If Tinnitus Is Equally Loud to a Human's Voice, How Do People Cope?

I can't imagine that. In terms of volume, my tinnitus is softer than most things. A fridge is probably louder. But I always hear it, over everything, except the shower. That's why it's so awful, it's always there.

Some of the examples I see on YouTube, how do people live? I'm falling apart due to my tinnitus, yet people with it much worse say "I just live with it." How?

 

I can only speak from my experience, and that is after so long, it's like your brain just becomes uninterested in it. I used to be obsessed with it because it’s there nonstop, but now I rarely think about it.

 

Same exact reason why some people have OCD and hyperfocus and others don't - some brains are just better wired to cope with afflictions that are thrown at them than others.

 

What really changed things for me was acceptance. Once I started to accept that my tinnitus was a part of me now, at least for the foreseeable future, I stopped resisting it and started to think, "Okay, now that it's a part of my daily experience, what do I do next?" That's when I began to not see it as an intrusion, and I started to focus on things beyond it, like my hobbies again, and just living life again. It took a long while to accept. It wasn't a one-and-done thing. I had to practice it daily, convincing myself to accept, and then it got easier over the course of a few months. Now, my anxiety toward it is pretty low. I still get annoyed by it on the louder days, but I don't react negatively to it, and I very often focus on other things.