My First 3 Days and I Feel Doomed... Help

So, I now know what I am facing. I was already stressed out with other life situations and then this. I am trying to push through the negativity, but a constant thoughts of how am I going to do this crops back. How in the heck am I going to make it?

What type of psych help should I find?

 

I'd just like to clarify one thing. Is it the case that you've had T for 3 days, and now you are worried that it is permanent?

 

Yes, that is the case. I have had ringing for years, but very light until this past week. I had an exam today and definitely have damage.

 

Welcome to the forum. As a new sufferer, it is too early to conclude that you will suffer like this. Your stress and anxiety level can affect how severe & loud your T will be. Try your very best to stay positive and calm. The best advice I can give you is to focus on reading the success stories under Knowledge Base. There you will learn how people may suffer initially like you and yet come out a winner over T. Not saying everyone's T will be gone. But there are ways people can learn to cope with T or habituate to it. The first thing you should do is to get an ENT to look at your ears.

When tinnitus is new or at a new irritating level, and the ringing is causing much anxiety and panic plus sleeplessness, it is advisable to get masking going so you won’t be so anxious and fearful and can sleep better. Stress and anxiety are toxic to T. So try masking if you haven’t done so. When my T was new, I used to mask all day just to prevent panic attacks from hearing my ultra high pitch loud dog whistle T. Try these if you haven't yet. Best of luck. Take good care. God bless.

1) Mask at bed time if having trouble sleeping, by using a sound pillow or sound machine with pillow speakers. There are good sound machine & pillow therapy systems like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Oasis-...d-Oasis-Therapy-System-Speakers/dp/B00MH5HKTA

2) If you need masking on the go, try load an ipod with nature sounds or music using itune. If you have a smart phone, you can download free APPs for soothing or T-masking sounds. Use wisdom in the use of headphones or earbuds as extended use or excessive volume may hurt your ears. Try set the volume slightly below that of your tinnitus.

3) With PC & speakers, you can try these excellent masking sounds to see which one masks best:

TT's excellent audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/

or this online sound library, particularly the self-mix nature sounds: https://mynoise.net

or download free sound generator ‘aire freshener’: http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html

or click play to mix these sounds with this simple sound generator: http://asoftmurmur.com/

or search youtube with words like 'tinnitus masking sounds', 'white noise', 'rain sound' etc.

 

Hi @Danny 1.

Try to remain positive, it does help.

@Michael Leigh wrote the following, excellent post on negativity and tinnitus:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-and-the-negative-mindset.23705/

@billie48 wrote his success story demonstrating how positivity helped him habituate.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...w-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

As for psych help, anything will help. There are two main schools of treatment that are prevalent here in the US (sorry, I cannot tell where you are located): Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Psychodynamic. CBT generally addresses the problems and its main focus is on providing tools and techniques to the patient to help them conquer their negative thought processes and replace them with more positive thought processes. Psychodynamic focuses more on getting to the root cause of the problems, and often involves reviewing your past and bringing up previous problematic times in your life to understand you and your history to help understand the causes and why you are suffering.

If you want to quickly solve the problems you are having, CBT would be a good choice; if you are more interested in "talking things out" and getting to the root cause, then Psychodynamic would be the choice. Both are valid and will help, you just need to select the style that you are the most comfortable with and suits your needs at this time.

 

I am trying my best. It is hard to ask for help, and I appreciate the input.

I saw an ENT and audiologist today. Neither gave much hope. Just a hand full of brochures. I live alone and don't have many people to talk to about this. The words of encouragement will stick in my head. I hope to find more of these here than words of despair here. I hope to fill my thoughts with the ones of positivity.

Honestly, this was happening for a week, and I didn't even realize what it was until 3 days ago. When I found about T, that is when the anxiety began. Not when the T started...when I read the negative stuff online. I really believe it is possible to turn this around to be manageable. But it will take me reading more positive support for sure. That is my hope.