Wake Up Sensitivity to Some Noises

hi TT family,

I wanted to know whether it is normal/anyone has experienced waking up with increased sensitivity or whether this is due to overuse of muffs and plugs.

I sleep in muffs at the moment as it is so hot in the UK that my wife insists on opening all the windows. We live near a road.

This morning, I woke up and replaced the muffs with plugs as I was heading to a meeting also in a room near to a road.

I found that I was finding certain noises loud that shouldn't objectively be loud - my wife walking down wooden stairs with flip flops clicking away, her slamming the door when I was in a different room and the noise of cars passing on the road outside, even with the windows closed.

My tinnitus seems to have spiked as a result of these exposures, which is incredible frustrating. Do I just not go out, or do I wear the earmuffs the entire time?

Thanks for the help guys!

 

I can feel your frustration that your tinnitus spiked easily.
My advice is --- try not wearing ear muffs or ear plugs 24/7
especially during sleep.
Your ears need to be desensitized by exposing to acceptable sound
(eg. white noise).

 

so this should not be permanent spiking? given that the sounds are not 'objectively' dangerous?

 

Feel your, pain, brother. @Ed209 has been good with me at explaining sensitivity issues and over protecting

 

You will be fine. Please give some time for it to subside.

 

@spikedears
We're the same on a situation bro that we also live near beside the road as so hot this summer and my wife also insist to open the windows that we always argued that leads me into frustration.

What we are doing is that when my wife arrive from work so I will go outside and take a long walk on the park for 2-3 hours, so that's the time she can open all the windows as the fresh air gets inside the house.
And when I got home from walking I close again all the windows and during our sleeping time my wife sleeps at the living room with open windows and I sleep at our bedroom and close the door since we only have one bedroom.
It's hard in doing like this it's so hot that I sleep in a bedroom with no fan and close door and windows and the temperature got high and I sleep for about 3 to 4 hours sometimes this summer.

 

Are you used to being in quiet rooms and places now? When I got a spike 2 months ago I was listening to my ringing a lot but also somewhat starved myself of sound out of fear. I then realized that I was just allowing my brain to focus even more on the quiet but annoying sounds, so I tried to almost desensitize how I felt about those sounds by "sound therapy" and also listening to tones of similar frequencies that didn't annoy me. After a while even though my hearing still felt sensitive, certain sounds felt less sharp than they did before.

 

Sounds like my hyperacusis.

Each day I tend to wake up sensitive to sounds and through out the day it gets a tiny bit better. I slowly see it getting better but some days are tolerable and some days it feels like it's getting worse.

I sleep with some relaxation music.