My 15 Years of Tinnitus

Hello everybody!
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As many of you, I'm a victim of tinnitus too. The cause of the tinnitus is my own fault and this has tormented me for years by my own guilt and I can never forgive myself for this. If I could go back in time I would beat the heck out of my younger self and explain what drama/torment it will cause me the next coming years. Oh well, I was young, immortal (I thought) and stupid :/

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I want to share my experience and struggle with tinnitus and I have also a few questions to others here that might have a better experience/understanding about it. Even if I had it for around 15 years, I actually never looked it up more than the basic of "what is tinnitus" so I don't have a very deep or good experience about it, if I may say that myself.

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I would also point out that my tinnitus miraculously isn't that loud (maybe a 2 or 3 out of 7) and I haven't got any hearing problems. I can only imagine how people with REALLY loud monster tinnitus 24/7 must be :/

The beginning​

The first years were very chaotic and I couldn't get help from anyone really (I can understand that in a way, I guess it's hard for a non-tinnitus person to understand and feel how you feel and what you are going through)

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My family couldn't really do anything and I tried to just rest my ears from any loud sound from that point on. I'm still amazed that I actually could sleep without any masking or any sound at all the first months. Over time however I started to get fixed by my tinnitus, was it my tinnitus or was it a sound from something else? For many years that actually worked, I could fool my myself and my mind that the sound came from another sound source and for many years everything was actually alright.

The present​

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I got a cold and I got 2 new tones I didn't have before in all my years with tinnitus. Note that ever since I got my tinnitus I had ALWAYS been careful with sound volumes and I even have a remote controlled decibel meter so I can see how loud the sound around me is, I very rarely used it, only if I wasn't sure if the sound volume from the movie/music/game was too loud) but I never took it with me when I went out so I wasn't a control freak that needed to check every sound I heard

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The first tone is like a very mild alarm sound of some kind, it's very quiet and I can only hear it when I really, really, really concentrating, however it was a new sound nevertheless.

The other sound is like a pulse, I guess I can hear my heart, it's not very loud but I can hear it pretty good when I'm on my side and trying to sleep, googled around a bit and it's supposed to be "pulsatile tinnitus?" from what I gather it's not dangerous and some people can have it their whole life but it's different from "normal?" tinnitus, because it's actually possible to eliminate pulsatile tinnitus. At least that's what I read. I'm more curious how I got these new sounds after years with only one sound, my only guess is that they came from the cold I got.​

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Well now to my questions and any help and experience from any of you is very much appreciated

Since I only have these 2 new tinnitus sounds in maybe 1½ week now, is it possible from them to go away on their own or is it better to search for help as soon as possible?

After I got new sounds to fight/adapt to my old tinnitus sound that I had learned more or less to accept suddenly became a sound I no longer can tolerate, what gives? Shouldn't it be that I can mask it with my mind since it's been there for so many years? *confused*. This has given me a new enemy to battle that I really can't win over at the moment. SLEEP.

It's been like this now for the past maybe 7 days, I just can't fall asleep. Or yes, I can fall asleep after HOURS of lying in the bed staring at the ceiling and just fighting (mentally)/meditating/try to get my thoughts on something else. Then I get 2-3 hours sleep and then I wake up and can't go back to sleep.

What happened to my awesome habituation power I had all these past years? It's like I'm on day 1 with my first ever tinnitus all over again.

I'm also curious and I don't hold any hopes but can tinnitus that has been with you so many years (15+) go away/fade by itself as long as you treat your ears carefully?

I'm not talking about habituation, I mean if it truly can disappear/heal after all this years? If someone here has that experience that would be awesome if you would share it

Best regards,
Jin