Newbie Concerns

Hello, I believe I have fallen to this affliction (~2 months now) and I've got some questions if you please.

1. I am not actually sure I have "regular" tinnitus or if it's tinnitus at all. How can I be sure of what I got? I went to see a ENT and my hearing stats are perfect and they think I'm fine. I do consider myself healthy but I'm still hearing this "new" tone at all times especially at night.

2. My tinnitus changes intensity when I turn my neck to its max or look up. I feel like there's something in my neck that plays a huge part in this. Is it the eustachian tube? (I am not currently sick / clogged)

3. Is tinnitus heavily dependent on feelings and emotions? If I feel really good in life, will I magically stop hearing it? It's quite the paradox...

4. I hear it loudest when I just block my ears completely with my fingers or with plugs. Is this what happens for other people?

5. Is it possible I've been subject to this "dormant" tinnitus for years, but my brain simply did not know about it and thus ignored it? Was me learning and focusing on it actually a "trigger"?

6. I can't actually stop listening or thinking about it. Even when I do the things I like I just constantly have this "check" in my head that reminds me how miserable this noise makes me. How do I ignore it?

7. Can the humming/whirling sound of computers or consoles actually cause tinnitus? And I mean from near-endless exposure for 15+ years, even when sleeping.

8. Is modern medecine really poor to the point where they haven't found out anything about tinnitus? Most specialists think it's imaginary or not worth the research? That is truly disheartening.

9. I do not actually picture myself living the rest of my life with this. Is it true most people get over it after 6 months? I am going through a real bad phase right and getting desperate fast.

thank you

 

1. Tinnitus can be a result of hearing loss but you don't need to have hearing loss to have tinnitus. Tinnitus is when you perceive a noise in your head or ears that isn't coming from an external source. It can be a symptom of many things and yet nothing at all. Point is, if you have noises in your head or ears that aren't audible to others or can't be heard externally, you have tinnitus. We all hear different noises. I hear a dentist drill, a dog whistle, and a static all in one. Some people hear cicadas, crickets, dog whistles, buzzing, beeping... the list goes on. And some rare few have pulsatile tinnitus, like myself.

2. Many of us can change the pitch of our tinnitus by moving our jaws, necks, and some people can change it by moving other parts of their body. My tinnitus intensifies with jaw movement. It's hard to say if your tinnitus is related to any problems with your eustachian tubes but there are other symptoms you can look out for if you think you may have ETD: Muffled or dull hearing, dizziness, ear fullness, some people have pain -- that's just off the top of my head. The only people who can really tell if you have anything going on with your ears are ENTs.

3. Tinnitus is affected by your emotions and mentality. My tinnitus is really loud when i'm stressed, anxious, angry, or generally just feeling negative. It feeds off of those things. I can't say it'd 'disappear' because we don't exactly know what caused your tinnitus. Maybe if it was caused by stress, It could go away once that stress leaves, but tinnitus is unpredictable and whilst I don't think you should give up hope, I also don't think you should put any money on it. Nobody knows with tinnitus. Some people have had their tinnitus leave in a few months, some in a year, two years, and I've heard of people finally experiencing silence after 10 years. There's always hope that it will go away eventually but there's no guarantee, sadly. The only guarantee is that for 99% of people, it does get better.

4. Yeah. You're blocking out external noises so your brain is focusing on the only noise it can perceive: your tinnitus. That makes it louder. It's why our tinnitus is often louder at night. There are less noises around us than in the day time. I wouldn't make it a habit though. We get addicted to monitoring our tinnitus when our main goal should be to habituate to it. Measuring how loud it is now compared to how it was a few minutes ago won't help you. Even if your tinnitus is going to leave, it's better to habituate now in case it doesn't.

5. Kind of hard to say considering only you can know that. I'm sure most of us have thought about this. I've gotten so used to my tinnitus that I can't remember a time when I had silence, even though it was only a few months ago, so I'm still wondering if I actually did have mild tinnitus back then and just not realise it until I learned what it was. But for most of us, we did hear silence before our tinnitus. I can vaguely remember, despite my brains attempts to erase it, being able to sit in a quiet room and hear nothing at all.

6. Habituation is a process that can take a while. Some of us habituate faster than others. I'm pretty much habituated after only 3-4 months of having severe tinnitus, but I'm definitely not a common case. You'll probably find that your attitude towards tinnitus will change the longer you've had it, even if you haven't accepted it, which is fine. You just get used to it. But when you're habituated, I can only describe it as background noise. Like, you can sit with the air-conditioning on, the fan of your computer, maybe the drone of your fridge, the vibrations of the washing machine, etc, and your brain will block it out. It's still there, you're just not listening to it. It is a hard pill to swallow at first, but eventually it'll get easier.

I think a good mantra to repeat to yourself is 'I know it's there, but I don't care'. Even if you do care, fake it 'till you make it. When your brain stops treating tinnitus as a threat, it'll stop being a threat. It's fine to check it every once in a while in the beginning but you can't make a habit out of it. The reality is that it's there. Listening for it in hopes that it may be gone or to check if it's louder or lower than last time won't change the fact that it's there. You've just got to get used to that. It'll take a while but you've just got to remind yourself that listening for it won't help you and it won't change anything other than your anxiety level.

7. I can't speak about whether it does damage in the long term, though I personally don't think so. But I know that the sounds of computer fans irritate my ears because I pick up higher frequencies in one ear (I have mild high frequency hearing loss in one ear, which probably explains why my other ear is more sensitive to the frequencies that my other ear can't balance out) but it generally doesn't affect my tinnitus much. Hopefully somebody else may have better insight on this one though.

8. It's more like tinnitus is very complex and it's not as easy as we think it is to cure it. I think the way that people see it is that whilst tinnitus is bad, there are bigger problems that they need to fix first. But I wouldn't be disheartened. Just last year alone there was a huge surge in tinnitus research and there's a lot more awareness coming around, especially in the latest decades due to our love for ear-drum shattering music. Whilst there may not be a cure in our life time, I have no doubt there'll be better ways to cope with it, maybe even a way to turn the volume down for those with debilitating tinnitus. Never say never.

9. Nobody sees themselves living with tinnitus. They say that we shouldn't consider our tinnitus permanent until it's been two years since the initial onset. It's true that tinnitus can and often does go away within 6-8 months, but it's not always the case with tinnitus that has come on for no perceivable reason. I wouldn't hold onto that statistic, not because it definitely won't happen (it could!), but because you'll only dig yourself into a deeper hole when you hit that 6-8 month mark and your tinnitus is still there.

 

thanks for the reply. I realize not many people would want to answer so many questions at once. thanks again

 

I read that most people habituate within 18 months...

Keep in mind that a lot of people get better or even completely recover within 6-12 months.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/spontaneous-recovery-stats-over-70-recover-3-studies.21441/