Did I Damage My Hearing Further by Pushing Quickly on the Tragus?

Hello,

I've had a very difficult week so far. Probably shouldn't have taken that Ibuprofen, probably should have run away when I heard that ambulance siren, and probably should not have stayed in that very loud arcade. By the end of the week I was in the ER being given Ativan for a major panic attack.

Now, after calming down some thanks to some prednisone, my ringing came back completely, even worse than before, and I quickly pushed on my right tragus (the flap on the ear) and pulled off quickly to make sure the noise was in my head. It's caused a rather sharp pain that comes and goes the last hour and my tinnitus is definitely much louder.

Have I fucked myself even more? Or am I getting a little too worried over something that could easily be unrelated? I can't sleep at all with the stress and the noise.

 

You are probably having a tinnitus spike driven by your anxiety (the more anxious and nervous you are and the more focussed on your tinnitus you become, the louder and the more obnoxious it'll be). It will most likely go down (obviously not immediately, things take time, probably hours/days) after you calm down.

Try not to listen for your tinnitus, the noise is here, whether or not it's in your head, listening for it won't make it stop and will likely just exacerbate it.

Remember, tinnitus is not a threat, just an obnoxious annoyance, it can't drive your life, no matter how severe it is, unless you let it.

Does it have an impact? Sure, lack of sleep is especially troublesome, not that anxiety makes things better in that regard, but how much of an impact it has is ultimately up to you, the less you focus on it, the less it will be impactful to your daily life and the more likely you will habituate.

Eventually, once you stop perceiving the noise as a threat, your brain will process it through the prefrontal cortex (handles background noise) instead of the amygdala (handles threatening sounds/fight or flight situations), that's the first step of habituation, then the part of your nucleus accumbens responsible for processing annoying sounds will shrink (over the course of several months) which will make your tinnitus less noticeable (until you eventually stop noticing it entirely unless you focus on it), that's the later that drives the final steps of the habituation process, the later change is also the reason why it becomes easier/faster to habituate to a new noise, should it ever arise).

Because all those steps are overall changes in your brain chemistry, they take time (on average 6 to 18 months) and can't be rushed in any way, the second step can only start once the noise is handled by the prefrontal cortex (so, after you stop having your tinnitus drive your anxiety, which has it being perceived as a threat).

This is why (among other reasons, such as some brain may lack the plasticity to adapt, although it's unlikely, that's a possibility nonetheless), 2% of tinnitus sufferers don't habituate as they get stuck in a perpetual, chronic, negative feedback loop of stress, anxiety, fight of flight mood and keep spending their time looking for an hypothetical cure, rather than going through acceptance and going on with their lives.

Does this mean we shouldn't look for a cure, of course not, does this mean we should keep wanting to make the noise stop, control its level/loudness/pitch and cling on a possible cure like a lifeline?
I don't think so, we should expect there may not be such a thing within our lifetime and move on, and if one ever turns up, well that's a nice bonus.

Those 2% of people who struggle to habituate are the ones who would benefit the most from CBT.

You need to keep in mind that, according to studies and statistics, 98% of chronic tinnitus sufferers (from mild to severe) do habituate, the odds of you being one of them are obviously high and in your favour; that said, it is true that the more severe tinnitus is, the harder it is to take the first step to habituation.

I know habituation is not a cure, but it's the next best thing, and probably the only thing we have for long term tinnitus management at this point, we also know it does work to make quality of life drastically better to sufferers and currently our best outcome.

 

Ah, my favorite copypasta.

Forgive me. My tinnitus is definitely worse than it was prior to this (both more audible and more distressing). I can all but promise you that it isn't just my anxiety and prior to this week I was doing significantly better on the mental front.

I really still don't get it. After the first six months I finally began to calm down about the fact that I had tinnitus but even a year and a half later I still have a great level of distress, which is not being helped by constant set backs and the general intrusiveness of the tinnitus anyway. On top of that I have several tones at differing frequencies and my tinnitus changes from day to day basically making getting used to this ever shifting cacophony ten times harder than when it was just 1-2 noises.

Sorry, had to vent.

 

If you check @Mathieulh's post history later, it is bleak. He became suicidal and still was after 2 years of suffering.

Habituation and positive thinking does not work for everyone...

 

Yeah, that was quite a change going from stating that "98% of chronic tinnitus sufferers (from mild to severe) do habituate" and "it can't drive your life, no matter how severe it is, unless you let it" to the reality of facing suicidal tinnitus. The "98%" sounds more like the habituation rate of mild tinnitus sufferers. Or maybe 98% of severe tinnitus sufferers that can NOT habituate. It's yet another example of how things can change suddenly for the worse despite positive thinking.