my tinnitus is worsening. especially upsetting is it happened after sitting along at a relatively low-volume karaoke for two hours — now my right ear has worsened. i had grown accustomed to how it was the last decade or so since i had sat in an orchestra, then played some electrical instruments with various people, then had sat around on bad fucking conference talks with obnoxious speakers.
now in this one fucking moment of weakness i join a karaoke and it seems okay then i wake up next day hearing such an awful loud pitched screeching constantly in my ear.
i am literally dissociating and losing track in conversations because of this: i have been everywhere in my answers.
i am so fucking hard of thinking now. it’s like a constant distraction from living and thinking and relaxing. please send help
Lots of great advice in the thread, the head finger thumping thing the other user suggested has worked for me when my very mild tinnitus flares up. If it’s bothering you as much as you described, you should see a specialist.
To add one more piece of anecdotal advice: in a quiet space, try listening to music or soundscapes with headphones on the lowest possible volume setting, that isn’t muted and that you can only hear when really listening in, and try to pay attention to the distinct sound elements like a particular instrument, singer, birds, wind, running water, background conversations. I imagine it’s partially training your brain to focus away from the ringing, and partially putting your mental energy into waking up the follicles that are hurt.
waking up the follicles that are hurt?
One of the prevailing theories about tinnitus is that it’s caused by your brain compensating for damage to the tiny hair cells in your inner ear that translate auditory vibrations into electrical signals that you interpret as sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_cell Perhaps “training” the damaged receptors can alleviate some symptoms?
That’s not a theory, that’s how tinnitus works. No, you cannot train neurons that are dead and gone.
please tell me what you mean by training
When your ear is hit with loud noise your ears make themselves less perceptive to noise and you get temporary hearing loss, but recovering in a quiet place makes this goes away.
So while hearing loss over chronic exposure to loud noise tends to be permanent, if you can try to do the opposite to increase the perceptiveness of your hearing to quieter sounds, your brain may be able to recover the signals better. The cause and the nature of each person’s tinnitus is very different, and it’s a mix of physical damage to your ear and psychological effect in the auditory processing part of your brain. The former may be irreversible but the latter is where you can improve it by training.
The finger thumping gimmick is pure placebo effect.
Even if it’s just another low bumpy noise and other sensations that distract my brain, it has worked for me. My ringing is quiet enough that it doesn’t bother me and I really don’t notice it until I’m somewhere quiet.