Hi. I saw in your post you wrote: 'I'm not talking habituation or almost gone. I'm talking dead silence, ears closed and not even a 1% of a sound or static, in a silent room. Pretty much back to where it once was.'
To me it's gone, in dead silence, ears closed, it's not a 1% static. But in the beginning when I tried the focusing stuff and wanted desperately to get rid of tinnitus, I'd have periods of not noticing tinnitus and having a normal life, until an hour would pass and it would all come back to me. I remember it had been a month of not hearing tinnitus, and then it appeared again right after a phone call to the ENT doctor where I cancelled my upcoming appointment since I thought I'd gotten rid of the tinnitus. But I went straight back to the focusing training and it would disappear quicker and quicker each time. It was a fragile time and I noticed that focusing on tinnitus or doing anything related to it would spike it back up.
Now I haven't even thought about it for a while, but if I put all my focus back into tinnitus and did so for a long period of time, who knows? Maybe it would be back. If it would be back, then I know I could get rid of it even quicker than the first time because of the neuron pathways I built back then.
I did not believe tinnitus could be gone entirely. I didn't believe success stories, I didn't have any hope. If anyone would say they'd gotten rid of it, I'd wonder if it was really true, or if they did hear it from time to time - because complete freedom from that hell is truly not possible (but it is, I've learned).
But as of today, and the past few years, no, I can't hear it. Not in dead silence, not in a silent room, not in the middle of the night in complete stillness, but it took hard work getting there, because I did hear it ALWAYS. Even when I finally managed not to hear it as loudly during the day, a silent room or nighttime was still torture. That's why I don't care if I've habituated or not. I also don't care that those are two completely different things, if they both mean I don't hear tinnitus, but I've understood from this forum that they are completely different things and that I probably don't know too much the definition.