Hi all,
I've been reading this forum for over a year now but hadn't made an account myself. Today I made one to post my story, in the hopes that it will benefit those of you who are still struggling.
I've been suffering from noise-induced hyperacusis and tinnitus for about a year. I might post the entire background story another day, but in summary I was exposed to a very loud noise at a music festival. I'd always been quite careful with my hearing, wearing earplugs at concerts etc., but my ears might neverthelss already have been weakened a bit by years of headphones use. And, I suppose, sometimes its also a bit of bad luck.
The day after the incident I woke up with ringing in my ears, almost like an electric hissing, and I became extremely sensitive to sound. Music sounded shrill, harsh and distorted, and it was like I had two megaphones permanently glued to my ears all day long. I also got pain in my ears, pain in my face and jaw, TTTS, hearing distortion, and tinnitus which was very 'reactive' / sound-sensitive: whenever I would hear a sound, the tinnitus would beep over it almost as if it was trying to overlay the original sound and compete with it.
When I first got these symptoms I became very scared and depressed, as the symptoms were very debilitating and limiting my life. I went to various doctors and ENT's who couldn't help and who told me that there was no cure, and that I would just have to 'learn to live with it' and 'wear earplugs'. My audiogramms were fairly normal (between 0 and 15dB on most frequencies), but showed that I had some noise-induced hearing loss which created a 20db "noise notch" on the 2k-4k frequencies. An extended audiogram showed that I was extremely sensitive to high frequencies, sometimes even scoring into negative decibels.
I had always loved music more than anything in my life, and because of the hyperacusis and tinnitus I could hardly listen to any music anymore. I became very scared and depressed, to the point were I genuinely started to feel like life wasn't worth living anymore, having suicidal thoughts on a daily basis.
However, the impact that this had on my life also made me determined to find a solution, so I started looking for one myself. I quickly learned that many people with hyperacusis and tinnitus tend to overprotect their ears, but that this actually makes the symptoms much worse as depriving the auditory system from sound actually caused the auditory system to 'turn up' the volume in an attempt to hear something, thereby increasing the hypersensitivity. I read about 'TRT', which as a treatment uses wearable sound generators in the ear to produce broadband noise all day long, in order to slowly stabilize the auditory system again. Since TRT was not available in my country, I decided to try if I could do it myself by using 'pink noise', which is broadband noise with less energy in the high frequencies, so that it is gently on the ears.
It took me a while to find a suitable form of pink noise (i.e. one that did not make my symptoms worse, and one that addressed the entire frequency spectrum) and a suitable headphone (as I could no longer tolerate most headphones/earbuds). I started out with a low level of pink noise each day, slowly increasing the length and volume over a period of months, and tweaking the frequencies to address my specific challenges. It took many months before I noticed a little bit of improvement, but I decided to stick with it as I was convinced that an overly sensitive auditory system needs to be desensitized, rather than kept in quiet.
There were a lot of everyday sounds that caused me trouble, such as the clanking of dishes. Again, I tried not to avoid these sounds, and instead I purposefully tried to clank them a bit louder every time to improve my tolerances. I also learned that 'reactive' tinnitus is a poorly chosen term, as it is actually a symptom of hyperacusis, which can decrease as well as you build your tolerances to sound.
Of course, I still remained careful around loud sounds, but I learned that it is very important to only use hearing protection when you are in a place in which the sound is actually too loud (i.e. so loud that it could also be dangerous to someone with normal hearing), and that you only make your symptoms worse if you start wearing hearing protection in everyday situations.
Many days were - literally - quite painful, but I soon started to view the sound exposure and pink noise as a form of exercise, like training your muscles: at the end of the day you will be sore, but when you recover you will be a bit stronger next time. The same applies to your ears. The trick is to push yourself a little bit each time, but not so much that you injure yourself. I realized that because of my experiences, I had also built certain fears and anxieties around sound that I needed to address. For that I used EMDR therapy, which is a form of psychotherapy of which I believe that it would actually deserve its own topic here on TinnitusTalk, as it was very effective in reducing my distress and effectively moved the hyperacusis and tinnitus from the foreground of my perception to the background.
After a year I would say I am about 80% better. I am not entirely cured as I am still a bit sensitive to certain frequencies of sound, but I have faith that I will continue to improve as I work on desensitizing. Improvement can sometimes take many years and I am still in my first year. I have a little bit of hearing loss, which makes certain music sound a little different, but it is nowhere nearly as bad as when the hyperacusis and tinnitus were at their worst. I no longer use the in-ear headphones, and I avoid very loud situations such as very loud rock concerts, but for the rest I live a normal life. I do not overprotect, but wear custom earplugs whenever things get real loud (live musics, loud bars, using power-tools, snowmobiles etc.). I still have a little bit of T, but as it is no longer as reactive as it was it is much earlier to live with. Sometimes I have to struggle to hear it at all.
I hope that anyone who reads this who is suffering from hyperacusis and/or tinnitus which reacts to sound and/or the other auditory symptoms I describe, will find some hope and confidence in my story that it really is possible to improve. It takes a lot of hard work and there will be setbacks, but a slow and purposeful desensitization to sound will help you in the long run. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank
@Michael Leigh , whos many posts on TinnitusTalk regarding T&H were very valuable to me during my darkest days, and provided me with a lot of information and insight.
Feel free to ask me any questions!