Thought in a Little Breakthrough on Habituation

Forgive me if this all seems very "old news." LOL

Ok so I know I shouldn't do this but because of the fear that T might be getting louder I STILL check for it in quiet places. I am checking to see in the quietest area of the house how loud it is.

All the doctors advise against this by the way but it's VERY hard not to ..again because of the fear that it is getting louder.

What I am essentially doing is "training" my brain to listen to it. It's as if I am training my brain to listen to the smallest leaf turn if I were solider in the wilderness or a hunter. NO WONDER that makes it louder. If you were a hunter 1000 years ago in the wilderness you would JUMP if you thought you heard your prey or a lion or whatever even if you were dead asleep in the middle of the night.

The key I think for me is to just stop checking no matter what.

Our brains are so powerful. I know that I gave myself H because of how freaked out I was with the sound of the high frequency of my T. I was picking it up EVERYWHERE and literally magnifying my hearing. In a few days of doing what my doctor said to do "if you think your radio is loud put it a LITTLE louder than what you are comfortable with as long as it's not damaging to your ears." "DO NOT protect your ears unless it would damage them anyway." "keep going out and force yourself to hear the things that are disturbing you." Within DAYS it got so much better. It's because I made myself so hyper aware of noise.

It is kind of terrible but kind of amazing at the same time what we can train ourselves to do. I am hoping to put that energy into something useful!!!

I had my husband and mom go in my "quiet" area of my house (ok lol its the bathroom with the doors closed and the lights off) and both of them could hear a ring in their ear. They said they would drive themselves crazy if they did that 10-15x a day. Another area I do this in is my car.

Don't get me wrong, I don't ONLY hear it in those areas. Every time I am in my house I hear it unless I have lots of noise on or I am distracted. Like right now I have a white noise machine and my air conditioner on and I still hear it in my bedroom (but kind of distracted by typing this). So strange right because I wouldn't outside in seemingly more quietness. I think it's because I have trained my brain to pick it up in the masking frequencies.

Ok end of my rant. I am going to FORCE myself not to listen for this for a while and see what happens.

 

I think you would really benifit from cognative behaviour therapy to help you look at tinnitus in a positive way and retrain your thoughts about hearing your tinnitus.....lots of love glynis

 

I would sleep outside if I could. Good to hear noise is easier in a matter of days. I have been suffocating myself with the humidity afraid of the AC fan. I still check to see how loud it is everynite, morning. Thank you for your post.

 

I know what you mean about checking for it. The issue I have is that mine genuinely does vanish sometimes. I can suddenly realise it has gone and often at that point, I can't help but check. Sometimes I just think, wow that is great and carry on with what I was doing, but at other times I have to check if it has gone, or if it is just the surroundings that are loud enough to mask it - I can't help myself. I can then walk into a silent room and listen for it and it is gone, I just can't hear it, no matter how hard I try - much like your hunter scenario, listening for the slightest noise. I was told by one specialist that this suggests brain damage rather than damage to the auditory system itself - I'm not sure if it was supposed to be comforting or not, but since it was drug induced, it seems plausible. Other times though, it can be really raging and a boiling kettle or a shower is needed to mask it. None of this is helped by the fact that I also have ETD which exacerbates it all. For me, the lack of a consistent sound means I continue to both hope that it will go completely, but also makes habituation very difficult.

 

Very difficult to try to not hear or concentrate on something. The very act of trying NOT to concentrate will bring your mind back to the subject. There have been quite a few studies on this. I would suggest when you hear it to say something like 'that's just my noise' and concentrate on something else. Good luck.

 

Yes, how in the world to you force yourself to not concentrate on it? I try and try not to focus on it, but it always seems to linger in the back ground when trying to distract myself from it.

@Marie79 I think have trained my brain also to pickup the tinnitus in the masking frequencies. How in the world do you stop that?