My Story — Up's and Down's

My story with tinnitus started more than a decade ago.

Hunting and shooting has always, and will always be, a big part of my life. On my 12-years birthday my father gave me my first shotgun. A couple of years later I went skeetshooting with my father on our own private land. We were just going to shoot a couple of shots but it was fun and I was getting pretty good at it. We stopped after 50 shots and none of us were using any hearing protection. When we got inside I noticed the ringing. Anxiety struck and I became very afraid. I could not sleep the following nights, I used a CD player to mask the sound but often cried myself to sleep.

A couple of days after the incident, my mom took me to a ENT-specialist, who didn’t give me any support at all. ¨It might go away, but you probably have to live with it¨ - tough news for a 13-year old. There were no steroids or anything to help me at that time.

During the following years I gradually habituated to a point where I only noticed it at night, and even then it didn’t bother me. I always protected my ears while shooting. The most stupid part was that I was ashamed of using earprotection while hunting, and only used discrete filterplugs that I could hide under a hat. Today hunters are much more aware of the risk of hearing damage and many use electronic over the ear hearing protection, wich gives a much better experience of the nature. I still went clubbing and listening to loud music while traning. Sometimes I encountered a small spike when I came home from a night out, but nothing exceptional. I joined the Army and still works there, I do off course use earprotection while shooting and other loud activities.

In March 2016 I went on a live firing exercise with the army, I used earplugs but I must have installed them incorrectly. After the exercise I noticed a peak in my T, and started to listen for it and compared it to the levels I remembered. It felled like my body had forgot that it had habituated, and I was a mess, back to the feelings of anxiety and regret. My girlfriend was 8-month pregnant and I hated myself, as I was afraid that I would never be the father my babygirl deserved. This feeling lasted until the end of April, when my girl was born. When I left the hospital it was like I had habituated all over again. There where no time for T in my life at that point. Everything was back to normal until the beginning of December this year.


I went on an exercise in Germany for a week and it was truly boring, I was never close to any excessive noise. But spent a lot of time alone sitting, waiting and listening to my T asking myself if it was louder than before? Is this a new spike?. Again it felt like my body forgot that it had habituated. Now I have been home for 3 weeks spending the Christmas time with the family and I am much better. Not 100% back to normal but I will be its just a matter of time before I’m all habituated again. I have never used the 1-10 scale for T because (for me) its just a matter of how much attention I put into it. I almost haven’t noticed it while writing this in a quiet room, but if I tune in to it it would probably be an 8 or so.

To all of you that are new to T. Relax you will get much better, it takes some time don’t force it. In time you will be back living your life and enjoying it

Never ever give up!


Here’s some guidelines that works for me:

1: Don’t blame yourself or anybody else.

- Done is done, you got to look ahead. Regret keeps you focusing on the T


2: Do not mask the sounds at night

- You might want to mask it in the beginning but over time you will be better off accepting the sound. The sound doesn’t bother me at bedtime anymore, I know it's there and it can not hurt me.


3: Don’t isolate yourself, try living a normal live.

- This is the most important point. T does not stop you from doing anything. Keep your mind busy and it will slip in the background, maybe you will even stop noticing it. Enjoy your family and your hobbies. If you don't have any hobby's this is the time to try something new and get some

4: Protect your hearing.

- You better protect your hearing, buy quality hearing protection and used it. I just bought my first music earplugs to use in nightclubs. Maybe if I had protected my hearing better in my youth I would be in a much better place now. I don’t know- and I don’t do regrets.

5: Only read the success stories:

- This is important, there is so much negativity in many posts on forums like this, reading the success stories fills you with hope. In time you may want to stop visiting sites like this to keep your mind away from T. I have high respect to the ones that keep coming back to motivate newcomers. You are doing a great job.

 

did you ever had hearing tests ? what kind of loss did you have

 

It proberly 3 years since my last test.. At that time my hearing was fine besides the T

 

I agree when you say listen to your T,for me that is what helped me habituate extremely quickly in the beginning.

At first your just running from it,but I found laying down in a quiet room with the tv on low enough that you can still hear it helped me tune it out.
I watched The Walking Dead personally,and I would get so indulged with what was going on that I would forget about my T even though it was very much still there.When I was done I would turn off the tv and just lay there thinking about whatever it was I had to do tomorrow,say goodnight to Mr.T as I called him and then rolled over and got stuck in deep thoughts or dreams until I fell asleep.

Upon wakening I would say good morning Mr.T,jump out of bed and carry on with my day.
What's important to remember is that I could remind myself that I could tune it out whilst watching tv so why not during the day?So that's what I began doing,sitting in quieter and quieter places where I could hear my T and training my brain to ignore it,whether it be reading a book or looking at the newspaper or even sitting in a library.
If I could tune it out there then I could tune it out just about anywhere and that's what I did and it worked.

I think running from it and hiding it are not what helps,hearing it and tuning it out is what the key to habituation is.