successfully habituated but exposure to some big noises made it worse. As it happens I booked myself into the Tinnitus clinic in Cheltenham and I have an appointment there on Tuesday next. Hopefully they can do something.

 

@Cymro41
Hi so are you going to give Acoustic CR® Neuromodulation a go? I believe it's pretty expensive. Have you tried DIY Acoustic CR® Neuromodulation?

 

I am trying a DIY set up. The physics of it are basic. Its probably a good idea to go to an audiologist and find out your
tinnitus frequency. Call them and see if they can do this. Some ENT' are from the last century- dont know anything out of the box. Read about it. The neromodulation system boosts the tinnitus frequency, while other systems notch the frequency. I dont know what is best but my ears would most likely appreciate the notch system.

 

@ruben ruiz
I tried to match my frequency, but it's more of a hiss so it's very difficult (being a musician myself I was pretty confident that I could do it easily!). Most sound therapies tend to result in temporary residual inhibition...

 

I'm sorry it came back full force. Definitely putting in ear protection is the key.

It does have its ups and downs. I've had T for about 16 years now. Actually, I don't mind the hissing, pitch-shifting, whistling noise, mostly. I've overcome my mental reaction (most of the time) to not hearing silence. I used to love standing outside at night, picking out all of the night time noises. That's impossible for me now. But it's completely dependent on what I feel about that. Is it the be all and end all of my life, that I can't hear all the night-time rustles? Or hear a dog bark far away? Not really. I can focus on other good stuff in life. It is either accept or live in a world of pain, from non-acceptance. I know someone who lost their sight completely in their twenties - and this guy manages a positive attitude being completely blind...

Having said that, I'm newly on this forum too, as I've recently noted deterioration in my hearing, and I guess it's going to help sharing some thoughts with others about it all.

 

If we are being realists ??? I say depending on how loud it is is the key to habituating ,I had habituated for 20 years after a couple of the first years thinking id go mad.
6 years ago it ramped right up through an ear infection and I will never get used to this level of noise.

BM a chance for you maybe you have high freq hearing loss in which case hearing aids will really knock the edge off ( 60/70% id say.I wear them in bed as well with volume turned right up ( get ones with volume) this in real world would distort sound badly but at night in bed just really helps T how I dont know as a noisless enviroment,my Ear doc said they would help I didnt believe him but they are my comforter and life saver.I can hear well enough without them so didnt realise I had loss and they do not have a masker.Good luck Amigo

 

@sonic123
Hi, thanks for your reply. I know I'm desperately looking for solutions right now, but knowing that there isn't a definitive cure at this stage, acceptance and habituation is probably the only way out of this 'suffering.' It is going to be difficult and it will take time, but I'm hoping to get there ASAP.

Life if full of unexpected surprises, and we need to learn to accept whatever's to come that's beyond our control. Easier said than done, but they say it's the only way. When will we ever learn to not suffer from the unavoidable pain we are bound to experience at some point in our lives? Life time question for me...

Thank you for sharing your story.

 

@carlover
Hi, I'm pretty sure there's some sort of high frequency hearing loss that I'm not detecting (I can hear perfectly though), hence the brain is trying to make up for that missing sound. I've never bothered to mask my T at my initial onset 7 years ago, but this time around it is difficult to sleep without it. I'm wondering if I should slowly stop masking to habituate quicker.

Thanks for your advice on the hearing aid but I'm a bit reluctant on getting it at this stage. Maybe I'm still hoping that it will attenuate by itself, or NAC / vinpocetine supplements I've started taking will kick in, or I'll habituate sometime real soon. I might consider hearing aid + other options if it persists to bother me badly even after a while...

 

That's philosophical but pretty much to the point.... in Buddhist philosophy, the cause of pain and anguish in life is regarded as the act of grasping... For example, my own tinnitus (my ears are whistling as I write this), isn't so bad if i don't connect any thoughts to it - but if I start thinking about the fact that I can't hear silence etc, then I feel bad. But on its own, it's just whistling.

 

@sonic123
I have been trying to follow Buddhist teachings for the past few years, and to me it makes the most logical sense out of every religion/teaching out there. But I guess practising it is the most difficult part. I often wonder if that 'moment' will ever come to me.

Thank you for sharing your thought. It means a lot to me.

 

@bmguitar

I've become pretty chipper about my tinnitus - it's quite an easy thing to become really depressed about, unless one takes firm thought-action, as it were. I remember the terrible anxiety I suffered in the early days... but that mind state was taking me nowhere.

Currently - well, today - my tinnitus is more like a metallic whine, like the sound version of biting onto tin foil. Especially in my left ear, where I used to rest my violin. Right ear less so.

Don't mean to go on about the Buddhist thing and suffering, but the fact is that, old age or illness brings on loads of difficulties - as my sister says 'old age isn't for sissies'. I know we're not talking about old age, but a lot of ear problems are in a way premature ageing of the ear, due to the mad modern sound sources we subject ourselves to. I suspect my violin side ear would be alright if it weren't for pounding music on top of all that.

Yeah, suffering, ever listened to

Willard Grant Conspiracy - The Suffering Song

the Willard Grant Conspiracy, The Suffering Song?

Pretty much sums it up LOL LOL!!

Quiet meditation is surely the key, whether it's silent or tinnitus filled. Actually, occasionally while meditating I've zoned the T out for a while. Best of luck...

 

@sonic123
Thanks for sharing the song. I sometimes wonder if I would ever be strong enough to fight all the sufferings that are to come. Having said that, I'll deal with them later. For now, let's deal with this one first.