To Be in Silence or Not to Be?

Some people say it's better to not be in silence and others say it is good to try be in silence and habituate.

I go back and forth but when I'm in silence I feel like it gets SO MUCH LOUDER.

 

I think it's a very personal thing, just like some people like the AC set to 65 and some people like 78.

I know that I personally would have gone completely bonkers a long time ago if I hadn't taught myself to sit in relative silence; sometimes I still like to have music or cricket sounds on, but I've been listening to music forever and I know a good number of engineers without tinnitus who prefer some kind of white noise to work to.

 

I suppose it depends what your T sounds like also? Mine is like soft static noises so its not too grating. But I know some people have a very high pitched pure tone sound which sounds awful.

 

Oh yes it is
Its like a flashbang in call of duty but non-stop

 

Are you serious???? I remember playing Uncharted and it also had that flashang effect and it was freaking horrible.

 

So you taught yourself to sit in complete silence or ..what is relative silence?

 

Yup, that's what one of my handful of sounds sounds like. It happens to be the most annoying one, because it's very piercing.

 

Its makes zero difference for me, it's not like it's masked at all by noise so...

I like silence because it gives my ears a break, things get extremely painful say after watching TV for a couple of hours.

 

@Sam Bridge yeah Im dead serious

 

My T sounds better in silence because it eliminates the reactive part that is so annoying. It bothers me more when I can hear it over the road noise while I am driving.

 

relative silence is what I hear when I'm in a silent room because I have 24/7 tinnitus

 

Relatively quiet except for crickets and cicadas (the real kind not tracks) seems to be my sweet spot. It doesn't mask my T, but it seems to take my mind off of it and puts it more into the background.

 

I prefer quiet environment 9/10 times. My T is reactive to sounds though and I have extreme sensitivity so the quiet makes me feel better .

 

My thoughts exactly. After tv my t goes crazy!

 

After the initial period when I slept with masking/pink noise/ocean waves/etc., I took a tip from a post here and went back to sleeping in a regularly quiet house. I found that it seemed to lessen the tinnitus volume, in general. Don't know why. But I'm glad I did this, because my sleep is more peaceful.

This summer, with the necessity to run the A/C on those almost 100 degree days with high humidity, I found it aggravated the tinnitus while it was running.

So for me, yes, I prefer to go back to the quiet I love. Yes, I hear it. But yes, it is helping me to learn to focus outwards and not listen.

 

Do you have reactive t from the beginning?
What's the noise that is reactive?

 

I have pretty much always had reactive t. It seems to have gotten slightly worse since onset. The main things it reacts to (and sort of competes with) is the TV, the computer fans at work, sometimes the car radio or road noise, the vacuum cleaner... Etc. The tinnitus volume gets more loud when I'm exposed to those things but the main thing is the tv. My T always rages when I watch it especially in the evenings. Lately it almost seems as if my t is reactive to my own voice and it seems much louder in volume when I speak, which is very strange and also painful. I am talking to an audiologist and getting a new hearing test today to compare to my last test in November.

 

Spending my nights in utter silence instead of white noise like fan/AC CURED my tinnitus. So for me obviously silence was better.

 

How do you keep them alive?

 

I use a river sounding app every night...because my ear tremor made my tinnitus seem like nothing....

Its essential for sleep.

Silence is hell

 

I just leave the backdoor or window open at night. I don't know what I'm going to do come winter.
Are you the one that ordered 500 crickets? How'd that go?
I don't like it when it's just one cricket, that's annoying, but when it's a lot of crickets together outside that's more soothing.

 

I still have their home, but no crickets. They made more noise when I set them free.

 

Parts of mine get a lot quieter, and easier to deal with in silence depending on the day.

I find, even with the noise I can still sleep in silence as well.

 

Personal opinion....people don't realize how moving and amazing music is. Rachmaninov said "music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music."

Before tinnitus, I listened to music all the time. The nature of my tinnitus is that it can be heard even above moderate volume, but when I listen to music, it's impossible to discern my tinnitus noises from the music. I have to make a mental decision to focus on something. And the far more interesting choice, music, wins.

Listen to music, every single goddamn chance you get, and consider it a life well spent. Rachmaninov would think you crazy otherwise.

 

But at any rate, CBT is the preferred method of dealing with tinnitus, and one of the central strategies of CBT is to expose yourself to your fears, but ONLY IN MANAGEABLE AMOUNTS.

If you were afraid of dogs, no therapist would tell you to keep exposing yourself to every dog you see in your current state. He would say, start with small dogs, and work yourself up from there.

Works the exact same way with ANY fear. INCLIDING tinnitus. So use masking until you feel comfortable with exposure and continue to move forward from there.

You'll be okay in no time.

 

Tinnitus ruined music for me. This ultra high pitched head hissing just reacts and competes with music and ruins the experience.

 

When the reactive part of my T is gone. Enjoying music is basically normal.
What frustrates me was that I never listened to music on a regular basis loud before my T started.

In fact, the day before it started. I was either working to extract and make usable the soundtrack from Grandia II's PS2/DC versions to see if it was usable for my mod for the PC version. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673761272

Or I was listening to my music library on random at super low volumes. Like 30-50dbC.
It was a regular thing for me when I actually listened to music. Windows volume set to 65%, Amplifier set to 25% or less. And Foobar2000 set to -10dB or more. (And not using WASAPI Exclusive mode for Foobar either, which would have bypassed the Windows Audio Level setting)
Heck I remember that day, I even spent a sizable amount of time that day sitting in silence reading a book.
I probably spent even more time in silence than I did listening to music.

 

Really depends on your personality and the kind of T you have.

I cannot sleep with any external noise around, like a computer that is still on (fan) or if someone is sitting in another room and watching TV. The only noise I tolerate is when raindrops hits the window. So even if my T is shit and it is annoying to not be able to sleep in complete silence, I still have to have it as externally quiet as it can be. From what I have understood, being able /want to sleep in silence is rather uncommon. I guess it is so imprinted in my sleeping routine that it need to be quiet or I will just twitch and turn in bed for hours until it gets quiet enough.

 

I just returned from a noisy trip (first time flying with T) and can confirm that silence and "resting the ears" is the only thing that helps. My T definitely intensifies with noise and tries to be louder than whatever is around it. The kind of I have is the loud hiss. Music is completely ruined and masking is pretty much impossible unless I'm running a bathtub faucet.

Having a bad day, obviously.

 

My T is non-reactive, has 2 or 3 different eeeeeeee + sshhhhhh sounds. I dropped masking first 2 months after onset. I don't know why, but masking makes me feel miserable as if I adjust my life to my condition. The idea itself kills me. So I sleep in complete silence (just window open, so that I don't feel "trapped"). I just tell myself - I am falling asleep NOW and tomorrow life goes on.