Derpytia, this post is pretty much a duplicate of one I wrote shortly after joining this forum. Apologies to other readers for the repetition but it seemed to be once again relevant and may help to support others who are presently struggling but didn't see it first time around:
First of all, this is me writing several years ago:
"I certainly have profound suicidal ideations. Now my tinnitus fluctuates between being extremely loud and off the scale.It's just day after day of searing, squealing, hissing madness.Basically, I just don't understand what people are going on about when they use the word 'habituation'. How can one become less aware of sounds that are so loud, incessant, harsh and grating? CBT doesn't impress me either because it deals with cognitive distortions and not the primal emotions of fear,loathing and utter frustration/desperation that are so much a part of one's reaction to tinnitus.Sorry to sound so gloomy. But I see my situation as almost utterly bereft of hope."
"Much as I applaud the courage and tenacity of many of the contributors to this thread, there has to be a place here for people like myself who have struggled with very severe tinnitus for so long and simply do not wish to continue with that struggle any longer.We deserve the option of assisted suicide."
I think that I authored this post (in the old RNID forum when I had had tinnitus for about 18 months) and was getting nowhere.
To cut a long story short, several years further down the road, I have now habituated to a point where I find my tinnitus occasionally annoying and distracting. When it is at its peak, I can still sometimes go several hours without noticing it, even if I'm sitting in a relatively silent room.
You may draw whatever conclusions you like after reading this. Maybe you will think. 'Ah, this guy's tinnitus couldn't have been all that loud in the first place'. And that's fair enough. Tinnitus is a subjective experience that makes comparisons difficult. Plus, although my tinnitus is 'reactive' and fluctuates, I don't have accompanying ear pain or hyperacusis.
My policy with reactiveness is just to get on with what I am doing (within limits - I don't allow myself to be exposed to noise above 85db for very long) and to allow my tinnitus to do whatever it happens to be doing in response. I haven't experienced any reactive spikes that have been permanent as a result of doing so.
Anyway, I am saying is that I was in a very bad place for a very long time and yet I still got through it. The logic of habituation (that if you decouple the infernal racket from the profoundly aversive reaction it provokes it will slip below the level conscious awareness) has, in the long run, proved to be valid in my case. This may not be any kind of substitute for a cure. But it is way beyond stoic endurance. I'm not merely putting up with tinnitus, or 'coping' with it.
Along the way I also experienced a permanent increase in my tinnitus. It wasn't a permanent spike but a change brought about as a result of a medication I was taking (one that is perfectly safe for others with tinnitus to take - so I am refusing to name it, as my case is entirely idiosyncratic). For a good while, the process of habituation was derailed by this unfortunate development.
As far as getting to this point is concerned, I think CBT can be useful but found Mindfulness to be more 'holistic' and helpful.
With Mindfulness you actually allow yourself to experience both the sound(s) themselves and the profoundly aversive emotions that accompany tinnitus (anger, fear etc.) more fully but non-verbally. You tune into how these emotions manifest themselves in the body. And if you spin off into secondary reflection on those feelings ('This will never work', 'What's the point of doing this?', 'I still feel just as bad'), you gently bring the focus back to the raw experience.
This has to be done gently and slowly. Sometimes it may involve only briefly touching base with the emotional pain and/or the tinnitus if both are profoundly overwhelming.
The accompanying attitude is one of compassion: you embrace your present state no matter how lousy it is, rather as one might seek to comfort a suffering friend or child.
Bear in mind that I am no expert on Mindfulness. A fuller explanation of how this approach works can be found in Vidyamala Burch's
Living Well With Pain and Illness: The Mindful Way to Free Yourself From Suffering.
John Kabat-Zinn's
Full Catastrophe Living is another book which sets out a protocol.
Jennifer Gans (from Doctors' Corner) is far better placed to explain the Mindfulness approach more fully for anyone who is interested.
Lastly, though this may not be available outside the UK, there is a good discussion of MBCT which includes some insightful contributions from tinnitus patients at the 12 minute and 54 second point here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007qdks#auto
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