Is It True That If You Learn to Ignore Your Tinnitus It Will Cease to Make You Any Harm?

[Tassadar]

We all know how psychologically taxing tinnitus can be. It can lead to serious depression, anxiety, chronic stress.

What I am wondering is: once you learn to habituate...will all the negative side effects correlated with it cease to exist?

Thank you.

 

[Julien87]

Well if you manage to ignore it, the sound of the tinnitus itself won't be bothering you. What side effects are you thinking about?

 

[dingaling]

The short answer is - yes

Once we have habituated, T does not have a negative effect any more (or any effect at all) and thus, all the negative emotions attached to it disappear

 

[Tassadar]

Well if you manage to ignore it, the sound of the tinnitus itself won't be bothering you. What side effects are you thinking about?

For example, hearing loss is correlated with increased risk of dementia. So it happens even if you are stressing about it or not...similarly, could tinnitus affect your brain even if you learn to not notice it?

 

[Autumnly]

For example, hearing loss is correlated with increased risk of dementia. So it happens even if you are stressing about it or not...similarly, could tinnitus affect your brain even if you learn to not notice it?

Newly published research in the prestigious journal "The Lancet" examines the factors contributing to the development of dementia. The researchers split the contributing factors into modifiable and non-modifiable causes. Of the modifiable causes (which accounted for 35% overall), hearing loss was the greatest contributor as a risk factor for future dementia. It is not the hearing loss per se which leads to an increased risk of developing dementia, but instead, it is the indirect effects such as social isolation which is thought to advance cognitive decline and hence an increased likelihood of progression to dementia.

The new research was picked up on by the BBC:
www.bbc.com/news/health-40655566

The actual research paper can be found via this DOI (requires subscription):
dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31363-6

Note: the article does not focus on hearing loss explicitly - it is but one of many topics covered; the research concerns dementia and underlying factors.

 

[GregCA]

We all know how psychologically taxing tinnitus can be. It can lead to serious depression, anxiety, chronic stress.

What I am wondering is: once you learn to habituate...will all the negative side effects correlated with it cease to exist?

I think it depends if your distress is of psychological nature or physiological nature (or both!).
I can see how habituation can help with the former, but I doubt it can help with the latter. I don't have much anxiety or panic about my T anymore, so one could say I'm habituated (in the literal sense of "being used to it"), but the physiological pain is still there in full force and that is enough to impact my life greatly.

In other words, for those who have more than just psy issues with T, I think the effectiveness of habituation as a tool is fairly limited.