Hello Gman45,
I started developing tinnitus after a severe neck injury on 6/21/21. My first 5 months is almost exactly like yours in terms of fight or flight response, mental exhaustion, yearning for silence, hyperacusis. I'm 28 years old and been trying to cope with tinnitus too.
My tinnitus was raging at first but subsided to half its volume. I had an MRI of my neck done and turns out I had a lesion in my cervical spine from the injury and the inflammation spread to the brainstem. If I could give some insight, I believe maybe you hitting your head damaged the auditory nerve that connects to the brainstem, more specifically the inferior colliculi. The inferior colliculi is responsible for filtering out background or nonimportant noise so your brain can focus on what is important.
The initial damage to the nerves can lead to inflammation in the brainstem region to damage the nerves. Inflammation is your body's response to foreign objects but also injury, inflammation in the brain or spinal cord can lead to a prolonged fight or flight response because it takes time for the injury to heal. Inflammation near the auditory nerve by the brainstem can most likely lead to tinnitus and hyperacusis as neural connections are broken and loss. That is why Prednisone is so effective early on for tinnitus, it stops the inflammation process to prevent further damage and promotes healing. Once the inflammation decreases, then the fight or flight response starts to go away and healing can return. However, these neural connections may take months or years to return.
Going back to my earlier point. Since we likely damaged our auditory nerve or our inferior colliculi. Our brain's ability to filter out background noise has been affected. This can lead to hyperacusis as your brain can't shut down or ignore background noise as well. Lost connections from auditory nerves in the brain to the hair cells in the inner ear can lead to inner hair cell death and feeling of fullness in the ear due to an inflammatory response (removed dead cells). My theory on why everyone's tinnitus is different(some more severe than others) is because those with greater exposure to noise such as those who go to concerts often, those with age-related hearing loss, have increased ability to filter out noise due to activity in the inferior colliculi. I believe everyone is habituating to very minuscule amounts of tinnitus throughout their life as their inner hair cells die, however it is so small that we never really hear it. However, as this ability is lost through damage to the nerves/brainstem, the ability of the brain to filter out noise through decades of habituating is diminished.
The good news is that... I believe the brain can start this process all over again and the trick is to take one small step at a time.
You are not alone. I too wish for silence. I have very bad days and some good days. I just read all of your posts on this thread and I do believe in time, you will get better.
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