Seven Months with Sound-Induced Tinnitus: Is Anyone Seeing Improvements or Finding Hope?

[Sonia554]

I've had sound-induced tinnitus for seven months now and have only been on these boards for a short time, but what I mostly see is a lot of suffering. Is anyone here actually getting better as time goes on and feeling like their tinnitus is moving toward resolving? Especially those who have had it for more than six months. Is anyone noticing improvements? Does anyone still have hope?

 

[MindOverMatter]

I've had sound-induced tinnitus for seven months now and have only been on these boards for a short time, but what I mostly see is a lot of suffering. Is anyone here actually getting better as time goes on and feeling like their tinnitus is moving toward resolving? Especially those who have had it for more than six months. Is anyone noticing improvements? Does anyone still have hope?

My best advice to you, if you want to focus only on the "getting better part," is to stay clear of the stories you seem to come across most often. The more you read the "worst off" stories, the more you will suffer, in my opinion.

You can ask any counselor or therapist who works with this, and they will tell you the same.

And yes, there is plenty of hope and many people do get better. Habituation is real for most people.

Seven months is a short span of time, even though it may feel like a lifetime to you. Keep your chin up and know there will be better days ahead.

 

[Nes]

I got tinnitus about 1.5 years ago, and I started seeing the first signs of improvement after beginning Clonazepam, following 10 months of pure hell with loud tinnitus. Now, at 1.5 years, I still have it, but I have a lot of hope for the future, and it doesn't bother me nearly as much anymore. I don't believe it will ever go away, and I think accepting that fact was a big part of getting better.

There are plenty of success stories here, and even more outside this website. Many people who get better don't stick around. If you read the posts here, you'll notice it's often the same people who post regularly, and unfortunately, they tend to be the most severe cases.

One of the main key points in almost all success stories is that tinnitus and habituation both take a lot of time to improve—often months or even years. So, seven months is really nothing in the bigger picture.

 

[Tryn2BHopeful]

It can, and it does, get better. However, it can also get worse if you're not careful to protect your ears in loud environments.

 

[Sonia554]

My best advice to you, if you want to focus only on the "getting better part," is to stay clear of the stories you seem to come across most often. The more you read the "worst off" stories, the more you will suffer, in my opinion.

You can ask any counselor or therapist who works with this, and they will tell you the same.

And yes, there is plenty of hope and many people do get better. Habituation is real for most people.

Seven months is a short span of time, even though it may feel like a lifetime to you. Keep your chin up and know there will be better days ahead.

Thanks for the reply, @MindOverMatter. I've definitely discovered that reading the worst stories can trigger a panic attack when I otherwise would have been fine. I've been relying on ChatGPT to curate recovery stories for me so I can avoid reading the worst-case scenarios. The only thing is, I don't know if the stories ChatGPT gives me are real or made up. Some of them I've been able to find here or on Reddit, so I'm taking it on faith they aren't fake, and that healing from tinnitus between months 8 and 12 is actually more common than the forums or doctors let on.

I do realize that the very worst stories don't have much in common with my situation. I think tinnitus from a one-time, short-term noise exposure with no complicating factors, like mine, is probably one of the more likely cases to resolve fully or nearly fully. I just have straight tinnitus and some on-and-off soreness—no distortion, no hyperacusis, and no pre-existing conditions.

I've noticed significant, steady improvement over the last two months, months 6 and 7, and I hope it keeps going toward full or near-full resolution in the next month or two. It was like a switch flipped. It was awful, awful, and then one day, out of nowhere, I suddenly felt good enough to turn the sound support off and never really went back. Now I'm sleeping through the night, and I can sit in a quiet room with just the refrigerator hum—something I absolutely could not do two months ago. I'm not taking any drugs.

All the signs are positive, but I'm still sick and tired of it. The guilt and regret of knowing I caused this myself, when I should have known better and had every chance to avoid it, is probably worse than the tinnitus itself in many ways. I'm furious with myself for being so careless, and I have no idea what the long-term consequences will be, where I'll finally land in the healing process, or when. It's not like a broken bone where you have a standard timeline and recovery is practically guaranteed. It's unreal that 15 minutes in a furnace room seven months ago turned my whole life upside down.

It really is a lonely condition, and I was hoping to connect with people who are in a similar situation—one-time exposure and tinnitus lasting more than six months. I know a lot of people leave when they start getting better, so we don't hear about their recovery, and the forums make it seem like no one improves. I wish more people would come back and report when things get better so we could see that it does happen. That 3 to 6-month timeframe everyone talks about is outdated. Many people continue to get better well after that.