How Do You Work with Tinnitus?

Hi all,

Just wanted to ask how you work with T, if you work at all.
I am lucky in a way that I can work from home (being in IT support).
For the past months, I cut my work time to half (4 hours per day).

I can also be lucky that I have colleagues understanding my problem and I can work as much or as little as I can. Downside of this is that on some days where there is not much to do, I have enough time googling and posting about T (I know I should take my mind of).

I really hate losing control, that I have to cut my work time, and that anxiety and depression has caught me.

How do you work with anxiety, depression (at least in my case) and T in your head?

 

I play either the audio player from this website or my masking app playing whilst I am in the office. I just tell my colleagues I have T and I need the background noise. Work is a refuge at times because the mind can only focus on one thing at a time.

Do try to keep yourself busy. It distracts you from the T, anxiety and depression, and you retain control over your life. It is difficult initially but somehow we trudge through one day at a time.

 

Martin have you made any enquiries into the Botox treatment?
You said clinic is not too far away from you!
Just couriois!

 

Hi valeri. No. I still don't understand what Botox will do against overactive neurons in the brain.
This clinic also offers "Biomentale Therapie" (biomental therapy). Another approach of psychological assistance, stress reduction help, healing codes for the brain etc. Do you believe in healing codes? Hmm.
You can read here: http://www.ohrfrei.de/eta.html
Would you do that and pay a huge amount of money?
Or another offer for snake oil?
Of course Dr. Greuel says "Tinnitus is curable". What else should he say?

 

I must admit I have always struggled working in a quiet office environment with T, now I am a teacher I don't get a chance to think about it at all.

If I was to go back to working in a quiet environment I think I would ask about being allowed to listen to headphones at least on days where the T flares up as I notice my productivity is almost always badly effected on these days

 

The office air-conditioning combined with the electrical hum of around a dozen PCs provides sufficient background noise to partially mask my T. If I want to listen to music or neuromodulation sounds on my MP3 player or PC headphones then I can do so and nobody minds. Since getting T, I find that I have reduced tolerance for multiple conversations going on around me, especially when trying to concentrate on work. I think this is partly related to a deterioration in my ability to assimilate individual voices coming from different directions. I read somewhere that this is a consequence of impaired functioning of the dorsal cochlear nucleus and is a common secondary symptom amongst T-sufferers. But I get through the day somehow and I agree with shan that it is preferable to keep busy.

 

It's hard when you first get T to work, but it gradually gets easier. The first week with T, work was hell, because I was terrified and so tired. But for me work is a great way to ignore the T, because there is so much noise from the street (my office is right next to the front door and windows) and with my mind focussed on other things, I don't usually "hear" the T, though I can if I focus on it (just barely though )

The best thing to do is to keep working, because when you are focussed on other things you forget about T. Sometimes it takes a while to get back in the swing of working, especially with quite loud T, but the more you do it the easier it gets. Keep trying!

 

I agree 100 percent. Working, even in a quiet office environment, is a great way to distract yourself from T.

 

I wish I didn't have to work when I first got T. But I have no choice being a single income family. I worked in IT too doing business software development and support. But I have to show up to work in an office. I tell ya, it was hard to concentrate. I remember I was working on a program to prepare for the employee record of employment when they leave job, and to submit the info electronically to the government. So it is not a simple program. Hell I don't remember what I wrote most of the time. I am glad no angry employees ever come knock on the door to tell me the crap of info my program sent to the government. LOL.

Later, I told my colleagues that I have this crazy ringing in my head 10 times the pitch of a dentist drill 7/24. So I need masking with high pitch sounds. They don't understand T, but they can relate to the horror of facing a dentist drill. So I could put on the ear buds or even the speakers with sounds of waves, rain, running water, waterfall etc. They actually enjoy when I play the waves. They say it remind them of the beaches and they love it. LOL.

 

Unfortunetely my working enviroment is silent. My tinnitus is high, there fore I usually listen MP3 from my cell phone to mask it. ( But sometimes when I concentrate deeply on my Excel files,I do not hear tinnitus.)

Sometimes my tinnitus so loud that during a phone telecon, I listen masking sounds with my ear which has tinnitus; and at the same time I listen the phone with my ear which has no tinnitus..


And for your second question:
During the first 3 three of tinnitus I had a depression. But I'm not depressive anymore, although tinnitus disturbs me.

 

Thanks Ozzy. Yes, I read your success story.
Interestingly I had no depression the first months. But full of anxiety.
Depression kicked in recently, when I become more and more aware to live with this buzzing head until end of my life.
Work is hardest thing, in particular in the morning with depression and tension.

 

You are welcome Martin,

Do you know the reason of the depression?

American psychologist Rollo Reece May gave very good description of the depression.
"Depression is the inability to construct a future".
This is absolutely a briliant description, because it also gives the key for the salvation.

Please notice that you feel depressed, because you constantly think what will you do in FUTURE while living with the tinnitus. And as you are desperate, depression comes..

Please don't do that! ..How can you sure that you are going to live like that forever?
First of all, there is a FACT that called "habituation". It can happen to you soon.

On the other hand, please think that a cure will be found in the future. Think about this, too.
I'm sure that the cure is on the way.. Its just a matter of TIME!

Place replace your negative thoughts with good thoughts (e.g. habituation and cure)
And this will ease your mind and you will feel much better.