What's the Point of Masking If It Makes You Hear an Even Louder Noise in Your Ears?

whats the point of masking if it makes you hear an even louder noise in your ears? How is that going to help to diminish the irritation caused by the persistent noise? Would it not cause further agravation

 

Tolerable noise (masking) vs. screeching (tinnitus) that some of us hear.

 

Annoyance is not only loudness of tinnitus. Sound type is also important. Id rather listen to loud good music than a medium high pitch tinnitus that sounds like nails scratching on a blackboard. And also,sometimes loud tinnitus can be masked by low sounds. Dont ask me how that works, but it does.

 

I see your point and ENT also said to me earlier this year that we see tinnitus as a threat and irritation so we concentrate on it a lot more. So anything to block or mask it is helpful or heaven lol. He also said when a fan is on we block that out easy as its not a threat in our minds. Kinda wish we could just block out tinnitus as we do other sounds on in the background.

 

Many do. That's pretty much what habituation is all about.

But masking isn't a part of it - so I digress.

Dr. Stephen Nagler

 

I'm in that stage now....blocked the hell out of my T..... now I do nothing and do not hear it ....but when I focus on it , it 's party time in my ears. If I hear it though....I just do not care anymore....

Weird how habitation works and how sceptical I was regarding habituation...but it's true.... you just do not care anymore.....the more you focus the more you busy with it...the longer it takes.

I can remember I posted hear something that I gave up on T because I could not win it .... from that point on habituation was going fast.

Although you cannot force habituation ....it just happens.....may take years may take months. But it can happen.... so am I cured.......NO

Do I care .....NO

So am I cured to go on with life ....Yes

Do I go in full panic mode if it comes back in my concious and is as loud as when I stick my fingers in my ears....... YESSSSS

Because that's me...... stay strong!

 

Excellent!

Skeptics abound. Hell, I was skeptical at first. The difference is that (unlike many other skeptics) I wasn't all over the Internet knocking it.

Precisely.

For more on habituation and the barriers one can encounter along the way, please see:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/overcoming-obstacles-to-habituation.6886/​

Now this is a masking thread, and my last post took it off topic. I hope we can let it get back to masking, a treatment approach that was championed by a dear dear friend of mine, Dr. Jack Vernon. Below I am attaching a piece I wrote a few years ago about tinnitus masking.

Dr. Stephen Nagler

 

i have screeching. I know what thats like. So masking is supposed to be tolerable compared to tinnitus? I dont agree.

 

but any noise becomes annoying after it goes on for long enough. at least to me it does. There is no music or sound which i would like to listen to permanently. I used to love silence. Nothing can bring that back. I also used to enjoy music. How am I going to enjoy music now with these noises on top of it? Its ruined.

 

whats the difference between habituation and being forced to grit your teeth and accept that you will never hear silence again?
can you genuinely say that if you were given the opportunity to experience internal silence again, you would still choose habituation? really? If you would choose true silence instead of habituation, what does that tell us about the efficacy of habituation? It tells us that we might be downplaying the significance of our tinnitus.

 

Unfortunately that option isn't there. Everyone would choose a complete cure but we have to make do with the options that are presently on the table.

 

Yeah I do wonder why I listen to other sounds over my tinnitus. If I didn't I freak and think I'm deaf, I have bad anxiety.

 

whether the option is there or not doesnt matter. My question is hypothetical.

 

What's the difference? Night and Day.

Habituation is a totally passive process by which you get to a point where you do not care about your tinnitus, regardless of its loudness, pitch, timbre, or pattern. And if you do not care about your tinnitus, there is no need to grit your teeth.

Gritting your teeth is an active event. There is nothing passive about it. Gritting your teeth is the antithesis of habituation.

But neither has anything to do with masking, which is the topic of this tread. I unfortunately took it off topic, and I am trying to get it back where it belongs. Please see the piece on masking that I am attaching to this post.

Dr. Stephen Nagler

 

I am not convinced that habituation will work for all of us. I raised a question in the other thread about how we can measure the amount of suffering caused? or the relief given? Nobody has replied. How can we say there is relief when there is no good way to measure it? That is not scientific is it? We need to be able to quantify the amount of relief which is provided by a given therapy. Otherwise how can we say if it is adequate relief?

If your tinnitus increased by 200%, and your suffering shot up as a result by 100%, how could the same amount of habituation offer adequate relief? Wouldnt we reasonably expect that the effort required to habituate to tinnitus, would be proportional to the suffering caused by it? There is no such thing as a free lunch! Do all people with tinnitus have the same capacity to generate this effort? Could the level of effort required be beyond the capability of some people?

 

I experience silence in my fluctuating cycles. Like now. Totally non-tinnitus. However, the anxiety and the rebound of T that will happen, at very high frequency and volume is horrific. I asked Dr. Hubbard about my fluctuating T and he said its harder to habituate to.
That is probably true since I don't experiecne T every day, but my hopes of habituating to 11k very loud T took another turn into paralizing anxiety. Thats what throws me as much as the T. Like knowing you will relive a car crash every few days. No matter how I block it out in my mind I am haunted by knowing it will return and my inability at this point to habituate. Well, maybe I have made some progress, but it seems like it will be protracted due to the fluctuations and ongoing anxiety.

I just don't want to be crippled by the sound, the anxiety and the depression which throws me down every day.
And thats how I feel, crippled.

Can I habituate to the anxiety and fear and the sound? Its so much more complex it seems.
I can ponder this in a quiet day as my anxiety diminished with meds.
On a bad day, I would be here looking for mercy.

 

Don't agree with what? That's why people do it. Period. Why else would they do doing it? For fun?

 

I would give up my house for a couple silent days a month. Hell I would take louder T in exchange for a silence for one weekend a month. If I could get a couple of days to not be paralyzed by this noise I could get thing done and step back and think like a normal human being.I wouldn't sleep for the quiet days I would be so happy.

 

not for fun. But out of a lack of other choices and desperation

 

Yes i agree it's a terrible option

 

There are only a few options available. We cant expect all of us to be successfully treated by one of those. Thats what brings us to forums like this. Its not as if we havent heard of masking or TRT. Its just that, it wont do. So in the end many of us may end up being forced to accept whatever is available even if in all honesty we know that its not really the answer. Those same people may even go on to recommend their therapy to others.
This is why we need objective data.

 

@Telis
I Understand your position and I am grateful for the quiet times. It's hard to describe what I go through. Just like it's hard for people without T to understand what it's like.
You know the toll it takes and so do I.
But make no mistake, my thoughts are more scrambled with the anxiety and depression. Especially on clear days. It's hard to convey. It's like reliving the onset of T over and over. I don't know what to say. It's hell no matter how you live it.

 

Well you can treat the anxiety and depression so I'm sure you will be fine at least half the time once you get that looked after .

 

Yeah but these treatments do work for most people. I think trt claims 80 percent. The other 20 must just be doing it wrong....right!? Maybe bad patients?

 

Masking for me personally is trading one level of Hell for a slightly better level.