All of the above arguments (which contain valuable insights) only result in my conclusion that psychiatry even in 2020 (and doesn't that sound like a year in an H.G.Wells futuristic novel?) is woefully, astoundingly bereft of knowledge and treatments for so many brain malfunctions.
Tinnitus has resulted in me having unprecedented, overwhelming levels of panic that I had not even thought my brain/consciousness was capable of registering.
And, it occurred to me that as a Commercial Property Insurance Adjuster I had to go into some of most notoriously crime ridden neighborhoods in Chicago, and even when the people I was with had guns and were ready to shoot it out with seriously, threateningly approaching gangs, my level of pure unadulterated fear did not at all reach what it has been with this condition.
My wife has chastised me for always having (as never before) such a short temper that I become enraged when someone, for example, takes just a little too long to parallel park in front of me.
The fact that I am always on super/hyperalert defensiveness regarding the next spike (not to mention the ever-present baseline level) has exhausted me because of this constant state of irritability.
It feels as if there is a diabolically clever guerrilla insurgency waiting to ambush me when I least expect it, at the most inopportune moment.
And when this spike occurs, I will have a spaced-out aphasic affect that is similar to an initial migraine aura.
I am forced to become so preoccupied with this loud internal noise (which now sounds like a huge sheet of paper being torn) that I have difficulty in responding during a conversation.
My reading comprehension and both short and long term memory have been reduced by at least 25%.
This is particularly distressing since I was an English Major and I always prided myself on being able to readily understand the most complex prose (another ability that tinnitus has undermined).
After 6 years I have acquired a distanced, objective realization that this condition has produced various symptoms that can be characterized under the general definition of PTSD.
In spite of my best efforts to arrest all of the abovementioned symptoms, they are nonetheless worsening no matter how many habituation exercises, strategies, etc. I employ.