Struggling Recently: Reactive Tinnitus, Hyperacusis, and Clicking

Hi!

I've been on the tinnitus journey for about 6-7 years with multiple periods of spikes and reaching habituation.

This year has been ROUGH. It started off with my MEM episodes lowering some, but new tones in both of my ears appearing in January. Kind of hard to explain both of them, but the left ear has kind of a more high frequency beepy tone and the right ear a spiraling low tone. Whenever I focus on all of the tones in my head, it gets crazy with all that I can hear. So for like 5-6 months I couldn't help but mask these new tones 90% of the time because of the anxiety I would get from hearing them creep up in the background. With time I slowly was able to habituate to these tones (they're still disturbing if I let myself listen to them for too long).

Recently, I've developed this clicking whenever I speak at the end of some sentences and it's been driving me nuts a little bit. AND to add on to it, it feels like my ears are more reactive to specific sounds (especially mechanical sounds). It has this sort of echoing high frequency tone as a response to these noises; I'm scared. Not sure what to do, I just lose a lot of hope in these situations and hope that situations don't worsen.

Any thoughts? Words of Encouragement?

 

@Joseph., sorry to hear you have had a setback. This is often (but not always) due to noise exposure/hearing loss, that sometimes occurs many weeks before, making it difficult to pinpoint.

The issue seems to be you are 'focusing' on the tones, how many you have, and what they sound like. Why would you do this?

If your ears feel reactive to sounds, then some hyperacusis is present. Avoid loud venues for a while and don't increase the hyperacusis by plugging the ear canals.

All the best.

 

I'm so sorry to hear you are struggling right now. May I ask if you have had a recent ear exam? I wonder if you might have Eustachian tube dysfunction.

One of the symptoms of ETD is a clicking or popping sound inside your ears. Another symptom is a feeling of uncomfortable fullness or pressure inside the ears. As you may have heard, ETD can accompany hyperacusis and tinnitus, so it's not unusual, particularly if there's been recent exposure to excessive noise.

 

I have an appointment with my ENT at the end of this month so hopefully I can get some answers then! There's a lot that has changed in my ears in the past five days

I definitely know the cause of the spike and new tones back in January, and I hate that I made such a dumb mistake. I've kind of habituated to these new tones more recently since they don't bother me as much as they used to, but I think I'm struggling with dysacusis or diplacusis because the tones that are being created to these high frequencies are just crazy.

I do think my hyperacusis is acting up since I'm noticing some weird reactions to every sound in my left ear.

 

@Joseph., how are you doing? Did you get any answers from the ENT?