How to Deal with Noise at Work and Ignorance of People?

First of all I shall stress very importantly that I do NOT have hyperacusis. I like and enjoy noise and have no difficulties whatsoever with exposing myself to noise in the following sense. I enjoy loud noise, if I forget about worrying about the effects it will have on me later as I get into a silent room. As long as noise goes on, I have no problems to deal with THAT. My problem lies in dealing with the silent room. I refuse to be a person who can not stand sitting in a silent room. Therefore I expose myself to as much silence as possible, to teach me to cope with silence. Noise is never a problem, silence can become a problem if one is careless and enjoys life in too much noise.

What I DO have, is a worry of exacerbating tinnitus, which for me is extremely low, and only something that I notice as I go to bed in a perfectly silent room, and never otherwise. You may say I have a mental problem. Unjustified worry. I personally say that my worry is very much justified. We may argue about this point but I will never change my opinion.

It is for this reason ONLY, that I always try to avoid all noise that are caused by our civilization. This includes

-helicopter
-ambulance
-trucks
-drills

As I hear anything of these sounds, I open up my bag and put on my Peltor protections.

Other sounds I avoid include

-beep sounds in door locks
-talking elevators
-beep sounds from elevator doors that open or close

However, they just result in elevated level of stress hormones and I feel too much ashamed to put on my Peltor each time I am opening the door to my office.

It also includes

-slamming doors in office buildings

More troublesome is that it also includes noise that are not directly under the category above.,

-sound of very many people gathering together in a closed room talking

It maybe does classify as a sound of our civilization though, since I am fine if the people are outdoors, the problem arises indoors when people talk inside four walls and their voices get reflected by the walls. So I avoid that situation too.

Now, I am also making the following observations of people around me. They seem totally ignorant to all those sounds I listed above. They look very relaxed despite the elevator is talking so loudly and the door is slamming behind them or a helicopter flies right above their head.

I personally always close automatically closing doors so that it does not make this loud slamming sound. Not because of hyperacusis. I did not in the past, so it is also not very likely just a mental problem since if it was, then I would have behaved that way all my life, and I didn't.

I am wondering if somebody else shares my feeling of other people being ignorant.

I also am wondering if that has resulted in that people have been misunderstanding. In my case, it seems like people at my job now are scared of approaching me, they may think I want to isolate myself from them, since I ran away from an occasion when a person tried to make contact with me. I ran away since that happened in a gathering where very many people were talking loudly simultaneously. I ran away from that place, but I was happy the person approached me, and expected him to try again later on in a more quiet place. However, that never happened. Instead it seems all my colleges now try the best to all the time avoid me. Today an episode was that as I meet one college taking his bike to bike home after work, he started to bike in the opposite direction to where he should bike, only to turn around some 50 meters away, expecting me to have walked away. I did not though, and instead I saw how the funny thing happened, how my college turned around his bike and came towards me in a very very high speed hoping I wouldn't see him..

Another curious fact is that I did not get any renewal of my job contract.

 

I wasn't aware of how noisy our society was until I got h. The thing that gets me is cars beeping when you lock them. People close the door and start to walk away and then lock it when they're 10-15 feet away and I'm right in front of the hood.

Sirens make no sense to me either. I spoke to a fire fighter who is losing his hearing from them.

I can't change society. I can't blame society for their ignorance or lack of empathy toward my t. Like you, I carry ear muffs with me wherever I go just in case. If I suspect it's going to be a noisy place I put my ear plugs in before I enter. I got some body colored ear plugs so they're not too obvious.

I was at the doctors office the other day and someone started vacuuming. I was checking out and I put on my Peltor X5a's while checking out. The receptionist gave me a funny look, I said I have tinnitus and the process kept going. I'm not messing around with this.

I visited a nursery with my Peltor X5a's on while driving my diesel truck. The salesman walked up and sarcastically yelled, "Can you hear me?" I said I have tinnitus and this is for protection and moved on with the conversation. No need to give it power.

With h and t I don't linger around loud places. I cover and run. I'm not ready to test the waters. I had one bad incident with sirens that set me back and that was enough to convince me better safe than sorry.

I wish I could say I would have been understanding before I had t. I don't think I would have. I don't think I would have understood how hard it is. I know I'm a changed person now.