Mysterious Tinnitus Spike After Years of Habituation

I developed tinnitus at the start of 2017. By the end of the year, I had habituated well enough that it no longer bothered me. Mine was noise induced, and I’ve been doing all that I can to protect my ears since then. It remained stable and not bothersome for years.

It’s louder than it’s been since the start now. I can’t seem to ignore it. I don’t know what possibly triggered it. I am always careful with the volumes I listen to things at, and I always wear earplugs if I’m ever around loud noise. I keep a baggy of them with me all the time just in case so I can put some in even if I’m taken by surprise, but that hasn’t happened recently. I’m not physically sick or particularly stressed. I woke up and suddenly my ears have been replaced with ringing alarms that can’t be stopped.

I am going to get my ears checked as soon as I can. I’m not sure what to do in the meantime, and it’s frustrating to not have anything I can point to to account for this spike. I thought I had left the agonizing tinnitus days behind me. It just had to come back for a (hopefully) last laugh.

Has anyone else experienced a mysterious spike after so long like this? Did you figure out the cause? If so, what was it? Were you able to habituate a second time? I’m very upset about this right now.

 

Hi @loudmind

I am sorry to hear of the difficulties that you are going through and have a few suggestions that might be of some help. It is not uncommon for people to habituate to noise induced tinnitus the way you did. Unfortunately there is a risk of the tinnitus increasing under certain conditions: If you have been using any type headphones even at low volume. This includes earbuds, Airpods and headset. Using hearing protection is the right thing to do but overuse can cause problems by lowering the loudness threshold of the auditory system which actually makes the ears more sensitive to sound.

Even though you habituated to the tinnitus, if your ears were sensitive to sound or you had symptoms of hyperacusis, this is enough to cause spikes and eventually increase the tinnitus. Perhaps this was one of the reasons you have been using earplugs a lot because your ears were sensitive to sound?

An increase in noise induced tinnitus after habituation has been achieved is usually caused by sound. Either headphone use as previously described or being around sounds that have irritated your ears and auditory system without you realizing it. This is followed by overuse of earplugs and then stress, once there is no underlying medical condition that is causing it which includes hearing loss.

Please go to my started threads and read the following posts: Will My Tinnitus Get Worse? How to Habituate to Tinnitus, The Habituation Process, What Causes a Tinnitus Spike and Can It Be Cured? Hyperacusis, As I See It.

All the best
Michael.

 

Did you get the COVID-19 vaccine recently?

 

Similar story to you.

I habituated to tinnitus after like 2 years. Then I had 3 good years. Then in February of this year I had a pretty massive spike that freaked me out bad, felt like I went right back to the start but worse. Oddly it would cycle around 3 bad spike days, then 1-3 good days, then ramp up to 3 spike days again, very strange. After about 2 weeks I made the commitment to start calming down my nervous system and basically follow the same strategies I used to habituate the first time. Eventually I could string more then 3 good days in a row, then a week, then two weeks. And at this point I no longer keep track at all, which feels real good.

For context spikes very rarely last more than a day for me, and never before did it stick to a pattern like it did these last 6 months. I think my anxiety played a big role, cause once I determined to calm down things got slowly but steadily better. Incremental progress is key I guess.

 

What kind of strategies did you use to calm down?