Weird New Tinnitus

Hi all,

Some years ago I developed tinnitus in my right ear from playing in a band (mostly) with my ears unprotected. Since the drums were always very close to my right ear, that’s where the tinnitus developed. At least that’s how I saw it. A few years after that I developed an anxiety disorder, which had absolutely nothing to do with my tinnitus. My tinnitus also wasn’t that bad though (luckily) and apart from a period of little deterioration, from going out too much +-two years ago, I’ve grown to fully accept it. A lot of the times the ringing is there but, in fact, it barely bothers me anymore, even though it can get quite loud at times.

Anyway, last year my anxiety issues got a lot worse and their ‘character’ changed a bit (easily put, I’m experiencing fear for completely other things then I did before). For example a few months ago I was so scared of being dizzy that I felt dizzy continuously for weeks. Two months ago then I developed some problems with the muscles in my jaw, for which I’m currently undergoing physiotherapy. This is nothing too serious, though, but I still managed to worry about it all the time. I looked on the internet (should never have done that) to see if this can have serious consequences, and, guess what, I found some. One of them was tinnitus and other hearing problems, since the jaw and the ear anatomically are close to each other.

My fear of getting new hearing issues got completely out of hand, I searched on horrible stories about people getting completely mad on their ears and last week and while I was alone on my (silent) room, I suddenly heard a super silent new sibilant sound in my left (and previously completely healthy) ear, which also is the side where the most of my jaw issues take place. I started panicking and went for a walk.

Strange thing was, I didn’t feel like the sound was masked when other mild sounds surrounded me (for example my fridge buzzing right next to me), which always helped with my original, right-ear tinnitus. In fact, this time, this made it even worse. Just like the ‘tinnitus’ really tried to get full attention from me and tried to climb its way in front of all my sensations. It’s only when I was in a really sound-busy environment (e.g. heavy traffic) and I had a lot of hearing distraction that it completely went away.

Two days later, while I was making a test at college, I had some hearing distractions, but only to the left of me, and suddenly the tinnitus sound seemed to change its way to my right ear.

Ever since that moment a very similar sound with just the same characteristics (masking doesn’t help; it’s rather silent but when I’m surrounded by noise I seem to hear it even more loudly) is present in my right ear. In my left ear everything is gone. I’m still experiencing my original tinnitus to the right, and this is much louder and doesn’t bother me, but, still, I’m incredibly annoyed by this sound which never seems to really go away. Another example, I’m now listening to a tape of sea wave noises on a rather mild volume and I feel like this ‘new sibilant tinnitus’ succeeds at planting its way into my hearing system.

Sometimes I feel like I’m unconsciously looking for sounds similar to this tinnitus in the waves and I’m interpreting this as a never going away sound to scare me. When I put off the tape though, I only hear my old tinnitus, until I start thinking about the sibilant new one and there it is back. I feel like at the moment my attention is so strongly put on what I hear that I’m developing new sounds in my mind to be scared of.

So, since this ‘new tinnitus’ started in my left ear and then suddenly went to my right, since it sometimes gets louder when being masked (though it doesn’t feel like hyperacusis because I can handle all rather loud noises and it never really hurts to my ears) and since its extreme cognitive component to it (I know original tinnitus can get worse by or caused by stress but this feels just not as simple as that), I was wondering if some people experienced similar situations or if anyone knows if there’s a possibility that my tinnitus is 100% anxiety-induced or it’s even something illusory. Or maybe it seems like my tinnitus can be caused by excessive muscle tension, which should mostly be anxiety-induced?

Thanks for reading this (too long) story either way and I’m wishing all of you a lot of strength in coping with your hearing (and other) problems.
MARCUS