How Do You Feel About Having Tinnitus at a Young Age?

I was just looking at people's profiles on Facebook and thought to myself "Am I not the most unlucky one among them?" They are now living their lifes as they planned it 4 months ago but here I am suffering such an incurable or maybe even life-long disease (Yes, it is a f*cking disease!) I'm just 24 years old and can not enjoy life as I'm supposed to. I even quited school when I was about to graduate in 4 months! Please, do not go like "You can still live like the way you want. You can do it!" It is not realistic guys. I DO try my best to stay positive but what if they can not find a cure for this and my young ages will be gone in pain? I tried to study a little bit today but gosh! I just couldn't. What am I gonna do with my life if I can not live it like I want?
I can not sleep in silence. What will I do if I need to sleep-over at a friend's house for instance? The little things in life...

I know things could be so much worse, I know it. But we need to be real here. I was just about to be a adademic person in literature field. But I just can't even rrad a book now. What should I do?

Sorry, I needed to share my pain.

 

Is your T very loud ?

 

Hey poyraz,
you are complety right in many of your statements.
i consider my self "young" even that im in my super late 20s hhahaa.
during my late 10s and untill now. i really live my life to the fullest, travel, concerts, drunk nights etc..
and not to have that anymore is heartbreaking and also, to see your friends still having fun without you its awful too.
i feel like life gave me a lot of christmas presents in my life but i took them for granted and they all fell apart.
BUT, NOT ALL of them fell apart.
there a lot of things to do, im starting to new courses about design my second passion (music and concerts was my first), i make small get togethers with close friends, pizza, Sex, painting, drawing, taking proper care of my pets, netflix, work and more work, spending more time with the family....
i mean yes this is an awfull condition BUT we need to focus on what we can do.
you are very young and there are things we can still enjoy.
i knwo it sound like i wanna give false hopes, but a cure, or a relief is on the way we just need to be positive about it.

 

Wise words.

Also, it will always make you feel worse to "compare" to the lives of others, but we often don't know what others go through under the surface of their profile. In my hometown newspaper yesterday, there is a story about an 18-year-old girl who just finished her first year of college and was struck and killed by a car. Gone. In a moment.

Where there is life, there is hope. Please keep heart and hang in there during this early part, which is known to be the hardest to adapt to. You have life. You have hope. You will find good in life again.

 

"Where there is life, there is hope"
i love that saying, and its true,
and yes we cant compare to others, everyone has a different journey.
Also, Poyraz i dont know how life works, if there is a real god, or universal power.
but i have lived my dreams many many times, in my lifetime i have desire big things and i have get them.
all im saying is that we cant loose our hope.
if there is life, there is hope

 

I hate to say it, but you will eventually adapt and learn to live a full happy life with T. You will be normal again and yes it is possible with T. Do not compare what you are going through now to where you will be in a year. Just like you know silence to be a certainty, you will know T to be a certainty and you will carry on with your life just like you did before. You have only had this 3 months and it is still new to you and probably loud. It will get much much softer as you get used to it and stop looking for it. When it gets softer you will forget, the more you forget the softer it gets and so on and so on.

Yes, you are right living with loud T is very very difficult, but it won't stay like this for long. You will eventually adapt. We all adapt and go back to living our normal lives again.

I must have only thought about T for many 10 min in my day today and the rest of the time it was so low I could not hear it, or I was pre-occupied and didnt listen for it. My hearing is shot and I guarantee after you get better yours will be softer than mine and I had a pretty normal day today.

 

Hang in there Poyraz. Don't look back and compare. I've told myself that this is the new me and who I am now. I have made lots of changes in my personal life and at work. I'm getting by and so will you. Try to surround yourself with family and friends who understand and love you. And know that God loves you. Put your faith in Him. I'm glad that your still posting, know that we all struggle but there is hope. I am also a Christian and my strength comes from a relationship with Jesus. Ask Him to come into your life and help you. God bless.

 

I got T when I was 25 so I thought a lot of the same thoughts you wrote here. I couldn't sleep in silence, I wondered how I would date or marry or hold a job or finish school.

It took a while, but one year in I was back in school, two and a half years and I was sleeping in silence again and I'm about to graduate (I was working full-time, studying at night).

Right now things are bad and the challenges seem insurmountable, but you don't know what the future holds. I understand that right now the months feel like years, but you're only three or so months in, which is a very short time in terms of adjusting to T. The first three months or so are the worst for everyone. I dropped out of my classes when I got it, 8 weeks from the end of the semester and I took a medical leave from work. It looked like my whole life was over and I contemplated really making it over. I'm so glad I didn't. Maybe five or six months in, I decided I was going to learn to live again and I did everything I could to learn to feel better. Nothing cured me, but everything helped just a little, trying new things helped me pass the time and one day I woke up and things weren't quite as bad as they had been, a couple years in and they were even better and now T plays next to no role in my life except that I'm a walking public service announcement for hearing protection

And you're right it is not realistic to think that you can live normally right now. You're going through a horrible emotional trauma so don't be too hard on yourself and do not think that right now is how it will be forever. You're in the very worst of it, but it absolutely can get better, you just have to keep trekking, doing your best and seeking help and the next step.

Hang in there, we're here for you.

 

I got it when I was 30....and it did change alot of things for me.

I didn't take it very well and kept feeling sorry for myself by comparing my wife's desire to relax in a quiet room with my total fear of quiet environments.

I consider myself as someone who just shouldn't have gotten T I'm obsessive about discomfort...but i suppose everyone feels that way.

I'm 3 and half years in and I'm pretty fine with it now. I use a masking at night when it's most difficult and take 3mg of melatonin for sleep.

I also have a strange ear tremor as well as T that cannot be masked...that started a tear after the T. So as bad as it is remember things can always get worse lol.

I no longer externalize the sound as an intrusive malignant agent. I accept it as my own background noise.

It took nearly 2 years to become relatively fine with it.

Avoid feeling anxious about is that best thing you can do.

Easier said than done I know.

But it's the best advice for it. The devil is in fearing it and reacting to.it as an external intrusive things.

It's you and yes sadly its most probably a life sentence bit accepting that fact was what got me over my fear.

 

9/10 I guess.

And thank you guys for your comments. I hope I will habituate to it but I see many peoole herr have their Ts for years and years and years and still here and T groups in Facebook. Is that mean they are still not habituated to their Ts? I see some people even had to change their jobs. This is why people get depressed when they have tinnitus I guess.

I can't even go to cinema without thinking of the possible circumstances. "What if I have a spike? Do I have my ear plusg with me?" I never imagines my 20s like that. Things could have been so much worse but I have never thought God would put me in a invisible totrure chamber in every single day.

 

Poyraz, where do you hear your tinnitus? Only in the quiet at home or even at work or outside in the street? When you watch TV, listen to music?

 

Hi TLion
I mostly do not hear my tinnitus when I'm outside. But at home or quite places like this I can hear it way too loud. My tinnitus is in my brain. It used to be in my left ear only but now I can hear it in my head. When it spikes, I can "feel" it all over my head even when I'm outside. It feels like my head is vibrating. I know there are people whose tinnitus are worse than me but I have already been dealing with GAD for the last 6 years and I can easly get depressed. I used to love reading books as I'm a literature student but I can not focus on reading now. Yes I can hear it over TV(mostly) and movies.

 

@Poyraz , the ones you see "still here" are the ones you SEE. Imagine, the truth, which is most likely that there are TONS of people you DON'T see, coping fairly well, who are not NOT here or anywhere else online. I mean, some people need or want to be online in forums and groups, but most likely, most people do not. They very well may be really coping and adapted well. Or just not into forums.

If you were to ask people in public, you'd discover many. I discovered a few in my daily life, whenever I mentioned this (which I usually don't). But whenever I happen to talk about it, somebody always either knows someone or has it themselves. And these "someones" are people who never looked to me like they were suffering from anything. Because they were adapted and smiling and having their lives.

So ... aim for THAT. Because you CAN and WILL achieve that for yourself.

 

Amen to that! Whenever there is a chance, I will mention the importance of ear protection! If it helps just ONE person who listens, I'll be glad!

 

Sure, it's unfair, and unfairness sucks.

When I was 21 I lived with a woman I'd been close with since I was 12. She was practically a straight edge; I smoked cigarettes and lots of weed.

Ten years later, she died of lung cancer. I think I saw her smoke weed twice in almost twenty years of friendship, cigarettes never.

Life is short, difficult and unfair. On the other hand, kittens, sex, surrealist paintings and sunsets on the beach.

 

None of this shit really makes any sense to me, but every so often I still get mornings where I wake up, look over to see my cat sleeping on my wife's face, realize I don't have to get up for another three hours and think "life is pretty great". So, as always, cautious optimism is the best plan for all times and things.

 

Ive been hearing the hiss in my brain for days. I got to experience many different tinnitus sounds the last 6mos. The worse is pulsatile, loud or low. The hiss is just nauseating, i hate it as much as pulsing. Id take the loud drill n whistle any day. Anyway I'm sorry I hope it stops. I think Ativan is turning my ring into a hiss.

 

I think you get depressed when you are neither able to change the circumstance that you have T nor you can accept it.
In the beginning of T we all try so hard to get rid of it. Everybody says you can do so much about it or even worse it's your fault having had too much stress, were anxious...
But then we realize it's not true. It's fate. And here we might have the opportunity to learn to accept T and find back to peace and even to silence again (I experienced that 10 years ago when having mild T. Took me 1 year though to accept. Reward was that it went away completely)
But to be honest I am pretty sure that if your T is nasty you will always have problems with it.

How do I know that my T is really nasty? I've never been member of any inernet community and now I am!

 

got it at 36 out of nowhere.just woke up to it.
loud as hell, heard everywhere.

difficult first year to say the least, tried everything, almost became a junkie, lost my job... Now getting used to it doesn't bother me that much, has gone down in volume but I still think about it a lot, but not in a completely negative way.
dunno, it a process, and a difficult one.

 

Got it at 37, 2.5 months ago.

I don't know wether it's habituation, real improvement or not, but it gets significantly better the last 10 days. Progress are not continuous, but overall softer level, and less intrusive tone. Right now I think I'll soon be able to deal with it, but I don't know if I'm on the way of real improvement (or habituation) or if I'll be deceived by some massive spike.

 

I am just 22 working as Software Engineer

• Don't pay attention
• Now the second thought that will come to your mind is that it's not easy not to pay attention . But trust me on this is the only way to tackle this .
• Life has many different things to enjoy other than going to concerts and loud music
• Neuroadaptation happens , you will have to just wait by not paying attention.
• Get yourself busy 24*7 almost. Do whatever you love , just get busy . Your mind will eventually learn to ignore that stuff
• Well, i face lots of issues while working in my office but I just stopped caring about it .
• So last point You will be Fine

 

If you mostly do not hear your tinnitus outside, it is NOT 9 / 10.

You're claiming to be 90% of the way to having the sounds that completely deaf people hear and they can't mask it at all (cuz they're deaf, of course). Does that really sound like your reality? 100% of people with tinnitus hear it louder in a quiet room, FYI. Just trying to put your condition in perspective. I don't doubt your suffering, but based on what I've read, I do doubt that the extent of your suffering should match its level of loudness.

Don't take my comments as belittling. I'm saying this to help you realize that things may be better than you think. And I think this is a fundamental step in recovery.

 

Agreed, I don't have hearing loss in the normal range but I can hear my tinnitus almost everywhere, I can hear it on an airplane. I've had to rate it often for clinical trials and have never rated it above 8/10. Maybe I should, but I just have to think to myself could it get worse, could it get much worse? If so then it's not a 9/10 or 10/10. I'd love to get to a point where I don't notice it outside. It's just a different ballgame when you cannot mask it, because there is no escape at all 24/7.

I guess it doesn't really matter at the end of the day since it's all subjective anyway, but that's just how I see it.

 

Archer has tinnitus, so I guess you can become the real life Archer? I been trying do some sterling Archer stuff here and there.

 

I got my tinnitus when I was 30 (Oct of last year) and pregnant with my third child. It is reactive so I cannot watch television or be in too noisy situations without getting a temporary increase in volume. Imagine that? No longer being able to enjoy "relaxing" and watching TV because almost always my T starts screaming.. I can, however block it out to where it doesn't bother me and I can enjoy the show if I'm very interested in it.

They don't know the cause of mine but suspected hearing loss/stress and anxiety. I hear my tinnitus about 50-75% of the time. It is worse when I am around certain sounds and generally I prefer to be in the quiet. I am able to block out my T if I am very busy or doing something I enjoy very much. I also believe I have some hyperacusis to boot because my own voice hurts my ears sometimes like nails on a chalk board. It can be miserable but I have 3 small kids, working a full time job and just trying to live my life to the best of my ability. I also worry about the future but I can't really do anything to change it but try and protect my hearing now. I do try to watch sodium levels of food and only drink alcohol in moderation (as alcohol causes increase the next day). I do wear ear plugs at the movies and other loud events but mainly because my T is reactive..

Point is, you can still have a somewhat normal life. Many people in life face challenges and health issues everyday. Tinnitus is the worst one I've ever personally had to deal with and the realization that there is no cure is a huge blow.. But just try to live your life to the fullest. You will have good days and bad days, just like me and I am sure most people on this blog but you can still have a rewarding life. For example, all last week my tinnitus was quiet and only bothered me a few times. Sunday, it was a high pitched electrical storm with massive hyperacusis and it was absolutely awful.. But I managed to work a 16 hour day and I did okay.. I'm still here, working and being a mom.. Hang in there. We are not alone and we can do this together.

The future is scary because we just don' t know. Will it get worse? How will I live like this? Well, I'm trying to learn worrying about the what if's just cause too much anxiety. I'll deal with that bridge when I get there but for now I just try to focus on THIS day and THIS moment because that's all we really have anyway.