Habituated or Just Gave Up on It?

[RicoS]

Hi,

I get a little confused..... when I stick my fingers in my ears I still hear my T and in a silent room I can still hear it loud. It's still irritating but for some reason I just gave up on it. It's easy to mask and sometimes when I'm tired a bit loud, but for some reason I just do not care anymore.

I cannot change a damn thing about it.... so for some reason I just gave up on it. When I hear it...I hate it. I still respond to it because when I hear it to long I go to a place where I hear it less.

So what is habitation. My T does not has the volume that I can "look" for it because I hear it or I do not hear it depending on the background noise. The amount of background noise has become less to mask it but the volume when I stick both my fingers in my ears is still te same.

Today for instance I had a meeting in an office which was very silent. It's very irritating listening to people with that eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee sound through my head....but after 10 minutes....my brain thinks.... .... ... I don't know.... I just cannot change a thing about it so why bother. It sucks never the less but I have no control over it.
Only when I have a good night sleep it's a bit less but other than that....T is just T.

I can take the sound down for 5 minutes with an opposit sound (talked about it in other threads) but I do not do it anymore.... because after those 5 minutes its back.

Do I feel bad about my life.....not realy....anymore........ Do I hate my T to the upmost...yes I do.
What is getting me stressed....T does.... when it is loud. Stress does not make my T louder.
What have i learned from this passed year and 3 months with T.......Nothing realy that cures my T...... If you go in panic mode you just go.... that is perhaps what I've learned. Just sit the panic mode out and slowly you will adjust to your new situation.
Is my life better than before T.... NO!!!! Without T I would be realy happy....sometimes I'm feeling I just act happy now.

So am I habitated....or just gave up on this T thing?... I just do not want to spend more energy on it. I still do the same things before my T , but I already did that at the onset of it.

I became less social .... I think.... and I stop carring about a lot of things and just focus on what is realy important.

I do not even know what I try to say with this thread...... I was just wondering if I was habitated or still in the proces of habitating.

If I had just one wish it would not even be to live forever....it would be " I wish this forum did not excist because nobody has T or H "......

Stay strong peeps....

 

[MattK]

To me it sounds like you're hanituating but not fully there yet. At the moment I'm similar to you. I can hear mine almost over everything. But I just simply don't have the energy to dwell on it any longer. Once I let go things started to get better for me. But I still have a long way to go.

 

[RicoS]

Yes it something like that.... Today I realy thought...man this sucks....and I felt some negative energy coming up.... but for some reason I just said.....pfffffffffffff whatever...... I can do nothing about it.... It just did not got to me this time.
And I do not accept that eeeeeeeeeeeee is my new silence..... I hate it as much as before....but ..... I don't know...yelling does not help. Crying does not help....praying does not help..... nothing does ... so why bother any response to it what so ever it will stay there anyway. If it becomes less so be it....if it becomes worse I hate it even more.... If there is a pill to cure it ...I would take it...if there is nothing......then there is nothing... But perhaps I'm finaly in a habitation proces or something..... it's not something I actualy control.

 

[MattK]

Have you considered retigabine? Some claim it helps, but I'm cautious about it... Though im not sure if I could convince my doc to prescribe it even if I wanted to try it.

 

[Ilija]

Habituation as I understand it is a combination of two things.
1.) Your brain doesn't care
2.) You don't care
The reason for most people why Tinnitus is at it's worst in the beginning is that 1.) Your brain is in panic so it focuses a lot on it and ergo when it's loud YOU FOCUS ON IT so then its like everything else 10%brain ,Tinnitus 90% brain.
When people are habituated the brain doesn't see Tinnitus as a threat so it doesn't focus on it, so then you don't focus on it and in time you lose all emotion attached to Tinnitus so even when it's there it doesn't bother you it's just something you have.
This is why for instance people like Dr. Nagler have jet engines and yet they're perfect happy and don't give a sh*t about it, there's no emotion attached to it, it's a sound.
I don't want say "just a sound" because some people are bothered by their Tinnitus but for those who are completely habituated yes it is "just a sound".
This is why children who are born with Tinnitus don't pay much attention to it, to them it's just part of life they've always had.
The reason I was scared of Tinnitus was mostly my reaction.
Plenty of my friends have had Tinnitus and none of them went depressed and suicidal they just forgot about it and didn't care and it went for them quicker.
I think if I didn't go full panic obsessive depressive suicidal by this time it may have gone away.
It's the same now, when I don't think about it bothering me, which it doesn't all that much I don't notice it and I don't care.
But the minute I start focusing on it, thinking about it, reading about it, getting angry and sad and depressed then it becomes a real problem and gets louder and worse and so the circle goes until I do something to break it.
I'm confident in my Tinnitus, what I mean by this is, I'm not afraid it'll spike out of no reason any more, I'm not afraid it'll ruin my life because when I'm out with friends or in school or something like that it really doesn't affect me.
Now all that's left is to eliminate the emotional attachment and I'll be habituated, this is also the one of the main reasons why when peoples Tinnitus goes away it takes them time to realise, because they're not checking for it every minuted any more.
It's the same principle as with say anticipating a party.
When I was young and counted every minute it took ages and ages, but whenever I would just do something else I'd forget and it would be there in a jiff.
Either way I've learned that focusing on Tinnitus and making my life revolve around it is just plain stupid, and while I probably will rage and bitch about it for several months more in the end I'll just stop caring, by that time as same as Srdjan's it'll probably go and I won't notice it until I'm laying on my bed or something like that.
My friend didn't know his was gone a whole month more, he noticed it finally when he was in a really quiet bathroom peeing xD

 

[MikeA]

@RicoS We have similar thoughts about this disease. You sound like you are doing well. Your statement "...so why bother any response to it..." is key. I suppose there are many ways to define habituation, but to me the most important element is to not view the sound as a threat. The fight or flight stress response is built around responding to a threat. If the sound is not perceived as a threat we are left with "yea whatever..." While long-lasting, my T is not overly intrusive and I've dealt with much more difficult issues in the past. So yea, why bother a response...

 

[awbw8]

Hi @RicoS, I agree with what @MattK said up there. It sounds like you're habituating, but you aren't there yet. It's not a quick or pretty process. I would consider myself fully habituated to the sounds I have now (if they change, I suppose I'll have to habituate again), but for now, all is well. I don't care about my T, my brain doesn't care about my T, but it is still very much there. If I look for it, I will find it, if I plug my ears, there it is.

When people say they have to "look for" their T, it's not necessarily about "oh it's so quiet I can't hear it and I really have to hunt for it" in an auditory sense. It's more like the way if someone said, "do you hear the refrigerator humming, or the clock ticking?" You would have to look for that. Not because you can't hear it, but because you aren't paying attention. That's what my T is like now. I sit in a silent room, I sleep in a silent room (with city noises, but still). If I "look" for my T, it is very easy to hear in the room with my ears unplugged, but I wake up or read and I don't hear it - just like I don't hear the buzz of my laptop, or how I don't see the fuzzy form of my nose between my eyes when I read, even though it's always there.

So hopefully that helps a little. I would feel good if I were you. You're on your way from the sounds of it! I had many ups and downs, so if you feel better or worse going forward, don't beat yourself up or lose hope. At this point, I feel, a lot of the habituation starts to happen without you present for the event, as long as you don't obsess over the T too much. It sounds like you aren't, so good for you.

Once you get to habituation though, it really wont annoy you at all. If it does, it will be rare and brief. Happy habituating!

 

[RicoS]

Thanks for the nice responses. In a silent room my T is instantly there so looking for it is not an option and perhaps it will come. But for some reason(call it habitation) I'm so done with all of this. I don't think of suicide anymore like in the beginning.....
My girlfriend hears a loud EEEEE sound when she plugs her ears but in a silentroom she hears nothing so I know habitation is a true thing,..... but I don't want to think about habitation...I just want to move on with life. At work I hardly talk about it anymore...because.....who cares..... they don't.....nobody does....it's just you and your T.

You have to deal with it yourself.... and it's there...just like the sun...just like air....I still hate it though....but focussing on it ain't gone help me anymore....I've done that the last year .... I just want to move on and I will.

I know we all feel bad about our T...but it hit me like a rock today.... it does not matter how bad I feel about my T.... it will be there in the morning. I will not be friends with it but I can live next to a neighbour I don't like and still live fine.

If I have to mask the rest of my life...so be it. If I cannot sleep on one ear anymore because the T is much louder...I just sleep on my back.

If I cannot get a quit minute of rest ....so bloody h3ll be it.... I have a great little kid of 2 years old. My MMA fighters all won their match saturday. I can eat sushi just outside of my work where I do not hear my T...so life is not all that bad.

I stop being negative because I get tired of my own complaining all the time

We are all in this together.....so if i can change my attitude against it perhaps others can also....but it's not like I want it...it just is happening by itself.... but if it happens to me so can it happen to you

PS I'm not taking retigabine.... did not think about that either ... just let me see how the couple of months will go ;-)