Need Help, I'm Feeling Very Hopeless

So within a week I've gone from living my normal life, to developing tinnitus, to being diagnosed with hearing loss and told I will have tinnitus for the rest of my life. I also read a lot on these forums and the internet in general that people are suicidal even after 5 years of developing tinnitus. So much for adapting. I'm feeling very hopeless, and I'm not asking for bullshit stories, but would like to hear how bad people's tinnitus is and how it has affected their lives. How do they deal, and is life still worthwhile.

 

My intrusive T is likely the result of high frequency hearing loss which sounds like your issue too. After the initial shock and panic, everything settled down and I started focusing on it less. Three years later and I am not bothered by it but it is still there. I live my life no differently now than before my T arrived. You will too. Try to stay calm and consider counselling to help you get through this change. There are many wonderful people here to help. Life is good.

 

First thing you need to keep in mind is tinnitus LOVES attention. I have loud tinnitus that cycles, so sometimes I have mild days, but for the first eight months it was nonstop torture. A lot of that torture was because of all the attention I was paying to the tinnitus, feeling like my life was over.

My life will never be the same, it will never be how I planned it, but I'm slowly adapting after almost a year and a half. The more I ignore this ugly troll called tinnitus, the less obnoxious it is. It's still there, and it's still loud a lot of the time, but I'm not crying about it anymore. I'm just more or less always a little p*ssed off and frustrated, which for me is a better feeling than depression.

My suggestion is you read the thread Back To Silence by @I who love music and try the technique. Just keep at it, and it will make a difference. For some people it makes a little difference, and for others it makes a lot. For me, it made a little difference, but it was still a blessing to have a bit of relief. Also look through the Support forum and the Success stories.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/

Also, the good news is you're early into this. The first part is the worst part, and there's always a chance the tinnitus will fade away into the background. It does happen, and you might be one of the lucky ones.

 

People can be suicidal for many reasons, failure of business, loss of job, bankruptcy, breaking up a relationship, failing health & loneliness, etc. But many other people who have gone through the same things either don't feel suicidal nor even if they have fleeting thought of it, they never actually carry out. With tinnitus, just like those challenges above, there are millions with tinnitus and very few statistically go ahead to off themselves. So there is no need to think T must drive a person to do the unthinkable. This is the same when we embark on a plane. Statistically very few air accident and fatalities but each air tragedy seems to stand out much more than the everyday onslaught of motor vehicle accident fatalities even though the number pails compared to deaths on the road.

With tinnitus, most people do get better over time. You can read up the success stories to get a feel of how people get better over time. You can learn some insights and strategies from those who have gotten better. Try to focus on these positive stories instead of the glooms and dooms from some posts. Remember, in a support forum, posts and rants are usually done from people who are still struggling while the majority who have no need of support don't post much above their condition. This tends to cause a support forum full of bad news but in reality and statistically, the picture may not be that bleak. Just my humble 2 cents.

 

Welcome to the forums.
Tinnitus is a shock when we first get it as it invades our quiet time and with it floods of emotions and lack of sleep for some .

Learning to overcome the feelings is a big step and that then makes you stronger to cope with your sound itself .

A lot of the feelings are because we don't know why we have tinnitus,
How long does it last as it can go away for some people and for some people it will remain.
There is help and support with your doctor and family and the forum.
You might cope with the unwanted emotions but there is medication and counselling also.
As you have hearing loss a hearing aid might help you to amplify the outside sounds and mask the sound of your tinnitus.
Keep posting on here for support and try to stay positive it does help and try not focus on the sound.....lots of love glynis

 

In internet you will find people who have problems. Those who are happy and live happily are not on internet.

Even if my T increased i'm still happy, annoyed yes and it's not fun but i'm not depressed anymore.

 

Please don't spend too much time doing this. Tinnitus can be very bad for some people, but the reality is for the large majority of people with T, it goes away or they adapt to it in a way that it does not bother them. They go on to live completely normal lives. I was exactly where you are once, and now tinnitus doesn't bother me in the least. Looking back on it, the thing that bothered me was simply all the fear surrounding it.

You have had hiccups before right? Did you spend time researching how bad people's hiccups can get? Did you spend time worrying that yours will be that bad? Of course not. Some people have hiccups for life, but you're likely not going to. And your T is not likely to be one of the worst cases either. Don't worry about it and focus on other things in your life to distract you.

 

This.

Mate if you do enough research on the internet you'll probably find people being suicidal because they're balding. Also, ever notice how when you google any symptom at all, you will likely find out that you'll die within like 3-5 clicks? Tinnitus itself won't make you suicidal, especially not after 5 years. The vast majority of people who have had tinnitus for 5 years never even think of it anymore and have long habituated to the point they don't actually perceive it. It requires quite a lot of work on the side of your psyche, too, to become suicidal.

On here, you will find a lot of people leading happy lives while having tinnitus. Now consider that this is a tinnitus forum.

I'd like you to pause and think about that for a while: the people who are active on here all care enough about their tinnitus to spend time talking about it on the internet. Even so, there are many forum members who would say they are happy with their lives and don't let tinnitus interfere with them. The number of people with tinnitus who don't even care enough to be active on a forum like this is infinitely greater. I think it's 1 out of 10 in the world or something like that. I recently read Noel Gallagher saying that you're not a real rock'n'roll star if you DON'T have one. You probably know a bunch of people who have tinnitus except you never knew, because they never cared to tell you.

So trust me, things are going to look up. Your tinnitus is very new, in fact it's well possible it'll go away entirely, especially if you stop worrying so much about it. Regardless, because of its newness it understandably bothers you, but it won't stay like this.

Check out the success stories board.

 

Thanks everyone for the support. My mindset has come a long way in the past week or so. I'm still quite depressed about it and have short bouts of giving up, but for the most part I'm determined that time and positivity will one day let me make peace with it. I will try to post back and let everyone know how I go - hopefully I'll be able to share a positive success story to light the way for future newbies as you all have. Thanks again.

 

Keep in mind we are like 3 years away from a drug that will stop this if everything keeps going the way it is now

 

Ive had it for 5 1/2 years, I'm still tortured by it. I am on various boards often because as someone said those who are still bothered are the ones here and the others have either learned to live with it or it has gone away and they don't need the support anymore. So as a person who has been suffering for 5 1/2 years I will say MOST people I have encountered on the various support boards do fade away as their tinnitus isn't as bothersome anymore so I think your odds are good.

 

don't read the horror stories. Seriously. Read nothing but success stories, and ignore anyone who tries to tell you that this will disable you or ruin your life.

I wish I didn't have tinnitus, and I still spend more time thinking about it than I'd really like to, but it hasn't kept me from having a pretty normal life. Yeah, I don't go to many concerts or loud bars anymore, and I always carry earplugs with me when I leave my house. But, I still do a lot of things that I enjoy, and manage to enjoy them pretty well most of the time.

I personally believe that this condition, at least for me, exists in an insidious feedback loop with my cognitive processes -- the way that I think about it, affects how severe it is, and may even impact how it develops over time. While I can accept that some people adapt a very pessimistic, negative view of life as a result of tinnitus, I have a zero-tolerance policy for reading that crap... when I find posters on here or other places who just do nothing but focus on the negative, I put them on ignore, because my own experience over the past 15 years is that when I read a lot of that stuff it literally makes my own problem worse.

 

Is it true?

 

Lol that’s a good one.
In 20 years i would say.
I am just realistic

 

Well, it was written in 2015, and it's now 2018... We have all the data needed to answer the question.