Welcome to the forum. Don't panic. Things will get better. The two places on this forum you can find uplifting words are 1) the Positivity thread right at the top of this support forum, and 2) the Success Stories under Knowledge Base. There you will find people having success with either T fading or disappeared, or with people habituating to the ringing. Positivity thread is full of members posting about what else they have done or have enjoyed despite having T. It paints a picture of life-goes-on despite T. Try to stay positive and calm and stress and fear will aggravate T.
Yes, it is quite normal to pay much attention to T when it is new. Being so scared or anxious of T initially is a very common reaction of the body trying to protect us from harm and danger. We are often very scared when T is new because T is both an alien sensation and a new ailment to your body. Our brain doesn't understand T and doesn't know what to expect. Failing to shake T, the brain just reactions in trauma, fear and shock. Your limbic nervous system kicks in overriding the normal parasympathetic nervous system and you function in fight or flight mode, the defensive mechanism for a human in face of a danger. The fight or flight center or the Amygdala is in control now making every sensation quite acute and intense and you easily succumb to fear and worry as that is how the body tries to protect you. It tends to tell you to be aware of the threatening object which in this case is the new T. That is why we tend to monitor or pay attention to T non-stop initially and can't seem to help it.
Try remaining calm and positive as humanly possible as you can. By being calm and positive, and be more accepting of the new normal, by educating ourselves more about T (like what you are learning by joining this forum), and by doing some relaxing or interesting activities or by going back to living life again, our brain will have a better chance to restore the normal parasympathetic nervous system, and the pre-frontal cortex will take over processing the T ringing stimulus from the scare-crow center, the Amygdala. One of the functions of pre-frontal cortex is to suppress the fear reaction. It will also let you handle other negative reactions/emotions more normally.
This process is similar to a child being afraid of the dark because of not understanding what it is all about. Fear sets in and stress builds up and the child cries to get help and to relieve the stress. Later on and growing up the child learns more about the dark and the fear fades and no stress/fear will be forth coming to trigger the limbic system. Likewise with our tinnitus experience, our brain needs to take time to understand T more and be more hardened to it so the fear reaction will subside. But this process takes time and may take learning some good strategies. You will be ok over time if you stay calm, positive and be more accepting of the new normal. Take care. God bless.
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