Punched Myself on the Ear While I Was Sleeping — Now a Spike — Did I Cause Damage?

Hey guys,

Last night in my sleep I punched myself on the ear while I was sleeping...

Don't ask me how I managed to do that...

That made me very anxious and I started testing if the punch was hard enough to cause damage, after a while I managed to go back to sleep.

When I woke up my tinnitus was as loud as it was when I first got it...

Do you think that I could have damage my ear or is this just my reaction?

I always ask myself what actions do damage the ear from the outside and can it be easily be damaged by a punch.

If its just my reaction it should settle back down.

Did any of you ever experienced a real increase that lasted or was it always just a spike that you had to habituate all over again to get to the same low volume state?

I hope you can share some experiences with me

Thx,

Chris

 

Give yourself a break @Christian82. It's probably more likely that your restless and disturbed sleep has aggravated your tinnitus, rather than socking yourself in the head.
Restful sleep plays a big part in controlling tinnitus symptoms.

I'd probably be exploring ways of curtailing the violence on yourself. If you do this a lot, you probably will end up with bruises and scratches that will be hard to explain. Working on the reasons why you do this in your sleep would be helpful, perhaps with a professional, like a psychologist of a sleep hygienist. Dodging fists in the real world is bad enough, let alone in your sleep.

 

I did something similar. I can say that I definitely had a spike afterwards for a bit, but it was not a permanent one. So most likely you will be just fine.

 

Yeah fabrikat I guess you are right I think I must have had a nightmare mare or something because I did not intend to do so, it was also the first time very strange.

Yes I guess you are right too its just when you get these spikes you get so scared that they are permanent.

Did any of you ever had a permanent increase? Or did all of you spikes always return to the same level?

Thanks for sharing!

Chris

 

Permanent spikes for me have involved serious, high volume noise or viral assaults, not typical exposures to day to day sounds, like traffic, loud restaurants or crying babies etc.

 

I'm curious, what were those serious high volume noises?

 

Always rock bands. AC/DC kicked it off, in a largely empty, echoey local town hall in the 1970's. No one even knew about hearing protection then and my head felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

Then years later, guard down and having forgotten my ear plugs at home, I exposed myself to another rock band, inside a small venue, together with a fellow shouting into my ear trying to be heard above the noise. A sharp pain, instant hearing loss and a permanent increase in tinnitus volume.

Whilst at the time, I thought my world had come to an end, I was habituated to it within three months and caused me little ongoing concern. However, nothing compares to a viral infection twenty years later, in 2016, that took out a significant amount of my hearing and has left me with very loud and utterly intrusive tinnitus. Habituation has not been possible, sadly.