Hypothetical Question — If You Could Swap Tinnitus with Certain Members of Tinnitus Talk, Would You?

This is a little nonsensical but I’d be interested to see how people answer.

If you could swap tinnitus with certain members of this forum, would you? The rule would be once you swap you can’t go back. So, if you decide to do it you have to live with their tinnitus and not what you have now.

It’s stupid but it raises an interesting question to me.

 

It's not a stupid question at all, Ed.

My answer is no. I have read posts and interacted with those who make my suffering look pale in comparison. Many times I am almost reduced to tears just thinking of what they live with on a daily basis.

On my worst days I can get very down and think that no-one could possibly feel what I am feeling and manage to live their lives. The truth is this, so many others here deal with unimaginable forms of tinnitus/H, something that I am sure would break me.

I have read posts where people have a very slight form of tinnitus that they only hear in a quiet room. Perhaps this would make me want to do a trade-off. It's just that we all know how changeable tinnitus can be, even on a day to day basis.....

 

I find it interesting how none of us have any clue what other peoples’ tinnitus sounds like regardless of how well we try to describe what we hear. If we could somehow swap, we may be surprised in a good, or bad way, how different others’ T is.

Maybe some of the milder cases are no different to some of the described severe cases, and vice versa, if we could experience it for ourselves. There is such an emotional connection involved in the whole process, utilising various areas of the brain, that it makes it impossible to be objective. There are cases of people with very severe tinnitus (based on descriptions of how it’s experienced) who are not negatively affected, and at the same time there are described mild cases (based the same way) that drive people crazy. This is why the best system we currently have is a questionnaire.

Its not as simple as the explanation that damaged cells, and nerves, lead to tinnitus because it doesn’t always. Where does the real fault lie for the tinnitus signal emerging? Is it really down to a faulty gating/filtering system in the brain like some theories hypothesise? Obviously, this only applies to subjective tinnitus. However, whether it’s caused by noise damage, ototoxic meds, or a medical condition: what is the mechanism of how this sound is created, heard, and perceived? I suppose that’s the million dollar question.

I digress. I suppose the original point of the question is this: what if you could swap with a person on this forum, who based on personal descriptions, you deem to to have it mild. Even if that person was really struggling to cope. What if you swapped, and found their tinnitus more unbearable than yours? Remember there is no objective measurement, and everything we know about the brain is incredibly complicated. I think the brain can become so entangled, with other areas, that ones perception is a difficult thing to quantify.

 

I would swap with anyone who has very mild tinnitus that can be heard only in total silence.

This is of course based only on how those individuals describe their tinnitus.

 

Me2. I really don't get this thread's question? Isn't that obvious?
I would swap also with no tinnitus at all.

 

No.

 

Yea, that’s the interesting thing Val. I’ve had various forms of tinnitus over the years so I know for a fact (from my perspective) that tinnitus is harder to deal with when it’s loud. However, we are dealing with something akin to phantom pain here. The noise we hear doesn’t come through the same signal chain of a real outside noise. When we hear a real sound there is a complex system/chain of events that occur. The brain has to decide what’s important and what isn’t so it can amplify the information we need most. This is why we tend to filter out useless background noises whilst working in an office, for example, or whilst talking in a bar, etc. Even then, we would be simplifying the process by quite a margin. The brain will also attribute emotional significance to the incoming broadband sound, such as, if we heard an unexpected lions roar, or distant gun shot, it would instinctively flood our system with cortisol and adrenaline. Our perceptions would heighten, and we’d have a physiological reaction. There’s a lot of complexity, in fact, even the word complexity doesn’t cut it here.

With tinnitus, it’s already a part of our brain. We are essentially hearing our own nervous system at work. So little is understood about how this noise enters our consciousness, and how it becomes a part of our reality.

I’m going to get deep here, but pretty much everything we experience is made up. Nothing about the world we perceive is real; it is all a construct of our brain presented to us the way our brain wants us to see and experience it. Colours don’t exist, temperature doesn’t exist (it’s high and low energy), balance doesn’t exist, tastes doesn’t exist, shapes don’t exist, etc etc. Every animal on the planet experiences the world completely differently. Think about that. A fly has such an intensive frame rate to its vision that it effectively sees the world in slow motion. All animals experience time dilation differently; the way we experience it is down to our brains. It’s an extraordinary subject that has fascinated me for years. I wonder what the world really looks and sounds like if we could some how view it in an unbiased objective way. I suppose there can never be a definitive reality as even the scale we experience reality at can be vastly different, from sub atomic levels, upwards.

Even our decision making, which we also believe we have full autonomy over, is also not the case. Most of the time our brain predecides which action to take, and then presents that idea to our conscious awareness, giving the illusion of a free decision. There is a debate whether we have free will at all. Here is a famous experiment which demonstrates how our brain decides what to do before we actively make a decision:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/amp

So, I suppose my point regarding tinnitus is that we are dealing with something that is extraordinarily complex. There is more to how we experience our tinnitus than we think. It’s a very complex issue.

 

The idea behind the question is to highlight the unknown. What one may think is an easy swap to someone who has it easier when it’s not that simple. The only measure we can really go by is how much the person suffers and that’s why we still don’t have anything better than a questionnaire. Even then, we still have no idea if another person would find that level of tinnitus a problem or not. We only have our own experience to go by.

Also I said certain people’s, so if someone said they didn’t have tinnitus then they would have to be excluded. What I’m saying is it would be interesting for a severe sufferer to enter the mind of a mild sufferer, and vice versa. Both would be suffering so to be able to experience another persons reality would be very interesting. Maybe there’s no difference, or very little difference in some cases. The subjective nature makes all these labels unquantifiable.

 

No I could not let anyone go through what I do ...

 

You’re so selfless Glynis. You still think of others no matter what.

 

You inspire me, glynis.

 

Glynis could probably bring peace to Israel and Palestine if she could just spend an afternoon with their leaders. That’s the effect she has on people.

 

I wouldn’t swap, be careful what you wish for!! A life with vile T would be fitting for paedophiles maybe?
Very interesting concept Ed. How do we measure pain, it’s not visible, only by the reactive response by someone who is suffering.
Eve x
@Ed209

 

If we are hearing our own nervous system does that mean we can exacerbate the noises when we are anxious.
Eve
@Ed209

 

Yea. In my case it does.

 

Me too, I’m much more aware of it then although I’m always aware of it.
Eve
@Ed209

 

Not true, just sometimes my attention slips onto something else!
Eve
@Ed209

 

I'd wait for someone with no tinnitus to join.

 

I can’t edit the question as it was written in a rush, but it could only be members that consider their tinnitus to be intrusive.

Would you take a gamble or keep what you’ve got?

 

Blue Pill or Red Pill - The Matrix (2/9) Movie...

 

Maybe tinnitus is a glitch in the matrix.

 

Oh yeah hell no.

 

I would like to go through the worst tinnitus that is experienced on this site to see how it differs from what I’ve already got. Imagine if that was truly possible. To gain true understanding of exactly what someone else experiences.

 

idk if it counts but I used to have absolutely awful tinnitus until I got my earwax removed, and my ETD cleared.

 

Yea, that’ll definitely up the volume. However, I seem to be chronically bunged up because of my allergies. The steroid sprays don’t touch it, unfortunately.

 

Providing you also hate the other person right? Maybe someone with mild tinnitus that tries telling everyone tinnitus isn't that bad and it's mostly psychological.

Anyway, I think I would want to swap with someone that only has single tone tinnitus and no hyperacusis / reactive tinnitus. If I could get rid of this hyperacusis I feel like I could live my life normally enough despite having moderate/loud tinnitus.

 

No I would not. It seems that there are a lot of people here whose tinnitus is much louder than mine. Also, most people here have tinnitus in both ears.

I'm tempted to say I would swap with someone who has mild tinnitus, but as you say @Ed209 , I only have their descriptions to go on. Perhaps what they call mild is actually louder than what I call moderate. Or perhaps their sound is different and, even if not as loud, would be more annoying to me than my own.

Also, I know exactly what caused my tinnitus and many people here do not. They go to many doctors seeking the cause of their tinnitus. I'm terrified of doctors, so I would rather have my certain knowledge of acoustic trauma than a medical mystery.

 

Yea I suppose that’s the essence of the question. What is quiet and loud? To me personally, I know what I’d consider quiet and loud, but without comparison it has no real meaning.

I have to teach this in my lessons when we go over the dynamic marks. PPP is really really quiet, PP is really quiet, P is quiet, MP is moderately quiet, MF is moderately loud, F is loud, FF is really loud, and FFF is really really loud.

But, it’s all relative. There is no definitive volume for any of those dynamics, and every student I’ve ever taught interprets them completely differently. But no less correctly.

 

As you can see, ED, this was not a stupid question. I find the replies so very interesting. It has turned into quite the discussion, all for the good.

 

Are you Glynis’ daughter . You have a real sparkle to your personality. No wonder your introductory thread is so long; it could be turned into a book

The Chronicles of Emmalee