Purpose, Distraction

Remember life before tinnitus/other inner ear problems? Yeah it still sucked and was difficult much of the time. Now we are in a totally different realm of difficulty that transcends almost every other struggle that we have ever dealt with and our previous lives now seem like a lost paradise, like expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is right up in our brains. From my 4 months in, I could sit here and say that I'm "habituated" or whatever. Some days are better than others, that is for sure but until there is some kind of cure for this that allows me to lay down in a quiet room and hear total silence, it will always bother me, whether it be a lot or a little.

The best thing I have percieved so far is that masking sounds, artificial or natural, seem to do a great job tricking my brain into cancelling out the tinnitus. I'm sitting outside and cicadas are all around me and pretty loud and I cannot hear my tinnitus. I kinda think the sounds bleed over in my auditory cortex and fill the lost frequencies with the masking sounds. Actually the things I'm looking at in my visual cortex bleed over into my tinnitus sounds. I can actually hear what I'm seeing in my lost frequencies, which is very disturbing.

When the tinnitus is masked, I can focus on other things besides pervasive tinnitus and it allows my brain to kinda take a break from the stress of it. Therefore I believe masking is very very important. I say avoid quite rooms at all costs. Your brain will fill in the quiet sounds with tinnitus, which is an ugly ugly sound in my opinion, sounds like death. Get tick tock clocks, little fountains, maybe even a gecko cage with crickets in it for the gecko's food, anything to keep your auditory cortex working on anything but a quiet room.

Next, find a purpose in life. Read books, write books, paint pictures, get involved with charities, volunteer around places, exercise regularly, even if you have to force yourself. Many of us never had any real purpose in life before we had T anyway. Well now there is a reason to. That's my version of tinnitus retraining therapy. Masking, and distracting yourself with some sort of purpose, whether it spontaneously manifests itself in your life or you have to contrive it. Sitting in a quiet room with you T ringing like an alarm cruising social media isnt an option for any of us. There arent going to be quick fixes for this from any supplement or food source. So stop googling for it and looking on YouTube. The riboflavonoids don't do jack. The Reddit head tapping thing is a joke.

Mask and distract, find purpose in your life, something to get up in the morning and work towards, despite this ugly disease, whatever that may be.

There is still life for us to live. There is no fate but what we make.

 

I like this analogy.

Awesome avatar, by the way. Seeing Stimpy brings back good memories of my own personal "garden of eden"... Joy!

Habituation normally takes 18 months or longer...

Same here.

 

I'm not "normal".