Staying Home to Recover from Reactive Tinnitus — Not Sure If I’m Doing the Right Thing

It's been practically a month since my spike and since then I have been doing my best to rest and stay at home. I want to know how much longer I should stay at home so that my ears can recover much better? Every time I go outside even if it's briefly to go to the nearby supermarket my tinnitus spikes despite wearing some form of hearing protection. There are also frequent and constant loud noises where I live so for the mean time I am just going to continue to stay home. To put it into perspective, it is not uncommon to hear 2-3 ambulances every hour or so, it's a very loud city. Every time I go out even with earplugs I find that I put myself at risk of worsening my tinnitus.

How long should I expect to wait to recover from reactive tinnitus? It's so hard to live like this, I have had to halt my entire life and feel like a burden to my family. I know there is no quick solution to this but I just want to know if I am doing the right thing by staying home all the time. I don’t know if just completely stopping my life is doing me any well either since my tinnitus is what occupies my mind for most of the day.

I’m really hoping that the reactiveness goes away, I feel that it will ultimately keep giving me spikes until it leads to a permanent one.

 

Wondering the same. My ears feel super fragile and right now staying home makes sense to me to let them rest. I’m also not someone who believes that being overly cautious makes you more sensitive. I look at it this way, a calm environment won’t make me worse, but a loud one will certainly cause spikes, so the choice is obvious to me.

I think while COVID-19 is happening and life has slowed down a bit, we have an opportunity to take things easy and should take advantage of it!

 

Did the reactivity go away or improve at all? I'm 4 weeks in and dealing with the same thing and have only left my place for food while wearing protection. The reactivity prevents me from watching TV and I struggle with a hot room because even the fan sets it off. It's always there, as crickets, hissing, and sometimes ringing, but it's much milder if I refrain from sound.

 

I have tinnitus in both ears but my right ear (which was exposed to the sound) is still painful a month later.

Regarding the reactivity, did yours get better since you posted this?

 

I'm in the same boat. My tinnitus reacts to sound, but in particular the TV really seems to irritate it.

 

How have you been handling it? And no noticeable improvement since January? Are you trying to slowly increase your tolerance to sound by purposely exposing to low level sounds, or just avoiding completely? I'm avoiding. The fan is a problem though because I'm in Thailand and it gets very hot. I've had a milder week and realized it's because it cooled off and I didn't use the fan much.

 

I am sorry about the ear pain.

Unfortunately mine did not get better.

 

The hyperacusis (sound sensitivity) has got better, but the tinnitus still gets louder when exposed to sound. Not handling it great to be honest.

 

So sorry

 

Have you been avoiding sounds for the most part or trying to gradually reintroduce them with increasing volumes? I wish we knew how to go about this in terms of recovering.