Tinnitus Joined by Sound Distortions/Reactive Tinnitus

Hello hello! I'm Beau!

A brief background on me and my tinnitus journey! I've had it for... a long time haha. I remember thinking that everyone just always heard a ringing in their ears instead of absolute silence. I think mine was caused by listening to music too loud when I was a teen but habituated to it pretty easily. I didn't actually hit my first struggle with tinnitus until Sept. '22 when I woke up to my tinnitus being extremely loud to the point where I could hear it over almost anything and everything. It was quite the monster, with no real cause as to how/why it spiked up.

I actually found this forum during that time and it really helped me through the struggle to return to normal (or at least, as normal as one can get with tinnitus!) In about a month or so I was able to re-habituate to my tinnitus and all was right with the world, yay! Until --- a few days ago.

I don't know whether this is sound distortion or reactive tinnitus because I don't really know the difference between the two all that well but now when I have my air purifier on, fan on, running water, etc. I hear a sort of... whistling tone, different then my normal tinnitus sound ring. It only lasts for as long as the sound is going, so for instance the second I turn my fan off --- boom the whistling is gone. It's also really only in my right ear as well.

Unfortunately this puts me in an absolute awful position. Sounds like a fan, rain, waterfall noises, etc. are all things I use to try to help me whenever my normal tinnitus decides to become bothersome especially when I'm trying to sleep. Now I can't do anything to help mask my normal tinnitus without activating this annoying whistling... reactive distortion. I can put up with it for a little bit, especially if I have something to distract me like the TV or music but it's really draining, like it's taking a lot of energy to just put up with it before eventually I have to just turn everything off that irritates me (which is not good as I need my air purifier on for health reasons)

I only really have one thing I can think of that *might* have set this new issue off, someone was using the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink, and something must have gotten stuck or something because it made the loudest noise I've ever heard. I wasn't in the room when it happened but I could hear the vibrations all the way through my body up through my ears from the bass of it. I can't prove this is what caused it but heyho, just some food for thought.

If anyone out there might be able to lend some advice as to what I might be able to do to help habituate to this new sound that would be great! Or even better if anyone knows if something like this might just... go away? That would be even better Either way, thank you for reading & I am excited to officially become a part of this community!

 

Hey Beau, welcome to the forum!

I have the same thing as you do with distortions, which happened to me about six months ago, most likely after listening to loud music with headphones but I'll never really know for sure, could just be sudden hearing loss too. You're still early into this so if it goes away or if it's there to stay is still up in the air, but do your best to not let it worsen and stay away from headphones; using speakers instead would be the safe thing to do.

As far as I know, habituating with distortions doesn't seem like it's a thing compared to tuning out regular tinnitus but it does get a little better over time and you'll stop hearing as many whistling noises to everything as you do now. Just try to be careful, slowly let yourself get used to everyday sounds and stay away from anything that's overly loud/uncomfortable.

I don't have that much great advice to offer because I'm still learning how to live with it on a daily basis myself but I feel for anyone that has to deal with reactive tinnitus/distortions too, it's a complicated thing. I've spoken to people that also had distortions and they often recovered pretty well after 1 to 2 years so there is hope, it just takes a long time to start seeing results.

 

Many thanks Capybara! I appreciate your words -- it has been very rough so it's comforting to know that even though this noise is in my head, I'm not the only one whose hearing it (tho I wish none of us heard it!)

I've been trying to take this slowly. It's gotten a bit worse (i.e. reacting to more things) but I'm still hopeful that I'll come out the other side just fine, as I actually got way worse before I improved when my tinnitus spiked before. I've spoken with my doctor and he told me I can keep the air purifier off for at least 1-2 hours a day and when the whistling is still too much for me I just place some over-the-head headphones (without anything playing through them) on and that helps to muffle the exterior noises enough that it's easier to ignore the whistling.

Honestly the worst part of dealing with it is just trying to get to sleep. Without my fan or any of my regular masking noises my regular tinnitus can get so loud that it sounds like I'm drowning in it and it even makes me almost dizzy! The only solution I've come up with for the moment is alternating between bird songs/music or I just leave the TV on at low volume to help focus on something other than the noises in my brain.

 

My guess is sudden hearing loss due to either noise or idiopathic cause.