Suicide

@pytajnick I don't see you as a complainer. I totally understand and relate. I'm also always impressed by @glynis medical knowledge and her good comfort intentions for well being as well as the others here. None of us are always right with our thoughts, but we care. I need friends also as I'm really not able to leave my house. Going to the dentist next week is going to be so difficult, when I can't even wash my hair without it being painful. I'm not able to move my neck and I get the shakes from high pitch T, severe headaches, heart, vein, joint and muscle disease. I'm 64 and have 32 ailments on my medical profile. My comments in posts #21 and #26 are just some thoughts.

 

There were many times in my journey where the T raised it’s ugly head. I could have gone back to square 1 many times. Personally I think it’s more than acceptence, it’s about choices.

Every time we hear the T we can chose to focus on it or something else more positive.

We also have a choice as to whether we want to help ourselves. Harsh but true.

Having said that, forums like this are great for getting things off our chest and sharing experiences with others. In the end though it is up to us, we are the only ones responsible for our well being.

 

You need to firstly try and calm your anxiety. You sound extremely stressed and wound up. Anxiety and depression heightens your T, big time. You should really go to a doctor and ask for some medication to help you get your head sorted firstly, then once you have your mental well-being on at least the right track, you can start tackling the T.

Stop isolating yourself too. That makes your T worse. You feel like there is no escape. If the T is worse by other sounds, you might as well just 'go with the flow', by the way you are speaking, it doesn't sound like your T can get any worse. So don't let it rule your life. You need to take care of your mental health though firstly and more importantly. I would advise visiting a doctor ASAP. Don't worry about the medication making your T worse, by the way you're explaining nothing can make it worse and you need help ASAP to bring your life back under control.

Please go and visit a doctor and please take care of yourself. We are all here to support you.

 

Can I ask kind of a technical question? How did you address sleeping issues? When T was so loud that you were unable to sleep what were you doing?

 

Hi @pytajnick

My T is also loud and constant.
It never stops.

It may or may not ever let me go.
Either way, I am learning to “let go of it.”

- I do some meditation for a few minutes every morning.

I put myself out with a simple technique of allowing my tummy to take over my breathing.

Once I am ‘out’ and at peace, I think the words

“Easy Dave.....just let go.”

Repeat a few times.

When I come round I get on with my day, and simply remind myself of my mantra as and when necessary.

It may be worth a try my friend.

Jazzer x

 

I don't thrive for the recovery. I would settle for having the comfort of my T staying at the stable level to which I can habituate. Then I would be able to see what adjustments I am forced to make to my life. For now, all the adjustments I've made (and i've made plenty of sacrifices) seem not to be enough. There's not a single aspect of my life that was not compromised by this disease sooner or later during this bloody year. I remember how I would panic during initial stages that It's possible that I'll have to use earplugs to visit the clubs (not that I was frequent visitor) or I might be forced to use sound enrichment at night. When thing about this now I can only laugh at my "worries" from that time. I guess that's what's sucked my hope. The perspective how it was at the beginning, how it was developing, how it is now. Man can't help but assess the future based on the experience. For the whole time I was doing something completely opposite. After each damage I would eventually start to look for some positive spark: "Maybe it's temporary? Maybe it was like that before but I'm just more stressed? Maybe I'll be able to habituate to this level anyway? Maybe it will eventually stop to progress? Maybe me it will stop to get worse at some point and stay that way? Maybe my brain will start to treat all these spikes as something natural?" I just run out of "maybes" for the time being. I know that in few days or weeks I will eventually come up with some new uplifitng note but they are becoming less and less feasible to myself and I have to come up with them more and more frequently.

 

I am familiar with breathing exercises. I guess they work to some extend. I am doing them when I need them the most - Before the sleep. It helped yesterday for example. But maybe I was just exhausted from lack of sleep previous days. Today it was no success. But thank you!

 

@pytajnick, it’s only been a year. You need to stop analysing your situation and let time do it’s thing. I have a cocophany of noise in my head that I can hear pretty much everywhere, but I’ve adjusted to it. You have to stop fighting it and accept what’s happened to you. For a lot of people, there’s a storm of emotions connected to the trauma of having T and one really ugly one is guilt. The feeling that something you have done has ultimately caused it, or, the ‘what if’ scenario.

We have to accept our fate in order to move forwards. In the early days I thought it was impossible to sleep with such noises roaming around my ears and brain; nowadays sleeping is easy for me. In fact, I kind of disassociate myself from it. I never thought I’d ever feel anything again, such was my depression and outlook on life, but that’s how we all feel when we are crushed by our emotions. Let me just say again that a year is a drop in the ocean. My cousin lost his eye and it took him years to come to terms with it. If you’d ask him how he felt after a year he’d say suicidal; ask him now and he’s totally loving life. By the way he also has T. He has his own construction firm so power tools and building noise is an everyday thing for him. He also does a lot of clay pigeon shooting, which ain’t helping matters, but he doesn’t care. I’ve warned him about it getting worse, but you know what people are like. It’s already pretty bad from his description of it, but hey ho, different personalities.

Basically, you need to ease up on the stress and the doom and gloom (which let’s face it is almost impossible to remove yourself from when you’re in the thick of it). You can live a happy life once you accept it and allow yourself a lot more time to adjust.

 

Well whether we got to the panic stage forwards or backwards there are always things which may help. You’re doing one of those things by coming on here and talking about it. Have you had any counselling yet by the way?

Anyway, to answer your question, and I take it you haven’t read my book yet, I found the sound of babbling brooks helpful. I tried to do everything I could to focus on my imagination rather than the T. Isn’t that how we normally get off to sleep anyway? I did take anti-anxiety medication for a week but I was too stubborn to give in to pills. I guess it was was stubbornness and determination which helped me move on in the end. I didn’t want to have to ‘just accept it’.

Eventually I weaned myself off the sound effects and learnt to focus on other sounds like my, or my partners breathing (snoring lol).

The trick in the end is to remove anything which reminds you of the tinnitus, but during the panic phase it’s the anxiety which is causing most of the trouble. It’s that fight or flight mode which needs to be addressed now. The logical part of the brain can calm down the ancient emotional part and train it to realise the T is not a threat.

There is no magic pill yet, but thousands (probably millions) of people deal with it using will power and inner strength. Some without any external help at all. I’ve met many.

 

I guess you're getting to me with this post. I often think the same to myself but It's just so hard to adjust to the condition that is so dynamic. I don't know really know what state I'll need to accept eventually. The level that I have now? I am not naive. It will get worse. And that is the question - how worse it will get and will I be able to adapt to it?

 

You’re already predicting the future which is a classic anxiety trap. Living in the here and now is really difficult. We either find ourselves dwelling on our past mistakes depressing ourselves or we think to what horrible situations our futures hold that haven’t even happened and probably never will.

Reminds me of this Churchill quote: “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened. –

Winston Churchill

Staying positive amongst the chaos of T is tough, especially at the start. But, if we don’t try then we already determine our fate. We are what we think.

Some great quotes here:

1. “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
   – Leo F. Buscaglia
2. “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
   – Swedish Proverb
3. “If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
   – E. Joseph Cossman
4. ”People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”
   – George Bernard Shaw
5. “Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
   – Dale Carnegie
6. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
   – Elbert Hubbard
7. “If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.”
   – George F. Burns
8. “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.”
   – Winston Churchill
9. “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
   – Arthur Somers Roche
10. “If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.”
    – Dean Smith
11. “When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.”
    – Joseph Joubert
12. “That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
    – Chinese Proverb
13. “Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.”
    – Cullen Hightower
14. “Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”
    – Erma Bombeck
15. “There is a great difference between worry and concern. A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”
    – Harold Stephen
16. “People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching a cold.”
    – John Jay Chapman
17. “Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.”
    – Nelson DeMille
18. “The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
    – Robert Frost
19. “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”
    – Henry Ward Beecher
20. “We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
    – John Newton
21. “If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”
    – Dale Carnegie
22. “I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”
    – Winston Churchill
23. “Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.”
    – Robert Eliot
24. “A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.”
    – John Lubbock
25. “Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”
    – Mary Hemingway

https://www.positivityblog.com/worry-quotes/

 

Ok guys, let's finish this thread with some proactive approach. I plan to visit a shrink to get an AD. Any thoughts on remeron? I made some research on the forum and on the web and it seems relatively safe. I am more concerned about my sleep than overall mood during the day. It's getting harder these days but still, I am able to distract on daily basis. The perspective of another sleepless night is the major anxiety factor for me. If not remeron/mirtazapine what else?

 

Sounds like a good step.

Out of curiosity what is it you do for a living, hobbies, interests etc? Have you got things in your life which you normally enjoy doing?

 

Thank you for posting these, Ed! Hope you and your family are well. It’s nice to have you drop by TT with some positivity!

@pytajnick Do you have a therapist? I have a CBT therapist and it’s really helped me to identify when I am making assumptions, turning my situation into a catastrophe, and all of the other annoying reactions driven by anxiety. Sometimes simply realizing that anxiety — not rational thoughts — are driving my fears is enough to help me calm down and keep moving forward.

 

Mountain biking, computer games, playing guitar, midi controllers and music production stuff, gym, movies (art-house and so-called classics mostly), concerts and music festivals. I used to LOVE to listen to music with headphones (chemical love it proved to be). At the beginning, I thought that I will just have to make some adjustments to be able to enjoy my hobbies... wrong. I've never been to a concert or movie since the onset. I once visited a club (with the earplugs). You can guess how it ended up:/ Actually every single of my hobbies started to giving me spikes at some point (even if I was very reasonable with levels) but I was ignoring it ("T will not rule my life, some increase after the exercise is normal etc.") and after some time these spikes started to be more frequent, louder and longer until at some point I started to get new spikes without old ones returning to the baseline. And suddenly I started to consider myself as a TRT group IV sufferer. I am still lurking though - learning piano, watching movies on laptop, doing some push-ups, pull-ups recently. Even trying dating. But it's like walking on thin ice for me. And the ice broke under my feet so many times. For a living, I used to work as a salesman in a broadband industry most of my career. For several years I worked at the factory though and there I initially acquired Tinnitus.

 

I guess you’ve tried low dose (2mg) Melatonin?

 

I don't have CBT therapist. I've seen a therapist some month ago and it was nice, friendly talk but it didn't do much good. I've read some CBT literature and identified when I was making the mistake of making generalizations or assumptions. It was at the initial stages. As I mentioned in the previous post I also activated myself to boost the mood during that time. I am afraid my current assumptions are based on experience and facts which I learned about this condition (hidden hearing loss, synaptopathy).

 

yep. Started with 1mg only during bad days but eventually ended with 3mg every day. I am taking them every other day now but I guess they don't work for me anymore. I won't try my luck with higher doses. The thing that worked for me best was sound enrichment but now with my reactivity it's out of the question. I tried anything recently from band noises to natural sounds, crickets, cicada, neural symphony. Most of them don't work. The ones that work by matching my frequncies also aggrevaties my T sound so I don't even have my safety umbrella anymore.

 

I can see stress leading to a spike that lasts a day. I Can't imagine stress leading to a permanent spike, at least that hasn't been my experience.

 

@pytajnick ,
Hi ,just in from work.
I think to much information and worrying about the future how your feeling now can seem pointless.

I think it's trying to cope here and now with how you are feeling is the way to go.

Options for a good night sleep as that helps us emotionally and strength to get through the day.
Emotional support and that is nothing to be ashamed of.
Talking therapy can help and medication.
Finding what helps take your mind off your sound and music you like have in the background.
You will get through this wobble in your life .
Take care, love glynis.

 

Yes that is strange indeed: as far as I know MRI is not indicated to diagnose otosclerosis.

Unlikely, but it did happen to me in less than 2 months. Doctors still can't explain it since it's supposed to be a slow-progressing disease, but CT and surgery confirmed it, so somehow it looks like something (I wish I knew) can make it progress on a very accelerated schedule.

I agree: when it comes to T, "perception is reality" - that's what the brain hears and everything downstream from it depends on that.

I'd work with your doctors to look into being able to do these things again somehow, even activities that you enjoyed with headphones. I was at my lowest mid 2016 when I felt everything was off limits to me (I play drums with an e-kit, play video games too), but getting a consistent recommendation from about a dozen doctors to resume playing (keeping volume low) flipped me out of the dark side and saved me. It still sucks of course, but I am no longer in the pits. Everyone is different, so get your advice from real docs, not people who pretend to be experts on here.

Good luck.

 

Just a suggestion, think about where you would really like to be. Come up with a plan and focus on that.

For me, when I was banging my head in the bathroom, the only thing I hung onto was the idea of living on a boat. Once I started to move towards that goal everything else seemed to fall in place (not without some sacrifices though).

We underestimate how marketing forces and greed mess our lives up. Sometimes less really is more.

 

@GregCA I guess I will have to ask a neurologist or ENT when I visit one about this whole mri thing. As for perception vs actual volume - You can actually distinguish these two things when you have the second source of sound playing role of minimal level of suppression. At the beginning when my T was quite stable in volume but my perception of it was constantly changing I was able to calm myself after playing on headphones white noise at the specific level. As each time I was noticing that level required to completely mask the sound of T was the same I was convinced that my T volume doesn't change.

I will never ever return to using headphones, especially earbuds. In this case source of sound is indeed as important as volume due to something called listener effect:

"Listener fatigue" prompts research...

.

For the rest of my hobbies... I am working on it but it's trial and error kind of work with errors that are very unforgiving.
Thx for advice. Hope You'll get better or not worse at least.

 

I really want to thank you just like others in this thread for trying. I know I am a hell of an ungrateful advice taker with this "denying anything" attitude of mine. There's one more thing that bothers me and which I can associate with the process of gradual worsening of my condition especially during last few months - fleeting tinnitus several times a day. None of audiologists or ENT's were able to address this thing. I don't believe it's a coincidence. It's happening too often.

 

If it helps, I remember how f%$#ing annoying that was. That’s why I wanted to give back.

 

Attempting to arrive an objective diagnosis for a condition such as tinnitus is fairly difficult. The best approach is to consider patient history (e.g. noise exposure, medication used, as well as accidents and incidents). This provides a clue.

Hearing loss can go undetected by standard audiometry and an auditory insult can linger on for a period of time after the original source has long been removed while causing further damage (and includes noise exposure that only led to a temporary threshold shift in the original instance!). This insidious process – which involves the loss of synapses before the loss of inner ear hair cells – has been described by recent literature and can also be observed by the profile page of Prof. Kujawa:

"An area of current focus in Dr. Kujawa’s laboratory is the aging of noise-exposed ears. She has discovered an insidious process that begins acutely after noise, as a loss of communications (synapses) between sensory inner hair cells and cochlear neurons. Loss of the neurons themselves follows slowly, but ultimately reaches the same magnitude. These effects of noise immediately and permanently change the way the ear processes sound information, and they occur even when the exposure produces only temporary changes in hearing thresholds; i.e., for exposures previously thought to be ‘safe’.

Moreover, she has shown that such exposures dramatically accelerate the gradual loss of cochlear synapses and cochlear neurons otherwise seen with aging alone. This work has provided the first clear evidence that noise exposure continues to have damaging effects on the ear and hearing long after the noise has stopped.

Ultimately, noise exposure should be regulated, and its consequences diagnosed and treated, in ways consistent with improved understanding of underlying processes and pathology. Thus, this work informs efforts to develop better clinical tests and to identify effective pharmacologic therapies for these common forms of hearing loss, and should guide hearing conservation efforts aimed at better protecting the public health."

The interested reader can read more about the topic via literature such as:

• Cochlear Synaptopathy In Acquired Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Manifestations And Mechanisms (2017)
  
• Noise-Induced And Age-Related Hearing Loss: New Perspectives And Potential Therapies (2017)

 

Thank you for your addition to this thread. There's one thing I am not sure how to interpret. I am somewhat familiar with general conclusions of Kujawa studies as well as Liberman (limited by my language limitations and specific language of the literature). It seems that hearing loss can progress a long time after the initial damage was done and there are forms of hearing damage that audiogram can't detect (due to looking only at the minimum threshold of hearing). But does it also indicate that the person is also more susceptible to further damage with noise that is not harmful for the healthy population? ps. I've had also DPOAE and TEOAE examinations up to 8kHz. I can't interpret them but Audiologist said they came up fine.

 

That might be the case. I've come to believe that stress can cause a lasting worsening of tinnitus. Particularly intense and prolonged stress. Whether it's permanent or not I cannot say as I am still alive.

 

The only assessment that correlates better than other tests with noise-induced tinnitus is the speech-in-noise discrimination test i.e. it is possible to have normal hearing, be able to detect speech, and still have difficulties following a conversation in a noisy setting (e.g. a restaurant). This can be studied by literature such as this:

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00293/full

I am not aware of literature that concludes damaged ears are more susceptible to further damage, but I am aware of qualified opinions that state this is the case (here an excerpt from a 2014-article featuring quotes from Bryan Pollard):

"'Significant relapses occur with new noise exposure,' he said. 'We continue to hear from people who follow the bad advice they receive and who go right back out into the world, confused and hurting themselves further.'"

Personally, I consider a damaged ear to be much more fragile.

 

I continuously go through this pattern you describe. I am in a place similar to yours. I'm searching for the answers. I hope things improve for us both.