Why Does Tinnitus Bother Us?

I just felt like getting some thoughts down on "paper". When I'm writing, I have to focus, and the ringing kind of goes into the background.

I have been having tinnitus for three weeks now. I don't know if it's chronic yet. My doctor says it's not chronic before after one year. My hearing-loss has improved, but it's a far way to full recovery. So I'm not exactly very positive, but, that just my nature. I hope I am wrong this time too.

This is a very devastating situation. The hardest one in my life yet. I have been to two different ENT's, and my family doctor several times. There is no reason for my hearing loss. I was just free-diving, bad luck, shit happens. Nothing to do about it. Before this, I have never been on any medication what-so-ever. I almost never had fever, no ear infections. Nothing. Just a mild tinnitus, a humming, everyone have that if they listen closely.

Anyways, enough about me.

Today I was thinking about something. Why does this sound bother us? Its just a sound, just like every other sound. Except you can't do anything about it. But actually, if you think about it, you can't do anything about other sounds either. If you are driving your car, you can't switch off the sounds around you. If you are out having fun, you can't tell everyone to shut up, you can't tell the DJ too turn of the music. And, if you go out of the nightclub, there is still sounds. And if go from the street, to your bedroom. There sure is some sounds in there too. You see what I mean? There is always sounds, there is never silence, unless you go out in space, actually, our ears hate silence, if you are in silence for a long time, your ears can get sick, and you can develop hyperacusis.

I sat at the bus for 15 years to school. Everyday. There was always sounds around me. Humming, buzzing, people talking, people yelling, horns, bad brakes etc. It never bothered me. Never. Most of the time, I ignored it and did not even notice it. It was just sounds in the background, nothing more. Personally, I have never actually liked silence in the first place. I always liked to have at least some sound around me. Since the laptop era started, I always liked to have the laptop turned on because of the fan. I could, in the theory, been sitting in front of my laptop, with the fan on, for the rest of my life, and not get bothered by it. No matter how loud it is Weird? Yeah.

So, since we always hear sounds, and none of them bother us to the point of depression, anxiety and desperation. How can we train our self to feel the same way about our tinnitus? No matter how loud it is. There has to be some way. Do we just have to decide it? Like a on/off switch? There is no connection between the tinnitus and your feelings. It's not like the ringing fabric some substance into your blood, that goes to your brain and make you depressive. It feels like that, but it is just an illusion, at best.

I was doing a hearing test on my phone, actually, I have done it a million times now, just see if there is some improvement, while I pity myself. And every time I started the test, I was pissed because, cars had to drive in the street in front of my house just in the moment I took the test. (That was a long and heavy sentence). The point is, cars are driving there all the time. I only noticed it when I took the hearing test, because that destroyed the test-results pretty much. All other time my brain filtered it out to the point that I did not even hear it. Not even as a background sound.

We can even take it further. You always feel different things. When you are walking, you can feel the ground hitting your feet. If you are lying in your bed, you feel the gravity. You can feel your heart beating, you can always taste something inside your mouth, you can always smell something and, you can always see. Even if you close your eyes, you can still see black/red-ish.

So, my point is, we hear/feel what we focus on, and our brain is quite bad at multi-tasking when it comes to focus, at least we have some luck.

So, I have two questions I want to discuss with you.

1: How can we ignore our tinnitus to the point that we cannot hear it?..
2: ..And when we hear it, how can we cut the link between our tinnitus and our feelings? To the point where we are just thinking: "Oh, that sound, uyeaah, just a sound. lol. who cares". If you know what I mean?

I know this is a lot to read, but I had a lot of thoughts. Sorry if some words or phrases don't make sense. English is not my native language.

Good luck to everyone, I wish everyone only the best.

 

I liked your post and basically, it's called TRT !

I, personally, am not that bothered by the sound of my tinnitus, it's annoying but it's OK.

Though, the problem is, and this is why i'm on a forum like this one, i'm a musician and it messes with the way i hear music. I don't want to go to concerts any more because the sound is massively way too loud, i don't want to use valve amplifiers because they are very loud and piercing. I don't want the sound to get worse. That's why it's annoying. It's not only the sound but what's around it, what it means to you.

Maybe if i weren't into music, i would be just mildly annoyed.

 

We are programmed to react to sounds, and if we dont know what it is, we get scared. I think.

 

T is like a fingerprint, meaning the effect and impact it has on us is individual and unique. Many times I can reflect on my volume, if my volume was lower I could definitively manage it better. Too me the volume of my T is of utmost importance to how I feel about it. Some lucky days I have these moments where I hear it going down somewhat, like its fading into the background, just for an hour or so. Those moments are bliss to me and I immediately feel powered by the mental rest it gives me, but sure as hell the volume returns to the raging mad level it's normally at and then it's back to being scared, exhausted, anxious, depressed etc. So, HOW can we get those perceptions evened out to one nice flat line where there's no feeling of hostility towards the unwanted noises? I think thats what TRT is supposed to be aiming at, although I've never been to any TRT course yet I've read about Jastreboff's theories of the plasticity of our brain and I'm positive about that. It must carry a lot of truth and it obviously helps a great deal of people. But to what extent we are bothered by T I think must be a very individual aspect. Of course it is, we are human beings and we are unique.

To me my T is not comparable to any other environmental sound like the ones you mention because the T is inside me, its part of my brain, my ears and my physique. It's there the moment I open my eyes after a short period of sleep and it's there as a constant reminder of eternity and discomfort. Almost all other sounds I can either switch off, remove myself from or in other ways exclude from my life. T is not one of them and that is difficult to get to terms with. I'm sure it will get better and my brain will sooner or later get tired of focusing, of being scared, of being anxious etc. That's my hope for the future and a lot of people here on the forum has achieved that state.

 

That's well put. I can relate to that statement. That's why I think it's difficult to filter out, because the character of the entire symptom is so dramatic.

 

Don't be afraid , it can't hurt you it's only a noise.....yea I know it sucks real bad but still it's only a noise and can't hurt you..

 

I have always been sensitive to sounds, clocks ticking, vibrations and I pray this ends.
So to say it is only a sound hmmmm

 

I agree with Per,
I'm only a few weeks into T but the thing that gets me is I can move away from every other noise. Every other noise can eventually stop.

T never does.

 

Wow that is a fabulous explanation.

 

I don't know how the brain ignores a sound. I know it can ignore a vision. Example, there is a spot in my eye that I can't see out of. Like a big permanent floater but black and almost dead center. I remember when I first saw this thing. It was scary, I didn't know why this happened or if it would get worse, and I would just see this spot, wherever my eyes moved it went. Years later I still see it, but my brain does not "register" it most of the time. When I pay attention to it, it's just something there, not something wrong. I can't explain how this process occurred, it was automatic.

Now I think tinnitus is a lot harder, because of how tied sound and emotion are, how distressing sounds you can't escape are (especially when you just want to sleep!) It impacts all of us with different severity. But I think this process can happen for sounds too. I like to think so.

 

@meeruf

Totally adore your post, no other words just adore
Made my day everything about it!

 

That's very nice to hear!

 

Hi James, your situation sounds quite similar to mine, except that my T still bothers me a lot. The final straw for getting my T was playing with self oscillating delay effect through guitar amp I think.. I've been to some band rehearsals with earplugs since onset, but you're right, the fear of making it worse is always present. That haven't happened though.

OTOH some fellow musicians have had T for many years and they just keep on gigging without ear protection without it going worse. Beats me.

-j