If Everybody Heard the Exact Same Sound, and It Was Normal, Would It Change Your Way of Thinking?

Ok, this is a bit of a thought experiment so here goes:

If you were told that everybody on the planet hears the exact same sound in their head as you do, and that it's completely normal, would it change your way of thinking about things? Would you no longer see it as a problem?

 

There is a tribe who have 98% tinnitus and when they get T they celebrate it as they say that it is the spirits of the departed speaking to them. I cannot remember the tribal name or where they are but if anyone else knows?
They do not suffer from T - they are joyful to have it!

 

Just found this....
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/david-green/tinnitus---the-mystery-solved_b_4976290.html
and this
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/sounds.htm

 

Ah no, just like if it were normal to be gang raped, beaten and tortured everyday I would still see it as a problem.

 

No, to know that everyone else on the planet had the same torturous sounds in their head would not help me sleep or stop me feeling rubbish most days. The noises are so loud they keep ME awake. That would still be true. Perhaps anxiety about T would be less but it's the sheer level of noise that keeps me awake more than anxiety.

 

You have to come at this from another perspective, it's almost philosophical but I believe it's true. Put it this way, as humans we always want what we once had if we lose something important, or what others have that we would love to have. If you elimate these there wouldn't be a problem.

Imagine if we were always created with no legs and had to crawl using only our arms, that would be how we exist and we would know no different. If we lost our legs now however it would be devastating because it's not our norm, and you would want your legs back. You would also have great envy of all the people who still have what you lost.

If we were all born with a screaming sound in our heads, I strongly believe silence would be the T and we would suffer from it.

 

For the most part, people I know who have had T from a very young age, aren't very bothered by it, even if it's pretty extreme (provided that it hasn't actually been getting worse over time, anyway).

 

What makes you so sure that this is the case? The reason I ask is that I personally have, on a good number of occasions, fallen asleep just fine in EXTREMELY loud environments. I remember one time when I was a kid, my brother's band was practicing and I literally fell asleep with my head on the back of an amp (which may not have helped my hearing any, ha).

 

It's just my personal experience. I had mild T when I was a kid and throughout my early years. It never stopped me sleeping as it was only a gentle tone. In 2010 the tinnitus ramped up and has been worsening ever since. It is now extremely loud with several other sounds and now I can't sleep as it irritates me so much. For me the loudness of the T is the thing that affects my sleep.

 

My T is bad too, it irritates the shit out of me to the point that I can not function very well in the day, sometimes not at all. I pass out quicker than I did before I had T,I'm always exhausted these days. Even during the days, my eyes are heavy and I feel like I'm going to pass out at any moment, a lot of times I do. Falling asleep is about the only thing that I do well with T.

 

@Telis hey Telis I now get constant pain where I got my tooth removed they tell me that I have nerve damage so not only do I have this F***ing T but now I'm dealing with pain too it sux bro I just got to believe at some point it will get better for all of us ...hang in there man

Carlos

 

This is a good question.

The big problem is that you can't rationalize it. It just doesn't work like that with tinnitus.

You are disturbed by the noise itself, not by the fact that the majority doesn't have it.
It's not like being ugly and surrounded by beautiful people.

Let's assume that from now on everybody on the planet has tinnitus.

Yes, the fact that your noisy neighbours that were listening to music at high levels can't do this anymore because they're suffering now just as much as you are, but that's about it.

What would help you, as an individual, is quick habituation.
But good things come to those who wait and this, according to the forum, would take at least 1-2 years.

OR if the species itself would adapt to the point of not being disturbed at all by the sound, but I think that would take a bit longer

Well we were born without wings and we're pretty much ok.

Now I don't want to suggest the fact that I would rather lose my limbs than have tinnitus (because I don't have a severe form) but I'm pretty sure that some of our friends here would really think about it...

It's not about envy, it's about literally going insane.

If you lose your limbs in an accident, for example, after being depressed for a period of time and having to deal with all the challenges that come with this condition, you can pretty much decide how to live your life from that moment on, either crying because life gave you lemons or making a lemonade.

Tinnitus doesn't give you the time to reflect, it just drives you crazy, like Chinese water torture.

And yet, here we are, fighting it and trying to move on.

For me, people dealing with severe forms of tinnitus/hyperacusis are superhumans.

 

Were you, by any chance, just here ^ ?

 

Anyway, to answer the thread's question: NO.

If everyone in the world suffered with tinnitus, then the world would have adapted to accommodating each person living with a sonic bomb inside of their head.

As it stands, because most of the population do not live with this condition, I as an outlier, am charged with adapting to the world as it is: noise polluted, fast moving and unempathetic.

In Ed's TINNITUS WORLD:

-Friends hang out in QUIET coffee shops and engage in conversation with each other.
-Couples go on dates for walks in the park and meals in QUIET restaurants.
-Workplaces are QUIET and serene. We work at a slow pace and don't expect one person to do twelve peoples jobs.
-Public transport is all electric and runs smoothly.
-We all shop peacefully in physical stores, keeping our local high-street stores economically alive.

In real ANTI-TINNITUS WORLD:

-Friends sit together in a coffee shop, staring at their smart phones, while pop concert level music plays over them.
-Couples go on dates to a movie, concert or football game and have their ear drums blown out.
-Workplaces are noisy as f*ck and laughably promote "health and safety" while happily allowing staff to sit inside an office with construction work going on next to it all day, and scoff at their employees when they suggest it might be hazardous. They also expect said employee to do the job of the other twelve staff they laid off last week and not be dead by the end of the year.
-All public transport vehicles sound like they're going to explode.
-All stores sound like a rock concert is being performed inside of them, so we buy all our clothes off the internet instead, then receive them, find they don't fit, then have to go through some tiresome returns procedure but can't be f*cked so don't bother returning the item and let another £40 go down the drain.

Yeah, so... NO, I wouldn't give a f*ck about my tinnitus if we all had it, because the world would be working for me and if it wasn't, then we'd have all have a cure within a month for that noise inside our heads.

 

I suppose I originally came at this in the context of a thought experiment of how the brain can adapt (plasticity).

By saying "if everyone had it" I think I was questioning normalisation. When you are born within certain parameters, that's all you know. In other words, if a noisy head was the norm, then it's very likely that we'd all be disturbed by silence, and the problem would be a reverse of what it is now.

Don't take this thread too seriously, though. It's nothing more than me getting deep with my own thoughts.

 

I did find a solution. I offer them as birthday gifts.

Not so sure about this. Kinda hard working on a cure when you haven't sleep 3 nights in a row because of the sonic bomb inside your head.

 

Oh don't worry about that @aura, we'll just do in in Ed's TINNITUS WORLD what we do with people in Real ANTI-TINNITUS WORLD: threaten them with unemployment and starvation, then pump them full of benzos for sleep and caffeine for work at their own expense until they die of exhaustion, then blame it on COVID-19. We'll have our cure in one month minimum, and coffee sales will have soared (fuelling the economy!).

 

No I understand that.

I accept I was being slightly obtuse by choosing to take the hypothetical scenario literally word for word.

But yes, I actually agree with your theory, if you remove the "whole population has it too" factor.

If I woke up blind tomorrow, I think the level of fear I'd experience would bring me pretty close to brink of death. On the other hand, if I were born blind, as some are, I would know no other way of life and would therefore experience no feelings of distress or panic.

This is obviously what you're getting at, and it's hard to disagree with.

In any case, I wasn't born with tinnitus, so I ultimately have no idea if it's comparative to being born blind or if one would experience distress or not. If I ever met someone who had been born with tinnitus, I would very selfishly want that person to be someone who suffered reactive tinnitus and tinnitus that had worsened several times throughout their life and not maintained a steady baseline, so as to gauge if this theory were correct or not.

I believe the most distressing element of tinnitus is that I've never heard of it having a "top volume"...

 

You got me a little confused here not knowing which world we are living in now, Ed's Tinnitus World or Real Anti-Tinnitus one but it's ok, I'm with you

Looks like a plan to me!

Just let me grab my walker and my Xanax

 

I believe, if everyone were born with tinnitus, maybe even severe tinnitus, it would probably not be as distressing as losing silence later.

Totally agree with this. If everyone had "reactive tinnitus", then it doesn't matter, that stuff is pretty much unsurvivable if the reactivity is severe enough. The lack of an upper limit on the volume is the most distressing aspect.

Stacken

 

Yes it would change my way of thinking, I would not see it as a problem. In fact initially I would read tons of forum posts about this where people claimed everyone heard tinnitus to try and convince myself that I was just focusing on it. It didn't work long term, but for a day or so I felt much better after fooling myself briefly.

A major part of why it bothers me is because I am so young, feel like I got completely screwed, and nobody I will meet in the real world will be able to empathize with this issue. I'm staring down the barrel of a lifetime of this goddamn noise.

It's funny because that doesn't even make sense why it bothers me now since if everyone had it I would still be hearing it, but it would take the edge off.