Tinnitus and Pulsatile Tinnitus Habituation and Positive Outlook

Hi everyone,

I developed tinnitus after a music festival 2 months ago, 1.4.17. At first, I was a complete mess. 2-4 hours of sleep a night. Panic attacks every hour of every day, suicidal thoughts, images of being in a mental hospital, basically anything but a happy Future... but just 2 months later I have turned it all around and on the road to recovery.

This is the story of my success in dealing with the condition and how I've managed to rid myself of pulsatile leaving me with just good old regular, but very manageable tinnitus.

Pulsatile:
After taking propranolol to deal with the physical effects of the panic attacks, I have since realised this caused me to have severe pulsatile tinnitus. My advice for anyone having a bass type "whump, whump whump" in the ear/ears is to deal with the stress and anxiety as naturally as possible and not to heavily rely on prescribed medication (my advice is B12, magnesium and zinc). I can say without doubt that my pulsatile tinnitus was stress related, with propranolol only enhancing the symptoms due to changing the blood pressure in that area. I have since limited taking propranolol unless I really, really need it!

Tinnitus;
For the first two months every other word out of my mouth was "tinnitus", I was obsessed with it. I struggled through work for two months with horrendous 8/10 tinnitus volume in my left ear and 6/10 in my right ear. How I did it with no time off... I do not know! But I did it and so can you. This was the key in my habituation in such a short time, it's not fully habituated but it has reduced in volume from 8/10 to as low as un-noticeable 0/10 for large parts of the day. I carried on going to the pub, listening to music (at a low level), I just carried on through the pain. It was the hardest two months I've ever experienced, but the best choice I made was to "carry on". The best advice I can give to any new suffers is to go out, have fun and don't talk about tinnitus. The first few times, you will probably feel withdrawn, out of place, miserable at times. The key is perseverance, after the initial period it DOES get better, the only way is to power through and talk about anything but tinnitus, after the first few times you will literally forget you have it. This will reduce your stress and you'll notice a reduction in sound in the coming days or weeks the more you do this.

I have a long way to go, but I've been productive and that has made me feel so much better. I've seen an ENT (£400 private, as NHS was 12-14 week wait!) but ruling out any serious illness was the turning point for me, they found nothing and assured me that it will go. No time frame, but he was VERY certain that it will go even if I have permanent hearing loss, my test says I have perfect hearing between 500-8 kHz at 10 dB, although I've not been tested for the higher frequencies. I could have been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but I wasn't. We're lucky we're talking about tinnitus here because it could be so much worse and you are all strong enough to get through this, the speed of your recovery is your choice. You can drag it out over years, or you can decide to live the best life possible, with an annoying condition. I know which way I'd prefer!

Happy to help with any other questions? Good luck everyone. You can do it!