@Calimike It makes sense, your brain still sees the internal noise as a threat. When there is a threat the brain will increase focus on it (a lot), to make you get away from the threat. In this case that is impossible, which is exactly why this is so extremely scary. Luckily the threat is not real, and you are fine. Only the brain needs to be trained to truly believe that.
Some tips that I thought of when reading your post:
- Of course you want to get out of this situation so badly, but trying too hard, trying to force things, isn't going to work. It adds more stress, which is the opposite of what you need. You need to find moments of relaxation, even if you can find just a little, it all helps.
- Try to keep healthy. Working out when you manage again and eating healthy can really do a lot in making your thoughts more positive and giving you extra energy to process all the stress. Again don't force this on yourself, small steps, this is not the time to push through in these things because your already working at the limit of what you can handle.
- Trying to analyse the tinnitus won't give you anything, except that you tell the brain it is important enough to analyse which is not what we want. You won't always be able to stop yourself from doing it, but if you notice yourself doing it, that is the first step to decreasing this. This is the pitfall of a tinnitus diary too, I took a report to the audiologist with detailed descriptions of every little thing I noticed about my tinnitus, and he couldn't do anything with that. With patience and kindness, teach yourself to not give the internal noise any importance or value of something that needs to be avoided or removed. It takes a long while, but this is really helping yourself habituate in my experience.
- The first period of time your fearful focus get's pulled to the tinnitus constantly. It's good when you're able to find the experience in which you forget about it, even for a minute. At first that might only be when you're asleep. I found it in a hobby of mine, which is gaming. I didn't even enjoy it anymore, but I started again to get some distraction and noticed moments where I got caught up in the game and forgot about it a little while. These little moments very slowly grew into whole days, weeks, months. After which somewhere I "lost" the noise completely.
- Your brain/body is your best friend. It does the best thing possible to get yourself in balance. This might sound a little weird, but it can help to talk to it like father/mother talking to a child scared of a monster in a closet. Explain to it that it's not real, without getting angry or frustrated. Love yourself. The only reason for this fear, is your brain believing it is something to fear, and this is within our control to change. It may take a while, but it will get better and better. All that is left to say is that I have seen that habituation is real, and when the brain is tought that internal noise is the most unimportant on the planet, it won't be bothered to put it in your conscious focus even if you'd want to.
Mike, I have been where you are. It's so damn hard, but the saying that every hardship in life is a blessing in disguise sounds very true to me. When it's behind you, you're going to see how much it strengthened you.
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