High Pitched Tinnitus — Anyone? Did Yours Reduce in Volume?

I am experiencing a quieter day. I had several emotional breakdowns this week, finally sought help for sleep and my GP put me on trazodone. It helps with sleep and levels my moods.

Sleep is CRUCIAL!!!! I know we can't land a perfect 8 hours, but if you've gone weeks without decent sleep, you aren't emotionally capable of handling this.

Get something to legitimately help you sleep. Start there, and give that time.

I am 6 weeks in tomorrow.

 

Does the Prozac help??

 

You can search this site for all of the relevant threads and posts:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/search/3255876/?q=prozac&o=relevance

 

Are you still on Prozac? I just started it...fear it’s making it worse but it could just be in my mind... Also on ambien and Xanax.

 

I have high pitched T, around 9600Hz. Took me a while to accurately measure because it's so high.

I'm about 3 months in like you @PeteJ and I can hear it pretty much all the time. Varying from electrical hissing to running a finger round a wet glass to dentist's drill level.

Sometimes it annoys me, sometimes it worries me, and it's hard to mask. I've found I can get some temporary relief using tracks from HushTinnitus.com, or YouTube tracks - if you look for "musical neuromodulation" or "residual inhibition".

It's also somatic tinnitus, so it responds every time I move any part of my body. And I have hyperacusis as well, so I worry that the neuromodulation tracks could be making me worse if I have them too loud... The H is slowly easing, and I have occasional days when the T isn't so bad.

Despite all that I'm trying to stay busy and stay positive. Mindfulness meditations help me - I've posted a link already for withandrewjohnson.com which is my main go-to.

 

Mine is in the 11-12.x kHz range. Originally at onset+about 2 months, it was around 9.6kHz. After more than a year, it has shifted higher to where most of the time is it is at 12.4kHz. If you were wanting a bit of hope, then yes the T volume is quite a bit lower than the beginning. Hang in there!

 

First time I got tinnitus it was 8khz and I thought it was the worst thing in the world and it took me 2 years to get my life back together. I had to protect my ears all the time from that time foreward which changed my life a lot, but I did find happiness again. that was from accoustic trauma. Last year I got it again much worse - maybe 4 times worse. Range is more like 10khz now (added to my other tinnitus which I really don't hear much. I'm just reminding myself that no matter what it is now, my brain will get used to it again and stop trying to fight it. It's not easy and it sucks and everyone who has it very badly is in the same boat and everyone wishes they didn't. But since we're at least 10 years away from stem cell solutions probably (if they work), we all have to just have faith that after a couple years our brains will train to not think about it.

It's not easy and it's not rosy. And some days are worse than other days. But try as much as you can to give yourself time to NOT try to fight it. Try to just say "Today I'm just not going to worry about it and do something else. I know it's there, I am just going to not do anything about it today." See how many of those days you can do. Start with hours or minutes if you have to.

Stress makes it worse for sure.

 

Is yours maskable? Mine is so loud, the idea of masking it is laughable. I had it bad but habituated. After being stupid 9 days ago on a 3 hour beach buggy tour, my tinnitus has doubled in volume and is now much louder than any other external sound! I'm not sure I can habituate to this if it's permanent. Which it looks like it is.

 

Nine days isn't long enough to know if it's a permanent change in my experience. In my 25 years of having tinnitus I came up with something not super scientific, but a rule of thumb where spikes lasted 2 days or 2 weeks or 2 months or 2 years to habituate. Generally a real spike would take between 2 weeks and 2 months before I would go back to my baseline. If I had it for over 2 months was when I would start to think maybe it was permanent and would take 2 years to habituate.

But everyone's T is different and as bad as I thought it was originally, my new T is 4 times worse and I imagine that some people have it much worse than I have it now.

My current T is only masked by the shower running, no music and not even recordings of rain mask it. I the rain recording if played super loud might. Music does not because the range is so high that the music would need to be crazy loud to mask my T range. For me it's 100% just a matter of trying to train my brain to not hear it. I just keep reminding myself. The sound is not in my ears, it's in my brain. And the brain definitely has the ability to not take in information it receives, that happens constantly all day long (or you'd be getting way too much information). I try to remove the emotion from it to help, but damn it hard and some days impossible.

I do have on my computer a recording of audio I made which matches my T. It's something that some doctors recommend. I was an audio guy, so it was not hard for me to make something to get in the range of the right sound. And sometimes I will play back the sound for a bit in intervals. Honestly I don't know if it's a good idea to do it or not, but on the days it's bad there is sometimes a little odd relief when played. There is a whole therapy program based on this, but I've not done it. And I also don't do it on days I'm less bothered by it, it's sort of my action of last resort. (There are some online apps which try to do a similar thing.)

 

Where are the people who claim that they hear their tinnitus over traffic or used to?

 

My tinnitus frequency is 13.5-14 kHz since onset. When it spikes I get an additional tone though.

I can hear it when driving in rush hour with the windows open easily.

 

I have had days where I could hear mine faintly over moderate traffic. I would call those days full on moderate.

Mine is 14,000-14,500 Hz which means it will naturally be heard over many things even though it is not particularly loud.

 

It's so bad right now.

I don't know how many hz it is. It's too high and loud.

I hate this life.

 

This
It takes a lot of time though, but at some point it all comes down to this, until a cure is found.

 

Does anyone describe theirs as haywire or "insane ringing?" The high speed of several tones?

This is torture at this high frequency and pitch plus the loudness.

Why are people trying to talk me out of suicide? I should be encouraged! This tinnitus condition is not normal even for tinnitus. I doubt anyone would put up with this for long - not at this pitch.

I need to make arrangements and plan. This is hard enough to do and figure out.

 

Hey, mine just flared up. I've been dealing with it about a month. It sounds like the machines they use to scare deer away that broadcast a super high frequency tone, or when someone slides their finger on the rim of a wine glass, but on steroids. I can deal with normal tones and tune them out, but this is so high pitched it's like a feeling as much as a sound, it makes me want to drop to my knees and just grit my teeth. Right now I'm just trying to focus on work to take my mind off of it, but god it makes me so irritable! I feel like I wanna slap the closest person to me right now lol.

I hope we both can get relief over time.