New to Tinnitus. Scared.

Hi,

Sorry if this is written disjointed, I'm writing as it comes to mind.

I'm young, in my 30's, Don't know where else to go. Ringing started in what sounds like both ears one evening without apparent cause. GP and ENT both said my ears and hearing are perfect. No loud noise events, no injuries. I simply noticed it one evening before bed.

I've read a few things. I'm curious about notch sound therapy, but i've been having trouble finding my frequency. I could have sworn when I started it was in the 12k range, but now it seems it could be in the 13 or 14 or 15k range. The notched white noise only seems to make it more apparent. I have better luck making the ringing go away momentarily by listening to a varying slow pulse of high frequencies from 9k-13k for a few minutes.

The worst part of it isn't even the noise. I've become incredibly anxious, nauseous, i've had a significantly reduced appetite, eating only a fraction of what I used to. My sex drive has vanished. I'm exhausted, likely from not eating much. I need to fix those, they are the problem. So people get those too? Do they go away for most people?

I did start a new job within the last 6 months, my wife says I've become stressed and lethargic and not my normal self. I do wonder if that has contributed. I do hunch really badly at my desk, i'm trying to have better posture.

Oddly, I find that I can fall asleep easily, and can sleep through most of the night and wake up rather refreshed. I'm hungry, but don't have the will to eat solid food for long. I can drink just fine, though.
For example, I would normally skip breakfast, but could eat if I wanted. Now I cant. I would have a filling lunch of a sandwich, salad, and usually ate some of my wife's too. I've essentially skipped lunch or dinner every day, and when I do eat, it's about 1/4 of what I was eating before. Am drinking water through. Sweet and salty things seem incredibly off-putting.

Do most people get this kind of anxiety when their tinnitus starts? Does that anxiety go away, even if the tinnitus doesn't? I'm not keen on starting antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds.

I think I just need words of support and hope. This isn't just causing me stress, It's causing my wife stress, too.

All doctors said I'll just have to learn to habituate. How long does that take most people? Does habituation mean that you learn not to hear it at all? Can you be in a silent room and not notice it?

People say that caffeine and alcohol make the ringing worse. Caffeine takes almost a month to get out of your body, by my understanding, or is that flair up only like if you have a cup of coffee, the ringing gets louder for an hour or so?

I enjoy drinking beer. Is the same effect true with alcohol?

I'm trying to do the first method on >Success Stories, Back to Silence. I hope that will help me with the emotional side of this.

Any words will be appreciated. Simply writing all this out makes me feel slightly better.
Thank you.

 

I do think anxiety comes with it, try not to let it consume you as we all know how hard that can be. I did not eat my proper meals for 2 months and lost 20 lbs...i think that's just from the anxiety and depression but today it's been almost 3 months and when I calmed down so did my T! I would wake up every day with my heart racing and anxious, try listening to whatever calms you down. And read the success stories on here...I read a lot into these forums and I think some of my anxiety came from the horror stories. Don't recommend putting too much thought into them lol. My best advice is relax and be calm....or at least try to

 

I totally get not reading the horror stories. I'm optimistic that it will go away. I'll get strange medical things like guidon's tunnel syndrome, (the brother of Carpel Tunnel), I'll get strange feelings in my eyes that don't effect my vision, but are obnoxious - and every time I get down and nervous - but i've never lost appetite like this before - I think it's the fear that it will get worse and be permanent. I've only had this for less than a week, so I haven't been waking up with any extra anxiety. I feel like I sleep well, and if I have to wake up in the middle of the night, it's usually because of the pets asking to be fed at 3am. I think I fall back asleep okay, though it does linger in my mind as I lay back down that I might not be able to because of the ringing, but I inevitably do.

I can't afford to lose 20 pounds, I'm skinny enough as it is, lol.

Did your anxiety levels and levels of tinnitus correlate? When your anxiety lessened, was it because T wasn't as problematic?

 

Welcome @JimJimJalabim. Anxiety, lethargy, and depression are extremely common amongst suffered of tinnitus. Many of the symptoms you describe are very common for people who are depressed.

I do not drink, and have not had caffeine in over seven months, and there has been no change for me, but I have had tinnitus my entire life. That being said, everyone's tinnitus is different; try giving up caffeine for a couple of months and see if it helps.

I think @JoyBenz007 is correct, relax and stay calm. You will either find a way to eliminate your tinnitus, or learn to habituate, or just cope with it. It seems that most people here do.

I wish you well and hope you find what you need here.

 

Welcome to the forum. Anxiety and stress are known to be one of the causes of tinnitus. Not all anxious people have T, but some will develop T from feeling to anxious and stressful. Plus, during the initial struggle, many members felt into the viscous cycle of T > anxiety/stress > worse T > worse anxiety/stress. So it is best we stay positive and calm as much as we humanly can. This will keep the limbic nervous system away which can cause you to function in fight or flight mode. As such T will be perceived as a threat and so all our senses will zoom on it making it look much worse and much louder. Try to do some relaxing activities and mild exercise, even going to outdoors, so we help the brain and the nerves to remain calm. This will only help to tame T. Take care. God bless.

 

Agreed that anxiety and stress play a part at a minimal of increasing it if not all together. my T frequency is sometimes hard to catch. sometimes it seems like its a higher frequency. never could exactly place it, somewhere in the 10-14k. When you try to fixate on your frequency do it in bursts. Do it for a minute and give it a rest and then go at again. if yours is that high you will have difficulty with any music notch therapy if you end up looking into it, but standing in the shower always covered up mine. Had a HUGE water bill the first few months i had it. Try this site Plasticity http://plasticity.szynalski.com/ Its kinda set up like a game. The first time i played it i noticed the sounds that were close to the same frequency as my T would cancel out my T, and my mind would have to reset and i woulnt really have T for a minute or two. Was a interesting experiment, but helped me figure out some things, and kinda figure out where my T pitch really was.
As for the rest, dont get ahead of yourself. Definable with any meds. Things will get better, but if assuming the worst and you have it a while, your body kinda has to adjust to it. You learn what sets it off and what doesnt, and as time passes then some of those things that set it off dissipate. I stopped caffeine after my T began, but as for alcohol, it makes mine spike for a few hrs. In the beginning i wouldnt dare try anything because it was so bad. But once i began to habitat to it, i slowly began to introduce new things back.
Eat healthy, nuts, dried fruits etc just to keep your energy up. Your appetite will come back.
As for Habituating, understand that all this is, is just a frequency signal, nothing else. It's not the signal, but your emotional response to it that is the cause. Sure it is a sound that you have natural embedded response to, like a crying baby, but once your mind becomes familiar to it that it doesn't find it as a threat, then it will move on, and it will become a background noise that you wont notice unless you focus on it. It sounds like thats an impossible task in the beginning when you have it, but once you move to the other side of it, you realize that some of the people that were helping you knew a few things.

 

Thank you. I think I can learn to ignore the sound, I don't know how to get over the anxiety, lack of appetite and sex drive. Does the anxiety always come back if you notice the sound? Or once you learn to habituate, the anxiety disappears?

 

Does the T always affect the limbic system? Does hearing the T always mean fight or flight? Or does that only happen on the onset, when it's new? If it never goes away, can the anxiety from the T go away?

 

I naturally fight from anxiety, so T kinda piles on easily. Habituating is difficult to describe. If i get busy with something, or even watch a movie, that distraction can focus my attention enough that i dont notice it as if it isnt there. Kinda like if you have a sore muscle. If your sitting laughing talking to friends, you dont notice it. Its when i stop that it makes itself known. I worked to get to that place, and it was a step procedure that took time. My worst days are when it spikes to a new sound and level. Its like starting all over, and it is difficult set yourself again. Spikes last anywhere from a few hours to a couple weeks, for me that is. But, I have learned that they have always gone back down, because i have had it for so long, that i can have natural faith that it will be okay, and just to endure it, (again something that takes time). For me now, a normal day at worst might just make me annoyed, because i'm dealing with all of life and then this. But, when a spike hits, for the first day, maybe some anx, but more of a depression to fight against. Make sure to communicate to your loved ones that your dealing with it, even if you cant explain it well. There seems to easily be a rift with family members because the affected person becomes irritable and withholding, bc it takes up all of their resources in dealing with it. They will understand, even if they dont really understand. Take on one thing at a time.

 

No, T doesn't always always affect the limbic system. I talked about meeting two ladies who have T so loud that they sometimes can't hear what other people were saying to them. Yet they didn't exhibit fear except discomfort and strange sensation initially. They somehow accept the sound and move on with life. So hearing T does not always mean fight or flight mode. In fact for those of us who have habituated to T, hearing it on and off during the day doesn't bring about any emotion much. We acknowledge it being there and sometimes it can get irritable. But no strong reaction forthcoming and we move on to next interesting or busy things to do in life.

 

Hi Jim, I can relate to a # of your worries. You're at a great advantage in that you've accepted the noise with the intent to adapt to it -- that's way better than being hopeful day-by-day that it will vanish. (I'm not religious, and this is a case of where prayer might hurt you rather than to help you.) Your anxiety will subside as you adapt to the noise. It doesn't mean the noise will go away, but like many things in life, you won't care as much anymore. (Remember all those kids in school that you hated or envied, and now who cares? This is another one of them.) I was confused by my T, as I didn't show any noticeable hearing loss. I tried masking apps to map my T, and just like you, I found myself up there over 10K trying to find out where I was. It was impossible to nail; and as you know hearing tests only go up to 8K. So my T is up somewhere over 8K, and mine was caused by too much dental drilling of my back molar (which is like an inch from the cochlea). My T actually sounds like a dental drill, yay me. So anyway, it sounds like you might have a unilateral notch somewhere way up there, like me. It's still here, and I can hear it now. It's just part of me, as crazy as it sounds. So calm down, your anxiety will reduce. If it doesn't, you're likely to get hyperacusis as well (I can talk for hours about that one). And T will NOT kill your sex drive, trust me on that one. (Actually, as you experience medical maladies in mid-life, you'll find sex increasingly important because it is the one true pleasure you're granted in life.) If your libido is still waning, then that's the signal that you're still suffering from depression related to this. In closing, to me habituation simply means acceptance, that it no longer haunts you. Right now T is like a rock in your shoe. You may be stuck with that rock forever, but eventually you can move it from your shoe to a pocket. Not sure where I came up with that one, but there ya go!

 

Thank you for this. I have stress, too, mostly from thinking about years to come and thinking of the most horriible things. But I know myself, and know that I have adjusted to many things in my life. We are all very adaptable creatures. If there is no cure or treatment for me, I will adapt (it's what we do). There are others who have.