My Tinnitus Journey Started After a Particularly Stressful Period with My Girlfriend

Hello everyone, long time lurker here but thought that I'd go ahead and introduce myself.

I'm a 20 year old college student. I've always been stressed and anxious, especially since the pandemic started. In retrospect it was probably an unhealthy amount of stress; I would always worry about parts of my body that were going wrong and would always find diseases within myself. In December, I went through a particularly stressful period with my girlfriend and one night when I lay my head down to sleep I heard a ringing in my right ear that started loud, diminished, and was replaced with 10-12 seconds of thumping which also diminished in volume. The next night too, I got a screeching left ear tinnitus that diminished, but has never quite gone away (it feels like something just "there" behind my left temple; it's really more of a feeling more than a sound and it drives me nuts). Anyways, I couldn't sleep for several weeks until I got back to university because my house is dead silent; even here at university I have to keep a fan on in my room in order to sleep. It's been almost 3 months and I've really given up hope at this point. I've contemplated suicide many times because this really is no way to live.

I can't help but feel extremely jealous of everyone around me who has their health. All of the issues in their lives, whether they're academic or social or personal, they don't know how easy and lucky they have it when every night I can't do anything except listen to my pulsing ears. Sometimes when they pulse it literally feels like someone's pushing earplugs in and out of my right and left ears and it drives me crazy. The ENT I saw said that there wasn't anything wrong even in the MRI with contrast and the audiologist said that my hearing was perfect. It drives me crazy and makes me sad that this really is my new normal now. I am so jealous of everyone around me and I haven't been this depressed in years. I don't know what to do anymore. I wish I could wake up one day and have this go away because it showed up so suddenly, over the span of 2 nights, and it hasn't left since. I don't know why I wrote such a detailed post but all I know is that I'm crying right now just writing this because I don't know what to do anymore.

Stay strong, all of you guys.

- GoldenEye

 

@goldeneye, nice to see you posting for support.

Tears of sadness and frustration and not knowing why you have tinnitus can cause anxiety.

Stress can cause tinnitus and tinnitus causes stress and the cycle begins.

Try to stay calm. No jaw clenching. Try not to listen out for the sound.

Tinnitus can be caused for a reason and for no reason at all.
It can be in one ear or both ears and head. It can change sounds and strengths and add sounds, it can pulsate, whistle, hiss etc. Mild tinnitus can cause stress too, just like louder or blasting tinnitus.

Over time you will develop knowledge on how your own tinnitus journey is going and what makes it worse or better.

Stay positive and give it time. Try not to get stressed out as it will feed your tinnitus.

love Glynis