Has Anyone Habituated to Ultra High Frequency Tinnitus That Can't Be Masked?

It seems like habituation is much easier if the tinnitus is easily maskable. But has anyone here habituated to loud ultra high frequency tinnitus? By ultra high frequency I mean well over 10kHz where no ambient noise masks it, only extreme things like being directly under the shower.

I know a handful of people on here have this type of tinnitus, but just about all of them seem to struggle with it even years later.

 

Hmmm. Idk. I have a ultra high hiss that I can hear anywhere, but it is so high
I almost feel like I can feel it more than I hear it. I'm not sure if that is like yours or not. I don't have it all the time but it is super irritating. The weird thing about this one is that I will start hearing it if I think about it. Just reading your post brought it to life. Very strange. I can still hear it in the shower. I guess some people can get used to anything and others can't. It certainly does seem reasonable that it is easier to get used to something that is less intrusive. Doesn't mean it can't be done.

 

I have high pitched in both my ears, higher in my left ear, when measured it got 11300kHz. Sometimes I even hear it in the shower.

Thing is, habituation is a very weird thing and most metaphors are useless until it starts happening to you. When my T started I heard it all the time and almost went crazy for the first 3 or 4 months. I started to get some very short periods, seconds really, that I wasn't paying attention to it. Nowadays, at almost 10 months I can go for maybe one hour if I'm distracted enough when I'm not aware, sometimes, during exercise or something that gets my attention I can even try to hear it (not that hard, but check) and it won't be there. And then sometimes it is there and I can do nothing about it. Even when it's there, sometimes it doesn't annoy me that much, sometimes I don't care and sometimes I still hate it. Sorry if it seems confusing, it is, but the point is I'm much better than I was a couple of months ago and there's no reason I won't keep improving.

So yes, maybe it's harder, but nowadays I get those moments of relief, and it's a HUGE relief. Try to distract yourself, exercise, force your brain to learn something new. that's what I've been doing.

Best,
Zug

 

Have you tried pink noise?

 

Kind of like that, that's what I hear every moment when I'm awake. Interesting you say you only hear it when you are thinking about it. Also interesting you saying you can feel it more than you can hear it. I had an ultra high frequency hearing test done, and I do have hearing loss in the ultra high frequencies but can still hear them. Some of them like around 16kHz it's almost like I feel it as much as I hear the tone. It's difficult to describe. The ultra high frequencies sound distorted to me too, they don't sound like a tone at all like normal hearing tests.

 

My sound is super loud and nothing masks it. For me its mind over matters..

 

@Alue
My T is above 15 kHz. It is like an old CRT TV is running in my head. The high-frequency sound they made.
Sometimes other tones join and become oscillating in my head. Shower sometimes covers it, sometimes not.
It is somatic, so when eating chewing gum for instance, every chewing makes the tone louder. Or when I am running, the sound becomes louder. A big problem is that severe T takes a lot of energy, as well as the anxiety and depression.

I have better days and I have worse days - it all depends on loudness. Sometimes I am lucky and have a milder day. It feels like being normal again. Or I take a Trobalt or benzo (but only once a week).

I try going through my life as good as possible. And I hope that one day my poor brain will ignore the sound. I don't know if this will ever happen, but that is the goal. I am sure with mild T I would not pay any more attention to T than it would deserve.

I wish you all strength to go through it and habituate at the end. You are not alone.

 

Mine is mostly all high pitched, dead hearing in ultra high range. Even though it's high pitch I still find myself listening around it or even through it. I think pitch is what kills as well, if it's high cutting type noise that hurts the ears and brain, I honestly don't think that this can be even half way normal in ones life. I've never heard noises in real life like my T. I don't think our ears are capable of hearing tones this high at this volume, it's so very messed up, I can't explain it. I think this T is extremely rare and also requires some sort of major trauma to the ear/brain to trigger T like this. If it were half the volume and no h,yup I could maybe adapt overtime. I feel like I won't be able to adapt and I'm a very adaptable person, (way more so than most people) not a lot could bother or phase me but this shit cripples me.

I WISH I could let people take a listen to the shit storm that hear 24 7 and feel what it's like to have H so bad that the crumpling of a bag is like having your head smashed in. Unfortunately it's just trapped in my head for only me to know about! Haha. Weird condition this is. Feel like I'm living in the twilight zone.

 

I don't know what caused mine, but I have T that's at about 16000 hz that I can hear over everything. I can tune it out if I'm distracted but it's always there. Try distracting yourself with something mentally demanding, like chess, or mental math, or something you find very, very interesting.

 

From what I've seen, habituation is a psychological thing as much as it's an autonomous thing your brain does. You have to not let your T upset you to habituate, and letting something upset you is as much your responsibility as it is an automatic response by your body. It's like that boy who was born with skin that falls off.

His condition is horrible and, while tinnitus is an awful thing to have, the fact that someone with such a horrible condition can find a way to make life more positive means that someone with a constant, annoying ringing in the ears probably can, too

 

If you don't mind me asking, what frequency is it? And did it come on suddenly or gradually over time?

Yea, I don't think mine is as bad as yours, but I can identify with some of what you've said. This ultra high pitched buzzing/hissing noise that is hard to describe. I find myself having to listen around it when watching tv or speaking with someone. I just had a meeting with someone today and I had troubles following the conversation, not because I couldn't hear the other person but because we were in a quiet room and the tinnitus was just so distracting.

I've had a number of bad things happen in my life that I've adapted to, things that I think other people would have a very difficult time with too, but this has been the hardest.



@Martin69 yours sounds similar to mine, I have a hard time finding the frequency but it's somewhere around 14-15kHz. Only it does not vary in volume much. I don't have spontaneous good days, but I've had a few worse ones.

@Booger You have had yours for less than a month? That's good if you can tune it out sometimes so early on. You will probably get better in due time.

 

I've always been a very adaptable, if somewhat sulky, person.

 

Same, but on that note I have always been sensitive to noises. I have always had a hard time filtering out noises and loved silence.

 

The noise definitely causes my anxiety and distress, I'm just trying very hard to get used to it if it turns out to be permanent, to which I have huge hopes that it doesn't.

 

Mine started somewhat soft as a teen, then it got much louder after going to concerts and then all hell broke loose after taking benzos, getting addicted and saving my life to get off them... We need to appreciate our situations because they can get worse.

 

Mine came on suddenly a couple of nights after the possible worst/most stressful night of my life after being under constant stress and more severe than usual depression for a month leading up to it.

 

I also hear it when I think about it. I wish that was the only time. It was with me for most of the day today. Now the low tones have taken over. It sounds like there is a tug boat outside waiting for me. I also hear the higher ones they are just in the background. My T seems to be much stranger than everyone else's. I have no idea what is going on in there. I am starting to think that I must have low and high frequency loss and can just hear in the range they are testing me. Or something else very weird is going on. I don't know how to habituate to something that is constantly changing.

 

I have had a few other tones and sounds come and go, some pulsate tinnitus after getting injections too, but by far the most maddening is the one that never ever goes away and that's the ultra high pitched one.

It may sound strange, but I actually didn't mind the pulsate whooshing tinnitus (I mostly only heard it when I laid down at night to sleep for a few weeks). I can see it being disturbing if you heard it loud 24/7, but this was just like listening to a artery with a stethoscope, much more relaxing than this dog whistle in my head.

 

Yup, high pitch, non maskable... it's a real treat.
I remember going to my Hearing Aid fitting appointment and the audiologist was going through all the HA with fancy masking options. For each of them, she asked me: "tell me when it masks it ok?" and kept cranking. As I kept silent, she looked at me with sort of a pity face: "I'm at the max - it won't go any higher - are you sure it's not masking it?"
Some fancy HA had some kind of "wave pattern" to match T. I kept wondering "why would I want the masking sound to come and go? I just want it masked as much as possible. Don't take away the masking sound! I want it constantly on!"
But frankly some of those sounds were just as annoying as the T, so I wasn't sure I'd want 2 annoying sounds instead of 1 to deal with.

So I don't have HAs right now. Mostly because I'm not allowed to (I had surgery 5 weeks ago and my hearing is still supposed to be "in flux" for 4-6 months post surgery.
I'm also not sure that the HAs are going to help much, but I'll try anything, like pretty much anyone with intrusive T.

And yes Hyperacusis is fun too... I had terrible H before surgery. Now it's better, albeit not perfect.

Good luck everyone

 

I've posted this many times, but my right ear lost 65-70db's, from 2-8K, standard test, but I know all my high frequency hearing is non-existent. Severe hearing loss, bordering on profound hearing loss. So, I hear all those missing frequencies inside my head, all at once. What seems like, hundreds of ringing and hissing noises. It hear this above everything, in the natural world, except cicada bugs, screaming at full tilt, on a summers night. It is madness and chaos in my head! Masking can only happen, when I sleep.

 

I've also high pitched T since almost 5 month. I don't know the exact frequency since its not a pure tone. But it must be way above 10khz.

I also hear it almost always. Intensity changes quite much. On good days I think I could eventually habituate fully.
On worse I don't.
Good distraction is best to forget about it then, like going outside running or playing online chess. But unfortunately when you have to work you just have to endure. Like in endless meetings it can be like hell...

 

You and Teilis are the reason I'll never rate my T as a 10/10.

 

I'm in the same situation.
Maybe you can say if this would help you?
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/wearable-noise-generators-with-natural-sounds.15689/

 

I suppose I'm lucky in that my sound, while shrill and extremely piercing, is relatively silent and kinda dulls a little if I take something like Benadryl.

 

My t is also quite high pitched, certainly above 11-12KHz, pretty much unmaskable but I have some really quiet days now and then so ... habituated? After 2+ years of having it, I'm kinda doing better.
But that's it. As the movie title says 'maybe that is as good as it gets'.

 

Moin Martin,

did this happen to be from the very beginning of T an do you have it always? Because recently I developed same somatic reactions. But it's only sometimes. Then T is increasing synchronous with every neck moment while running. Also it might get pulsatile then for a while.

Sometimes I really feel like a stranger to my own body with all this new reactions, wondering if I am just psychotically listening too much into my own body.

 

I suspect it wouldn't unless I crank the volume up real high:
I've already experimented with ear buds and over the ears headphones, with sound generators (iOS apps) or nature sound tracks ( Amazon Prime). What I noticed is that what works best to mask my T is water sounds (shower, faucet), but they need to be at high volume, which I'm reluctant to do, so I'm kind of stuck.

 

Sorry to hear that.

 

I've never tried to mask my T but I have habituated to it ( it is a high pitched squeee note that never stops). Under normal circumstances I don't even remember I have it. That has changed recently because of some other ear problems I have begun to have.

 

The only thing that will mask my T is listening to iTunes with my ear buds cranked up (which I do nightly). Having said that, my T has been with me over 20 years and I'm completely habituated to it. Very high pitched, never changes and yet it is no longer an affliction but my mind has not only adapted it it but has embraced it and brought it into my psyche and merged it with my mind to become completely normal and preferred.

I don't know when I habituated to it, it just did...