Sensing 9000 Hz Activity in My Mind Rather Than in Ears, Is This Tinnitus?

[Patrick O’Connor]

This is a 'sense' of high pitched '9000 Hz' rather than a buzz.

I have good hearing, despite working in industry for many years, almost always wore hearing protection, ear plugs or muffs, sometimes both because I worked with steam and that stuff is loud. For work I have been tested for hearing loss and there always was a little bit but it never got worse or flagged as detrimental.

My experience is more of an ever present sense of activity in my mind rather than hearing a buzzing sound in my ear canals. It is 'centre stage'. I get it a bit more noticeable when my eardrums get compressed like when I snorkel dive 8-10 ft., and goes away when I surface. I tried a tone generator today to identify the pitch and it's not a pure tone, key or note.

What the heck is this? There are probably absolute experts in this forum. Is this tinnitus?

 

[Leila]

What you're describing very much sounds like my first tinnitus noise. Because of the high pitch I initially thought it was a pure tone but when I tried isolating its exact frequency on AudioNotch, I found out that it actually is a sawtooth wave.

It is the one noise that is resistant to any attempt at masking. It also feels different to my other tinnitus noises since it seems to be located / jump around the centre of my brain.

It took me a long time to learn to live with it and what made it extra hard was that it happened the moment the physiotherapist I went to at that time did a chiropractic move, which he hadn't been qualified / permitted to do with the kind of training he had.

There are a quite a few people around here whose tinnitus is similar to yours and mine - high pitch and not located in their ears. I'd be curious whether you or anybody else with this kind of tinnitus can also trace the onset of it back to the wrong kind of manipulation (chiropractic move, headbanging, whiplash...) of the skull and / or neck.