Tinnitus for 9 Months — What's Next?

Hello everyone, this is my first post here. I'm 34 years old from Norway. I first had tinnitus during easter 2016, combined with extreme dizziness. This was after I had a really nasty cold. After I saw a chiropractor, the dizziness ceased, as well as the tinnitus and it was completely gone after 5 weeks total. Went back to live normally with quiet in both ears. I was super relieved and happy about this, obviously.

Then, in the shift from August to September of 2018, I had a cold again and at the end of it, my ears felt very plugged. I decided to do that maneuver where you hold your nose and blow hard. It didn't do anything at first, so I decided, retarded as I am, to go all out and I blow as hard as I possibly could. Blue in the face. A few seconds later, I could hear the tinnitus again for the first time since 2016. A day later, the dizziness also came back. I saw the chiropractor again 3-4 times after this, a little on and off. The dizziness went away after 3-4 weeks, but the tinnitus has remained and still is there after almost 9 months. The difference this time is that during the summer of 2018, I started having these really serious anxiety attacks, where it would feel hard to breathe and like I was freaking out. After reading a thread in this forum about psychosomatic tinnitus, I'm starting to believe that I might be a victim of this as well.

Like most other people, the first 6 months was hell. I had enormous problems with sleeping, very dark thoughts all the time, nervous breakdowns on a weekly basis and so on. Suicide was on the to-do list. I had to start taking antidepressants just to cope. I'm still taking them, they're called Olanzapine, they're actually an anti-psychosis drug, but in the smaller doses (I take the smallest dose available) they can be used to treat "mood changes". I'm also on something called Circadin, which is actually just melatonin as a pill. (A hormone that makes you sleepy, naturally created by the body. Direct light on the eyes can hinder the creation of this, though).

I've now come to the point whereI don't let dark thoughts plague me as much, I'm more in control and the sound doesn't bother me 24/7...its mostly at night, and I miss being able to "snooze" like I could before. Taking power naps is out of the question. So all in all, a huge improvement. The sound has improved a lot as well, or maybe its just my reaction to it. However, I remain 100% committed to becoming completely tinnitus-free. I had a lot of problems with "faith" for a long time.... the first time I got tinnitus, my faith was unshakable and like a wall of iron. And I recovered quickly, too. This time, it really got to me, emotionally and its continued presence grinded me down into a shadow of myself. I've felt emotionally unstable for a really long time, like someone who is excusing their existance. Passion and liveliness was just snuffed out of my life and my brain, it's like the tinnitus is just taking up the space where they used to be. However, I've read a lot of success stories, as I have been snooping around on this forum for a while and my impression now is that most people actually recover within a year or two. I've met people online who's recovered completely from tinnitus and from the stuff I've seen online, it's becoming clear to me that staying positive, using your focus correctly and staying somewhat healthy is important (although I've also met someone who was smoking 30 a day and still recovered fully).

For many years I had a really bad lifestyle, as I'm unemployed and living off my wellfare pension. Not a dreamlike situation and I'm currently trying to get a job or even go back to school. I've suffered enormous trauma in my past and because of this, I've been depressed, desensitized and disenchanted with life. I had a very rough lifestyle where I would go to bed around 2-4 o clock at night, sometimes even later (earlier?) and then get up around 2-3 in the morning. I drank 5-6 litres of Diet Pepsi every week and my diet wasn't exactly healthy either. After I got sick (with tinnitus) I lost something like 25kg, and it was very noticeable. I've somewhat managed to keep the weightloss, all my pants are still way too big now. I've completely eradicated the diet pepsi habit from my life now though, as I somewhat bought into the idea that you can get tinnitus from aspartam. The main reason was the coffeine though, since I'm having enough problems sleeping as it is. But I'm still playing videogames, mostly because I dont have much else to do and it helps me focus on something else. I'm very curious about the longterm effect of this, though... is it mostly helpful or harmful?
I've also picked up reading literature again, something I'm very happy about.

I guess the reason I'm making this post is because I'm unsure if I should be more proactive or just allow time to fix it. I'm thinking that if I let time fix it, its because I believe I need my cells to regenerate, and then I'm agreeing to my tinnitus being mostly somatic. But as I mentioned before, I think it might be psychosomatic, from stress and anxiety (or rather, that the anxiety turned it into a problem) and in that case, time is maybe not enough? My mother also has tinnitus (for 15 years) and that has been an enormous burden on me, just knowing that this can go on for such a long time...I've been upset with her for not taking it more seriously (she's just accepted it in order to live with it, something I refuse to do).

Ever since I found this video in October 2018, its been the torch in the darkness for me. It's given me hope, faith and been the driving force behind my recovery. I'm doing a kind of meditation practice on a daily basis, it takes about 1 hour, it's something called Holosync where I listen with headphones while I'm just laying in bed. The sounds are rain and chimes/bells, more or less. I don't know if it helps anymore, since its extremely hard to track tinnitus progress on a daily basis. It's more like month to month now.

How I Got Better From Tinnitus

There's so much information I feel like I should give in this post, but I don't want it to be too long. But I hope you can consider replying and be nice to me, since I'm still a little sensitive about this (please dont say stuff like "It seems to me you're stuck with this for the rest of your life, like the rest of us - get used it"). I don't know if it matters, but I have a condition from birth called Aspergers syndrome, which gives me some issues in life. If you know what it is, I'm happy about it.

 

What you're saying makes me link it to the new neuroinflammation tinnitus cure discovery in mice. When this is translated to humans (however many years it may be) it will likely be helpful to you (and probably all of us).

If anything you can check out the Neuromod Lenire thread. It might be able to help until then!

 

"How I got better from tinnitus"

What does that even mean?