Once You've Heard It — You Can't Unhear It. My Theory:

[VickiD]

With the exception of illnesses, such as Ménières and many more, I think it's a case of 'once you've heard it, you simply can't unhear it'.
It sounds ridiculous and I know some of you will be reading this thinking I am talking rubbish but think back to when it first began. The more you focused on it, the louder it became. Think back to those early days when you first realised there was a noise.... then the anxiety sets in and when the doctors tell you "there's nothing that can be done about this", all hell breaks loose and we leave with even louder ringing.

I am sitting in my livingroom right now typing this with no background noise. I have been advised against this because it's not good to have no noise in the background. But, I want to get used to it - no point in masking it over, it's there. I can hear my T right now, hissing, ringing, electrical noises, fax machines. It is annoying and sometimes it makes me feel so bad that I can't think of anything else. But I did this myself, my own mind is driving this pain in the arse forward and the one thing I did was HEAR IT!

I remember when I got this.... a year ago today, to be precise. I heard a slight whistle. I fixated on it and BANG, it got worse. The following months were hell and I wanted to end my life. I was terrified I'd go crazy and it still scares me. I feel like I have no control over it and it does what it wants to do but, if I heard it and it's been perpetuated by my own mind - then surely our minds are powerful enough to stop it?

I don't have the answers but I do know this was caused because I heard it. And I know this because many years ago (2008) I heard a whistling in my right ear and went to the doctors about it. She said "oh don't worry, it will go, it's nothing to worry about". So, I left and I went home and guess what - I forgot all about it and I didn't remember it or let it resurface until March 2016. So, this tells me something in my brain went awry.

I want you to think about when your t started, what was happening at that time and why it got worse. Mine was stress, loss of my mother and a job and a relationship breakdown. It was a horrid 18 months and frankly, I am not surprised I have tinnitus. If some cases are caused by the nervous system, this makes total sense.

Of course I know it can be caused by loud noise, such as those going to clubs and working in industry whereby it's loud but I have read 100s of posts on here from people, like me, who have not been exposed to such and they all share the same common denominator - STRESS/ANXIETY. There has to be something in this and I wonder if hearing T makes us fixate and it carries on.

Have you heard painted your room or wall papered and a bit goes on the ceiling and you think, "I'll fix that bit another time" or the wall paper isn't quite right. It sticks out like a sore thumb and your eye is constantly traced back to it, seeing it, knowing it's there. I believe T is a similar thing.

I might be so far off the mark but I had this in 2008 and now it's worse but the only difference being, I didn't give a shit back then because I was told it would go and this time I was told it was not curable and to 'live with it' so I panicked.

 

[Michael B]

Anniversaries are tough when you have this condition. You sound like you're on the right track here. Have you given any thought to cognitive behavioral therapy? Sounds similar to what you're talking about.

 

[MountainCreek]

I am a bit sceptic to all this. First time I got tinnitus I sat by a creek in the mountain and was very relaxed and happy. I went home listened to some quiet music, was very relaxed. The next morning I woke up with a terribly loud rumbling sound from the middle of my head. It lasted for two weeks. Right away I wasn't sure, but it took me just a few minutes thinking to realize that the sound from the water flowing in that creek had been louder than I could stand for those hours I was sitting there. This was not causes by any sort of stress whatsoever. I cured it by total isolation from noise for two weeks.

I think all tinnitus is caused by mechanical means only, and is not psychological phenomenon. Things like sound waves, infections, ear wax, a hit against the ear, pressure drops, mechanical things like that.

In our modern society we have got so used to noise around us all the time that we don't even pay attention to it. We don't understand how damaging all this noise is to us. Road noise increases our cholestorol and gives people heart attacks, but few see the connection with road noise and heart attacks. Noise gives us stress. Not the other way around.

Researchers who look for tinnitus in our memory and think about ways to erase that tinnitus memory, I think they are not quite on the right track. There is a connection to the memory of course. But tinnitus in most cases is probably more than just a memory stored in our brain. It is often caused by a damage in the cochlea. In that case erasing the memory will probably not help. However, if one removes the sound memory part of the brain by surgery, then maybe tinnitus can not survive despite cochlea is damaged. This could be so if tinnitus needs a memory part in the brain. Then the memory would work like a storage space for the electric impulses, and without the storage space, the tinnitus signal coming directly from the cochlea could become too weak.

 

[VickiD]

I am a bit sceptic to all this. First time I got tinnitus I sat by a creek in the mountain and was very relaxed and happy. I went home listened to some quiet music, was very relaxed. The next morning I woke up with a terribly loud rumbling sound from the middle of my head. It lasted for two weeks. Right away I wasn't sure, but it took me just a few minutes thinking to realize that the sound from the water flowing in that creek had been louder than I could stand for those hours I was sitting there. This was not causes by any sort of stress whatsoever. I cured it by total isolation from noise for two weeks.

I think all tinnitus is caused by mechanical means only, and is not psychological phenomenon. Things like sound waves, infections, ear wax, a hit against the ear, pressure drops, mechanical things like that.

In our modern society we have got so used to noise around us all the time that we don't even pay attention to it. We don't understand how damaging all this noise is to us. Road noise increases our cholestorol and gives people heart attacks, but few see the connection with road noise and heart attacks. Noise gives us stress. Not the other way around.

Researchers who look for tinnitus in our memory and think about ways to erase that tinnitus memory, I think they are not quite on the right track. There is a connection to the memory of course. But tinnitus in most cases is probably more than just a memory stored in our brain. It is often caused by a damage in the cochlea. In that case erasing the memory will probably not help. However, if one removes the sound memory part of the brain by surgery, then maybe tinnitus can not survive despite cochlea is damaged. This could be so if tinnitus needs a memory part in the brain. Then the memory would work like a storage space for the electric impulses, and without the storage space, the tinnitus signal coming directly from the cochlea could become too weak.

Perhaps you need to watch YouTube videos of Julian Cowan-Hill. I think he knows what he is talking about my friend.
Damage to the cochlea, not always the case. In fact, how did my ears get damage to both ears over night? By what? I didn't do anything. But it's also worth pointing out that people with tinnitus (a lot of them don't always have hearing loss or damage to the cochlea) that's a fact.
I have no hearing loss at all. I have no idea if I have damage to my cochlea, but I suspect not if my ears are perfect and I've also had a scan.

 

[just1morething]

It could be a bit of both. I thought Kevin Hogan got his noise from stress. Damage to the inner ear does seem the most likely though. Regardless, relief is difficult as we all know. Autifony failed as well as the latest IT injections. Not sure if OTO-311 will pan out either.
http://www.healthyhearing.com/report/47732-Stress-hearing-loss-tinnitus

 

[Vinnitus]

Perhaps you need to watch YouTube videos of Julian Cowan-Hill. I think he knows what he is talking about my friend.
Damage to the cochlea, not always the case. In fact, how did my ears get damage to both ears over night? By what? I didn't do anything. But it's also worth pointing out that people with tinnitus (a lot of them don't always have hearing loss or damage to the cochlea) that's a fact.
I have no hearing loss at all. I have no idea if I have damage to my cochlea, but I suspect not if my ears are perfect and I've also had a scan.

How did you reliably exclude you do not have hearing loss? It simply cannot be said, as there can be damage we cannot measure yet with any currently available diagnostic tool. You could have some hearing loss at the microscopic (synaptic) level, for which an audiogram is not a sufficient way of measurement. Please look into "hidden hearing loss". It cannot be measured yet and hence cannot be excluded.

Synaptic loss can probably be caused by a lot of things other than noise. Ageing, ototoxic effects, delayed noise-caused degeneration and then theres a lot of possible other causes. Synaptic rewiring is a common occurrence at the brain level. It is still subject to study.

 

[stophiss]

I think you are all overlooking mounting evidence that tinnitus is caused by the curse of the black pearl.

 

[MountainCreek]

Perhaps you need to watch YouTube videos of Julian Cowan-Hill. I think he knows what he is talking about my friend.
Damage to the cochlea, not always the case. In fact, how did my ears get damage to both ears over night? By what? I didn't do anything. But it's also worth pointing out that people with tinnitus (a lot of them don't always have hearing loss or damage to the cochlea) that's a fact.
I have no hearing loss at all. I have no idea if I have damage to my cochlea, but I suspect not if my ears are perfect and I've also had a scan.

Tinnitus can be caused by wear and tear during the course of many years. I listened to music nonstop for decades, never on a very loud volume. But I never gave my ears any rest. Music nonstop for decades broke down my ears. Then not much was needed to trigger tinnitus. A creek in the mountain the first time, driving the car for a couple of hours with a low music the second time, was enough to trigger tinnitus. Stress alone I don't think triggers tinnitus.

Here is an analogy: one can fill up a cup of water in either of two ways. One can hold the cup under the tap and open the velve fully. It then goes fast to fill up the cup (about two seconds). One can also put the cup under a leaking tap. One drop is falling down each week. Eventually that cup will fill up with water too. Once the cup is full, not much is needed to make the water overflow from the cup (overflowing cup correspodning to tinnitus starts).

That does not mean we can not listen to any sound without eventually damaging our ears. We just need to give them a break now and then. Here is the water-cup analogy. If the water drops are created only once a month, the glass will never fill up! Why? Because the drop that fell down into the cup will have time to evaporate before the next drop falls down into the cup!

What seems to me to support the wear and tear theory in your case is the fact that you had temporary tinnitus in the past. That is also my case. That is the case for very many people. It was in the past but it was just temporary and got forgotten. One didn't pay much attention to it. But one should have done that. Since temporary tinnitus in the past was a warning sign that the cup was full, that the wear and tear process has gone quite far already. Even though the tinnitus went away, the wear and tear was left and remained there to trigger tinnitus again in the future, either temporarily or permanently.

 

[stophiss]

Tinnitus can be caused by wear and tear during the course of many years. I listened to music nonstop for decades, never on a very loud volume. But I never gave my ears any rest. Music nonstop for decades broke down my ears. Then not much was needed to trigger tinnitus. A creek in the mountain the first time, driving the car for a couple of hours with a low music the second time, was enough to trigger tinnitus. Stress alone I don't think triggers tinnitus.

Here is an analogy: one can fill up a cup of water in either of two ways. One can hold the cup under the tap and open the velve fully. It then goes fast to fill up the cup (about two seconds). One can also put the cup under a leaking tap. One drop is falling down each week. Eventually that cup will fill up with water too. Once the cup is full, not much is needed to make the water overflow from the cup (overflowing cup correspodning to tinnitus starts).

That does not mean we can not listen to any sound without damaging our ears. We just need to give them a break now and then. Here is the water-cup analogy. If the water drops are created only once a month, the glass will never fill up! Why? Because the drop that fell down into the cup will have time to evaporate before the next drop falls down into the cup!

Exactly what happened to me. Unfortunately, I have a leaky roof right over my bed. For years this roof would leak and fill my left ear a drop at a time as I tend to sleep on my right side. I would wake in the morning and when standing up notice water would run down my left side. I could always hear best out of my left ear because the rain water would clean the ear wax out. Until that fateful night when the mother of all rain storms erupted which filled my left ear to the maximum. That is all it took to create tinnitus in my left ear. My cup runnith over.

 

[VickiD]

No idea about hidden hearing loss.

 

[MountainCreek]

No idea about hidden hearing loss.

I wonder what noise exposure you have been exposed to during your life? Nothing at all? Only stress? Stress could cause tinnitus? Are you sure you never listened to music during your entire life, never went to a party with loud music, nothing like that? You were just studying in a silent library all your life, and suddenly one day you had tinnitus when you got stressful?

 

[Bobby B]

Stress alone can cause tinnitus and that with perfect ears - that's what my ENT told me , he gets lots of people stressed from work - this is Japan .. where people work very long hours and even kill them selves from over work and stress
All of them hear T and even have trouble hearing some frequencies but all this goes away if the stress issues improve

So the pronostics are much better than noise damage

 

[MountainCreek]

I went to an ENT doctor in Asia saying I had tinnitus. He immediately replied: it is because of stress! I did not trust him at all of course. Just got angry and left the hospital ASAP. Seems to me that in Asia people do not *understand* what noise really is. Nothing is ever too loud for these people.

I now guess I understand why @VickiD got tinnitus -- it seems because of mechanical pressure damage caused by sleeping with earplugs for ten years, possibly plus the sound of dentist drills for perhaps an equally long time.

It is never good to use earplugs or ear muffs unless it is really necessary. The ears shall not be blocked or covered or disturbed by any means. Air shall be able to get into the ear to equalise the pressure on both sides of the ear drum and to let ear wax freely get our from the ear.

The fax machine sounds to me like it could be a rapid muscle contraction. This I think is telling us we have had enough irration of the ear and that the ear wants to take a rest. The fact that tinnitus moves from left to right and vice versa is a standard thing. It does not stop easily, but it can move around and change. Tinnitus can be turned off by sleep. In that case one may wake up in silence for a second or two and then it starts.

If tinnitus builds up gradually during the day, I would personally do the following experiment. Remain in the bed and don't move. Don't produce any sounds, don't flush the toilet. Does the tinnitus remain low as long as you remain in bed in silence? If so, then remaining in as much silence as possible could be improving tinnitus.

But the other alternative is that tinnitus increases as you wake up, in which case tinnitus is not related to noise but instead to your degree of awareness.

 

[VickiD]

I wonder what noise exposure you have been exposed to during your life? Nothing at all? Only stress? Stress could cause tinnitus? Are you sure you never listened to music during your entire life, never went to a party with loud music, nothing like that? You were just studying in a silent library all your life, and suddenly one day you had tinnitus when you got stressful?

Hi. No of course not but when you have hearing damage from noise exposure - you usually know about it very quickly after the noise exposure and I hadn't done anything differently. I wasn't stood next to blasting speakers.
I was actually in a hospital with my good friend and worried about her. I remember hearing the tinnitus that evening and ever since, it got louder and louder.
I suspect when it's heard, your brain turns the volume up and that's it. Think about it..... when the volume drops, it's usually when relaxed and not thinking about it.

Look, I don't have the answers but I'm trying to, like a lot of us, understand why this retchid thing has occurred. We all have various theories.

 

[MountainCreek]

Hi. No of course not but when you have hearing damage from noise exposure - you usually know about it very quickly after the noise exposure and I hadn't done anything differently. I wasn't stood next to blasting speakers.
I was actually in a hospital with my good friend and worried about her. I remember hearing the tinnitus that evening and ever since, it got louder and louder.
I suspect when it's heard, your brain turns the volume up and that's it. Think about it..... when the volume drops, it's usually when relaxed and not thinking about it.

Look, I don't have the answers but I'm trying to, like a lot of us, understand why this retchid thing has occurred. We all have various theories.

Maybe you drove an old car away from the hospital playing Depeche Mode Enjoy the Silence



at loudest volume as you felt angry at the unfairness that your best friend is so sick..? That too could be a trigger maybe?

 

[MountainCreek]

Perhaps you need to watch YouTube videos of Julian Cowan-Hill. I think he knows what he is talking about my friend.
Damage to the cochlea, not always the case. In fact, how did my ears get damage to both ears over night? By what? I didn't do anything. But it's also worth pointing out that people with tinnitus (a lot of them don't always have hearing loss or damage to the cochlea) that's a fact.
I have no hearing loss at all. I have no idea if I have damage to my cochlea, but I suspect not if my ears are perfect and I've also had a scan.

I remember very well when I watched this many years ago,



First I got attracted and thought this man sits in some library and looks real intelligent.

But then I realized what he said made no sense whatsoever. If he cured tinnitus, it was because he did his treatment in a quiet place. No more, no less.

 

[Tweaker]

Vicki, I think you have a point. I think the initial cause of the tinnitus is typically physical or neurological but I definitely think our brain can make it worse but the way we react to it and listen out for it.

I had tinnitus as a kid and a teenager but it was mild. When it got louder in 2010 and noticeable during the day, it was all I could think about it. I have struggled with it for 7 years and it sounds like what you described; "hissing, ringing, electrical noises, fax machines.". I would estimate it is about 3 times louder now with more complex sounds.

I sometimes wonder if I had been able to shrug it off at the start, it may not have worsened. If I could have the tinnitus back to how it was in 2010 at the start I think it wouldn't bother me much. Unfortunately, most of us react the same way when we first notice it. If I could go back in time and give myself advice, it would be to not listen out for it.

 

[MountainCreek]

With the exception of illnesses, such as Ménières and many more, I think it's a case of 'once you've heard it, you simply can't unhear it'.
It sounds ridiculous and I know some of you will be reading this thinking I am talking rubbish but think back to when it first began. The more you focused on it, the louder it became. Think back to those early days when you first realised there was a noise.... then the anxiety sets in and when the doctors tell you "there's nothing that can be done about this", all hell breaks loose and we leave with even louder ringing.

I am sitting in my livingroom right now typing this with no background noise. I have been advised against this because it's not good to have no noise in the background. But, I want to get used to it - no point in masking it over, it's there. I can hear my T right now, hissing, ringing, electrical noises, fax machines. It is annoying and sometimes it makes me feel so bad that I can't think of anything else. But I did this myself, my own mind is driving this pain in the arse forward and the one thing I did was HEAR IT!

I remember when I got this.... a year ago today, to be precise. I heard a slight whistle. I fixated on it and BANG, it got worse. The following months were hell and I wanted to end my life. I was terrified I'd go crazy and it still scares me. I feel like I have no control over it and it does what it wants to do but, if I heard it and it's been perpetuated by my own mind - then surely our minds are powerful enough to stop it?

I don't have the answers but I do know this was caused because I heard it. And I know this because many years ago (2008) I heard a whistling in my right ear and went to the doctors about it. She said "oh don't worry, it will go, it's nothing to worry about". So, I left and I went home and guess what - I forgot all about it and I didn't remember it or let it resurface until March 2016. So, this tells me something in my brain went awry.

I want you to think about when your t started, what was happening at that time and why it got worse. Mine was stress, loss of my mother and a job and a relationship breakdown. It was a horrid 18 months and frankly, I am not surprised I have tinnitus. If some cases are caused by the nervous system, this makes total sense.

Of course I know it can be caused by loud noise, such as those going to clubs and working in industry whereby it's loud but I have read 100s of posts on here from people, like me, who have not been exposed to such and they all share the same common denominator - STRESS/ANXIETY. There has to be something in this and I wonder if hearing T makes us fixate and it carries on.

Have you heard painted your room or wall papered and a bit goes on the ceiling and you think, "I'll fix that bit another time" or the wall paper isn't quite right. It sticks out like a sore thumb and your eye is constantly traced back to it, seeing it, knowing it's there. I believe T is a similar thing.

I might be so far off the mark but I had this in 2008 and now it's worse but the only difference being, I didn't give a shit back then because I was told it would go and this time I was told it was not curable and to 'live with it' so I panicked.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/stress-and-tinnitus.4967/