Hi everyone, my name is Alex and I'm 25 years old. I've been an occasional lurker on these forums for a while and reading the advice you've given other people with tinnitus has provided me with tremendous comfort these past few years so first I want to thank you for that. I never felt the urge to join up before but i'm really having trouble with a change in my situation and I was curious to see if any of you have experienced anything simmilar and to see if you could provide me with any advice on how to handle it. This will be a long post so I'm sorry if its too much, I get carried away sometimes.
First, since i'm new I'll just give some background on my my journey with tinnitus and then i'll get into whats troubling me right now. I first got T almost exactly three years ago, I was watching a movie and i yawned real big and at the peak of my yawn i noticed a high pitched static hissing in both my ears, it wasn't very loud and i figured it would was just temporary so I wasn't too bothered about it.
A few months passed before it really dawned on me that it wasn't going away and from then on I just couldn't stop focusing on it. I already suffered from anxiety and depression so that didn't exactly help things and i found myself doing everything i could to drown out the sound including listening to really loud rock music in my earphones. This was a really bad idea and I ended up in the grip of a spike sent straight from hell. I couldn't sleep and I was having panic attacks every day and my mum ended rushing me to get a mental health assessment because i was talking about suicide.
Eventually the spike subsided and I calmed down but I was still extremely irritated so I went to the doctor to see what was going on and he said the usual thing, "You've got tinnitus get used to it" He reccomend upping my dose of anti anxiety pills and listening to masking sounds and I definitely found those both to be really helpful, but i was still determined to get to the bottom of why this was happening so I did some digging and thats when I found this place.
From the info i gathered here it seemed like I ticked all the boxes for T. TMJ, ETD, excessive earphone use etc. I Couldn't narrow down the cause so I figured it was a combo of all of these factors. By the time I was done figuring things out though I found myself starting to habituate. I could sleep as long as I had my masking sounds and there were enough distractions during the day that I barely even noticed the ringing. I had spikes occasionally but they always calmed down after a while. I had made my peace with it and for the next two years I just got on with life.
And that brings us to now (Finally!) This January I did something I swore i'd never do again. I used earphones. I only used them for about 10 minutes on a low volume and only in one ear but apparently that was enough and my left ear got extremely louder than my right. I got really anixious and immediately threw my earphones away and hoped the noised would calm down, which it it did after a couple of days but later on something worse sprang up in it's place. I stared to notice a really high pitch flickering in my head that seemed to move across different different parts of my brain as the hours and days went on. It was extremely difficult to sleep because it was too high and sharp to mask and too flickery and unpredictable to get used to, so I started to get those old feelings again, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts etc.
Its two months on and it hasn't got any better, it keeps moving to different parts of my head and everytime I wake up it's different. When its at the top of my head it's loudest and i can kind of feel it burning. When its at the back or the right of my head its quieter but makes me feel extremely disoriented and off balance and It kind of feels cold. There is one sweet spot behind my left ear where its the least intrusive but it only stays there a couple of hours at a time. Its all very strange.
I've noticed that since this has been happening my jaw has been locking up a little and my doctor says my right ear has impacted wax, which i'll be getting syringed soon so i'm hoping one or both of these is the culprit instead of the headphones. For now though i'm extremely irritated and confused.
Have you experienced anything simmilar with your T? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Writing this has been pretty therapeutic for me so I'm hoping to stick around here for a while and use this place to get things off my chest when i'm feelin down and hopefully help others out with some advice as well. It will be nice to talk to some people who actually understand.
Sorry again for the long post and thanks for reading!
First, since i'm new I'll just give some background on my my journey with tinnitus and then i'll get into whats troubling me right now. I first got T almost exactly three years ago, I was watching a movie and i yawned real big and at the peak of my yawn i noticed a high pitched static hissing in both my ears, it wasn't very loud and i figured it would was just temporary so I wasn't too bothered about it.
A few months passed before it really dawned on me that it wasn't going away and from then on I just couldn't stop focusing on it. I already suffered from anxiety and depression so that didn't exactly help things and i found myself doing everything i could to drown out the sound including listening to really loud rock music in my earphones. This was a really bad idea and I ended up in the grip of a spike sent straight from hell. I couldn't sleep and I was having panic attacks every day and my mum ended rushing me to get a mental health assessment because i was talking about suicide.
Eventually the spike subsided and I calmed down but I was still extremely irritated so I went to the doctor to see what was going on and he said the usual thing, "You've got tinnitus get used to it" He reccomend upping my dose of anti anxiety pills and listening to masking sounds and I definitely found those both to be really helpful, but i was still determined to get to the bottom of why this was happening so I did some digging and thats when I found this place.
From the info i gathered here it seemed like I ticked all the boxes for T. TMJ, ETD, excessive earphone use etc. I Couldn't narrow down the cause so I figured it was a combo of all of these factors. By the time I was done figuring things out though I found myself starting to habituate. I could sleep as long as I had my masking sounds and there were enough distractions during the day that I barely even noticed the ringing. I had spikes occasionally but they always calmed down after a while. I had made my peace with it and for the next two years I just got on with life.
And that brings us to now (Finally!) This January I did something I swore i'd never do again. I used earphones. I only used them for about 10 minutes on a low volume and only in one ear but apparently that was enough and my left ear got extremely louder than my right. I got really anixious and immediately threw my earphones away and hoped the noised would calm down, which it it did after a couple of days but later on something worse sprang up in it's place. I stared to notice a really high pitch flickering in my head that seemed to move across different different parts of my brain as the hours and days went on. It was extremely difficult to sleep because it was too high and sharp to mask and too flickery and unpredictable to get used to, so I started to get those old feelings again, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts etc.
Its two months on and it hasn't got any better, it keeps moving to different parts of my head and everytime I wake up it's different. When its at the top of my head it's loudest and i can kind of feel it burning. When its at the back or the right of my head its quieter but makes me feel extremely disoriented and off balance and It kind of feels cold. There is one sweet spot behind my left ear where its the least intrusive but it only stays there a couple of hours at a time. Its all very strange.
I've noticed that since this has been happening my jaw has been locking up a little and my doctor says my right ear has impacted wax, which i'll be getting syringed soon so i'm hoping one or both of these is the culprit instead of the headphones. For now though i'm extremely irritated and confused.
Have you experienced anything simmilar with your T? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Writing this has been pretty therapeutic for me so I'm hoping to stick around here for a while and use this place to get things off my chest when i'm feelin down and hopefully help others out with some advice as well. It will be nice to talk to some people who actually understand.
Sorry again for the long post and thanks for reading!
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