Help I'm Confused... Does Everyone's Tinnitus Get Louder in Silent Environments?

Hi all,

I have a very simple question but I'm totaly confused at the moment. I was in therapy a moment ago regarding my depression and anxiety. The office where I was in was very silent.

My T became so loud my whole left ear felt warm and full after a while. I always say I have mild T because it can be easly masked. But when it is realy silent it is like going through the roof.

Do others have this also with mild T. When I walk outside I most of the time do not hear it when a ventilator is on in a room I also do not hear it (most of the time), but when it is silent (i mean no background sound what so ever) it is like the volume goes up so much it realy scared me. There is always some sound in my house or where I go.

My ear still feels warm after an hour.....I'm realy shocked about it. When I plug my ears it's still my same old T like it was. I thought that it could not be louder than when I plug my ears with my fingers, but for some reason in that office my ear became warm and it was realy loud. Perhaps it has something to do with the pressure in the room or something.

It seems like everything happens in a row now....I was habituated and it irritates me again and now this fiasco at the therapists office.

I hope some people can response .... i'm just curious if more people have this ...so mild T but when it is realy silent it is damn hard. I hear people say they have to look for there T in a silent room. Well not me....in a silent room it there in 3 seconds but the slidest sound can mask it already.

Thanks for your support.

 

Yes, silence amplifies my T. It's totally different than plugging in ears yourself. One reason could be that when you 'make silence' brain interprets it as less non-threatening than silence you don't cause yourself.

 

yes, much louder in a silent room for me too.

 

What scared me the most was that my ear became warm and full. I had that 1.7 years back when T started and this is the first time I experiece it again with T so loud...it scared me.... At the moment I'm at home and nothing is different than yesterday or a week back.... It just took me by surprise I guess....I'm realy stressed about it now....

 

it's wicked stressful, not going to lie.

 

Last night I figured out that the part of the sounds I hear is because of tention in my neck. Afte some massage it went away and my T was back to normal. But now I woke up and have that tention again because I feel stressed

 

I've been sleeping with no white noise lately.

What is interesting is that at first, in near complete silence, the t usually seems very loud, but after a short while it often starts to fade into the minimal background noise of the hvac and outside streets. Then, if I do turn a fan on, it seems louder. Some kind of auditory recalibration, I guess!

 

Yes the t gets very loud in silence but doesn't fade for me. Noise won't mask it
Benzo user. Yes I know. Stupid but didn't know harm could be done to gaba receptors. Had to take for physical illness and other reasons. After t started I wanted to taper. Big mistake.
My life is getting harder by the day. I'm too old and fragile to bear this kind of stress after all of the trauma I have been through. Benzos helped me function in my daily life.
All this talk of how damaging they are made me want to get off of them.
Damage done.

 

Hey. The problem I still have 18 months later is that I still find myself looking for the sound. Less and less though. In a quiet room especially. I take this as a sign that I have not completely habituated. But given that I had some tinnitus that came and went before, I guess there will always be times when I notice it.
Can I suggest that even though the therapists office is a calm place, your brain is working hard to process often painful information which in turn is stressful - but necessary. Perhaps noticing the tinnitus is due to the extra work your brain is doing. Anyway think about that one. It may not necessarily be a bad sign just an indicator that you are processing a lot of material.
You will get though this one ( like all of the other trials life has thrown at you!).

 

Yes the silence seems to have a reaction on the brain to turn up the volume,either that or
the general ambient noises seem to lessen more when night time arrives.

For the last few months i have been sleeping with the thunder/rain therapy you can find on Youtube.
I can't imagine sleeping without it now.

 

I generally notice my tinnitus in quiet rather than loud environments. I often go spells without noticing my tinnitus in quiet environments when engaged in conversation with people or doing something similar that is mentally engaging like the intense scenes in movies.

I also instinctively look left and right before I cross the road.

I think it's a mental thing. You are more aware of your tinnitus in quiet environments and so you consciously start monitoring it when you get into those environments. I believe this is why tinnitus treatments encourage some sort of background noise to aid in habituation and not silence. You see once habituation comes you just don't notice it unless it's dead silent and you are thinking about it. Sounds retarded, but having habituated in the past I can vouch for 6 years of not giving a crap about it...other for that first year where life was hell, I barely slept and wanted to die.

 

Same for me. But with me its very strange. When i am in my daughters room my whole head feels with sound but not the high pitch sound. The sound what you hear after a party, dont know how to explaine it. But it is in my whole head. But when walking in the same room i dont hear it at all.

And when i have a conversation with somebody in a silent room i also dont hear it but i feel my eardrum move, like little popping. Dont know what that is.

 

There are many types (severities) of tinnitus. Some amps up in silence, some stays stable.
If yours amps up, then it is a little more severe than the stable kind.
The most severe kind is the one that STAYS LOUD when you walk out into ambient noise and is heard over anything, so pretty much your head generates loud noise 24/7.
The medical explanation for this is the degree of thalamocortical dysrhythmia (imbalance between the auditory cortex and the thalamic filters). It is nothing to do with fear. It is what it is.

 

My old T was aggravated by sound and loved it when I went to bed in silence, it always went down.
My new T which came on after terrible stress and reaction to large dose vitamin D ramps up in a silent room and prevents me falling asleep. This new T is the worst of the two.

 

Yes.. the worst in silence

 

The warm feeling I have not heard about. I have an audiologist do hearingering tests once a year. Also my ENT once a year. My tinnitus is not every day now. I use Shaman meditation Music and self calming techniques every day. It is difficult to do, but I have leaned how to focus on sounds other than the tinnitus. I am doing very well now. I am so grateful.

 

Stress is a huge contributor to tinnitus.

 

My t lowers in silence and gets loud with noise. Lately I've been spending lots of time at home.

 

This is probably the most "just like me" post I have ever seen here. My T is always with me if I look for it. Only something like a noisy resteraunt will mask it. It's not that it's that loud, it's just that the frequency of it (around 11kHz) isn't really "plentiful" in daily life, unless you're listening to a CD or something (not streaming audio or mp3, they are HEAVILY bandpassed).

But just like you, if I lay in bed at night with no TV on, and the rest of my family is asleep (so not making noise), my whole head is engulfed in an ocean of T. It is EXACTLY like what I remember when I would get T after going to a concert or a bar or something and I would come home to go to sleep.

Even the ear popping during conversation in a quiet place is just like me. I have self-diagnosed this as TTTS, as my ear will also mini-spasm and thump to sharp percussive sounds, particularly if they're percussive, like crashing silverware.

 

Hello, what Benzos were you, or are you taking?

 

I take clonopin .5 at bedtime and lorazepam .25 at dinner. Not much.
I tapered the lorazepam down from .50 to .25. That's not much, I know.
I still have loud t.
I think for a while it seemed better but a hearing test didnsothing to my eardrum or Eustachian tube and now it's loud again.