How Long Did It Take For You To Habituate to Tinnitus?

How long does it take to habituate to tinnitus or how long till it disappear?

 

About 4 months in 2007 when it first started, and I'm in the process right now since my relapse, I'm 2 months into it and things are getting better

 

Impossible to answer. There is no right or wrong answer. It's totally individual. When I got T as a kid I habituated within a couple of weeks. If I had gotten it as an adult I would probably have a very hard time habituating since I'm not the same person now as I was way back then. I was a very carefree kid, but as an adult I'm very nervous and prone to anxiety and depression.

 

I'M also prone to anxiety unfortunately. I have a very low tolerance to T it seems....

 

Was there anything you did to habituate faster or did anything help? I know i listen to white noise at night on my phone. During the day i can still hear the high pitched E sound...it but at times when im really busy I dont really notice it.

Side note: I did just pick up a bottle of lipoflavonoid which my ENT recommended. Why not give it a chance. Keep in mind that its only been 3 weeks, and i have never had this before.. I think the T was brough on my extreme stress that i had for 6 weeks prior to the start of my T.

 

@Ifeel4U when T first started, I got pregnant about 6 months after and the fact that I was pregnant and very happy about it made me habituate super fast. For 9 months, I felt "protected" by the baby, like I couldn't be sad or depressed... It continued after I gave birth, until 2014.

This time, I have taken the matter into my own hands and have decided that I don't want to let T ruin my life or take control of it. I'm habituating by keeping busy, maintaining a healthy lifestyle (sleep, food, stress level) and having hope for the future. I also have 3 children and it helps a lot

 

The first time I got it, I habituated fast because the T lowered a tad and I was taking an SSRI which made me numb to it. Secondly, I thought the T would go away if I ever quit the SSRI. I was wrong, it did not.

The second time it took some months until I got on klonopin which lowered it for a while and helped my mood. It came back later though with a vengeance and depression.

This past time, its been a very long journey. Couldn't do it on klonopin because it is a depressant. After getting on Lamictal, I started having some good days. Unfortunately, I spent days still trying to lower it instead of trying to habituate. Instead of accepting it, I was trying to get rid of it.

Basically, if I set a goal and do not achieve it, it can get me down. So what I'm trying to do now is use wisdom and effort into not letting tinnitus bother me. Its tough because I have depressive episodes anyway, but I think I can do far better than I am doing. I was habituated for a bit and then decided to get stupid and take some CNS depressants to calm down. That's when I got destabilized and depressed.

 

The first time it took over 2 years. I was habituated for 4 years. It didn't bother me at all.

Now Im 8 months in and this is awfull. But it will be be better. You dont have to do anything, it just will be better with time.

 

My first set of noises I got as a baby, so that's actually "silence" for me.

My second set of noises I got as an adult and I had a really crappy 2-3 months but over that time the noise got a bit better and I got around to accepting it and then I had a pretty good 2 years or so when it was a nonissue.

Unfortunately Lenire's giving me spikes and just the act of doing the treatment keeps my attention on the tinnitus so I'm suffering again with the second set of noises, but I'll discontinue usage and hope that I'll get better again in a few weeks.

But as others have said, there's no right or wrong answer, and there's no heavenly horn that sounds when you're officially habituated. It's a process. Better days, worse days. Over time, there'll be more good days and less worse days.

 

Habituation, if that is what it is called.

My tinnitus is reactive to different noises and events that I will never be able to control so I never fully get into a comfort zone as it is always changing.

After nearly four years of constant high frequency head and ear noise, I accept I have it, the tears have long gone but I as we all do on this forum wish for our old lives of peace and quiet.

May we all be blessed with our biggest wish one day. Silence.

 

Habituation or Tinnitus resilience is a cumulative process; it's analogous to a muscle that just be muilt. I first experienced Tinnitus at 17 from hereditary hearing loss and for 10 years my brain suppressed Tinnitus so efficiently that I forgot I had it.

Last October, I experienced my first musical/auditory hallucinations and I had such an adverse reaction that my Tinnitus was amplified to such a cacophony, I could not function. I contemplated many sinister things...

Nine months later, and a very arduous process of acclimating to new sounds and stopping catastrophising about never getting better, I'm much better. I still hear Tinnitus but I can forget about 95% of the time. My life has resumed normalcy.

What was instrumental in expediting habitation was resuming my normal life, you cannot let Tinnitus deprive you. I had to stop living in a perpetual state of trepidation: "This will make it worse! I can't do this, I can't do that", I had to stop scrutinizing it.I

People will discard Tinnitus reprogramming because it doesn't cure the noise but how you think about Tinnitus is a core component to how I habituated . The brain can suppress something it perceives as benign, or my brain can, so I've found truth in reprogramming how I react to Tinnitus actually alleviates Tinnitus.

 

My issue is that my brain can't do this. I'm sure it's related to me having ADD, but I've never been able to suppress or tune out anything, be that the feeling of my clothes, me seeing my nose/cheeks/glasses all the time, or me having been unable to tune out an soft background noise for as long as I can remember. I tend to focus strongly on sensation whether I want to or not, and sound especially.

As such, I've not had a day where I haven't even noticed my tinnitus for just a second. It's not that I'm afraid or still stuck in my flight-or-fight response, it's just that I genuinely cannot tune it out or even learn to ignore it, however benign I do perceive it to be.

Which is, I think, the one and only reason for my tinnitus being so intrusive. It's not that loud in reality, and it doesn't usually compete with other noise. My brain just hyperfocuses on it, like I always have with actual noise/sound.

Sucks, honestly. Then again, my tinnitus also fluctuates by the hour, so that's a fun issue too.

 

@ASilverLight,

I feel like mine fluctuates widely as well. It can be quiet in the am and then loud by afternoon. I have some quiet days but mostly loud intrusive days of late. I have 2 tones. The fluctuating one is a high pitched hiss. The lower tone in my left ear never changes and is easily masked. But the high pitched hiss, which started about 5 weeks ago, fluctuates all over the place and seems to be worsening. Sometimes I wake up and it is quiet. Other days I wake up and it is ringing away. I am starting to wonder if the crickets I listen to on my sound machine is actually aggravating it.

Do you notice sounds at a similar frequency can set yours off?