Partial Habituation

Hello, I'm new to Tinnitus unfortunately. The ringing noise began suddenly a few months ago in my right ear for no obvious reason and is still with me now. A hearing test showed that my hearing was normal if not above average for my age (18). I don't go to concerts and I don't even own a pair of headphones. Various drugs have not helped (prednisone and betaserc) and my GP and ENT haven't been of much help, though I can't blame them, we know very little about but at least research for a solution is ongoing.

Probably like most other people, it drove me mad initially but for the last few days I've begun to notice it less and less, even in a quiet environment like going to bed at night. It used to make it incredibly hard to sleep but now it's become almost bearable. It's easier to put my mind to other things now, whereas before literally 80% of the time I was just freaking out about the noise. For the last 3 days I've gone through periods of several hours without even remembering I had it, and when I did remind myself of it, it didn't bother me as much.

I'm still hoping it will go away...but if not, continued habituation is an excellent alternative.

 

engapol, it sounds like you're making great progress already! I am hoping yours will go away too. But if it doesn't, then habituation is really the only game in town for most of us until an effective treatment/cure is found.

The best thing to do is keep doing exactly what you're doing now, which I assume is what you've been doing before tinnitus. And that is live your life as you were before tinnitus (within reason, obviously you don't want to do anything foolish with your ears). I firmly believe the more we live our lives as we normally would, the less control tinnitus has over us.

 

Agree!

 

The weird thing is, for me, habituation hasn't involved the noise going away. I think it's just as prevalent as before, but it's just that I don't care as much about it anymore. I consider myself lucky, having only taken a few months or so to get used to it, I can't imagine how bad a year or more would be.

 

Precisely the very definition of habituation, so I wouldn't be alarmed. If anything, you're habituating exactly like those of us who have habituated or are habituating -- the noise is as loud as ever, but our reaction to it is passively and approaches indifference. That's all great news!

 

Precisely what habituation is. See what it seems some people don't understand is that this isn't a matter of habituation vs. lowering the volume/cure. Because there is no universal way to lower the volume and there isn't a cure. So most of us are stuck with what we have.

So here's the way I've come to see things: we have tinnitus, our tinnitus brings about a reaction, and this reaction often brings anxiety. So put simply:

Tinnitus --> reaction--> anxiety

Obviously no one wants to feel anxious so we try to find a way to prevent it. Eliminating tinnitus from this chain would prevent the anxiety. Unfortunately, there's no way to do that, except for those lucky enough to find themselves with a treatable condition. So the other way is to change your reaction, and this is something that can happen. It's not easy, but it's a whole lot easier than curing tinnitus.

So yes, you do have tinnitus. But as long as you don't react negatively it won't bring anxiety.

I think that's really inspiring that you've been able to adapt so quickly... And as you've said yourself, nothing's changed. The very thing that once caused you distress is still with you. But now you've managed to beat it because it doesn't control you anymore.

 

Matt, you assume that people suffer becasue they have anxiety towards tinnitus. I keep reading this over and over by you and some of the others here. Some of us have zero reaction and no anxiety what so ever and suffer greatly. You seem to think that that all people that suffer have some sort of phycological issue, well yes, a lot of time this is true, but then again you shouldn't make assumptions and general statements like this becasue for some people this is definately not the case.

I'm not telling you this to argue with you, I'm telling you this becasue you seem like a guy that wants to understand.

 

Perhaps I didn't think through my choice of words as carefully as I could have. What I was trying to convey was this:

Tinnitus --> reaction --> suffering

Perhaps I'm being naive, but I simply cannot understand how someone can have zero reaction to something and still suffer.

Because if someone says they suffer because T is driving them insane, then they are reacting to it. If they say they suffer because they just want silence, then the sound is annoying them, and thus, they are reacting.

If someone suffers and truly had no reaction to T, then I'd probably conclude that the suffering isn't from T, even though T gets the blame.

Again, I am trying to understand where you're coming from. And point taken that not all suffering is anxiety. But I have to agree with @Dr. Nagler in that I don't see how one can suffer without a reaction.

 

I don't know, not sure to be honest. I guess I do react to a certain extent. I do things like wear ear protection most of the time to avoid a lot of pain and further damage. Or if the ringing gets so loud that it starts inflicting some serious pain at night on the pillow I will switch sides and give the other ear a turn. Other times it gets really loud and I will go play tennis or take my dog out to get a restart. Or if I'm really tired from the noise and ear pain at times I will go lay down and take a nap or try and meditate. I also don't play hockey anymore becasue the last time I did my situation was permanently made worse. This also gos for hanging out with friends at loud pubs, I don't go becasue it feels too loud. I guess these are all technically classed as reactions.

As far as non reaction goes, I could be laughing with someone about something while in the background I am suffering from the pain of the loud voice and the laughing. I don't do anything, I don't feel anything different in my mood, it just inflicts pain and suffering on me, however I don't go running out crying (this is what I meant by not reacting) I'm definately not one of those people that can put cigars out on my arm and not feel pain, I will admit that's not me, however I can take more than most when it comes to pushing through pain and mental boundaries.

I guess I am confused about how the term reaction gets used here at TT. To me not reacting is getting slashed in the back of the legs in hockey and continuing on with my game the best I can and not giving a response. I still suffer from the sting but I don't react to it by going down or getting angry and going to fight the guy that hit me. This is 100 percent a non reaction in my books even though I still feel it and suffer through it.