Tinnitus So Intrusive It's Hard to Follow Conversations?

[Ava Lugo]

I have tinnitus so intrusive, it will literally ring with every word spoken to me, so it's that bad.

It's been a year with this living nightmare and I'm so devastated. It's hard to watch TV or talk to someone.

Anyone else have this? If so, how do you deal with it?

I'm only 24 and before this garbage started I thought I had a future ahead of me and now it looks scarce... Only escape from this is sleep or alcohol and that's it.

How do others deal with this living hell?

 

[Chinmoku]

I have tinnitus so intrusive, it will literally ring with every word spoken to me, so it's that bad.

It's been a year with this living nightmare and I'm so devastated. It's hard to watch TV or talk to someone.

Anyone else have this? If so, how do you deal with it?

I'm only 24 and before this garbage started I thought I had a future ahead of me and now it looks scarce... Only escape from this is sleep or alcohol and that's it.

How do others deal with this living hell?

Sorry you are suffering like this.

I heard of a couple of people whose tinnitus used to make conversation very hard during benzo withdrawal. For both it improved within 14 months. Are you taking any medications?

 

[Michael B]

Suffice it to say, I've been dealing with what you describe for a long time, particularly watching TV when tinnitus is bad. Just wanted you to know you're not alone.

 

[dan]

I have tinnitus so intrusive, it will literally ring with every word spoken to me, so it's that bad.

It's been a year with this living nightmare and I'm so devastated. It's hard to watch TV or talk to someone.

Anyone else have this? If so, how do you deal with it?

I'm only 24 and before this garbage started I thought I had a future ahead of me and now it looks scarce... Only escape from this is sleep or alcohol and that's it.

How do others deal with this living hell?

So it's only bad when you're spoken to? Like reactive tinnitus?
If so, just stay in silence 24/7.

 

[Steph1710]

So it's only bad when you're spoken to? Like reactive tinnitus?
If so, just stay in silence 24/7.

Tut tut Dan. That's not very helpful, is it. Cheeky.

 

[dan]

Tut tut Dan. That's not very helpful, is it. Cheeky.

Actually it's very helpful, but very impractical.

 

[Kel65]

I have the same problem during spikes. Sometimes I lose track of conversations with my husband and can't watch a TV show. And I also go to drugs or alcohol and sleep to get thru it. Do you ever have periods of improvement or is it always the same?

I have finally started habituating a little, at nine months, so the conversation thing comes and goes now. This last week has been bad and worsening, which is why I'm here tonight.

So you are not alone and I'm sorry you are going thru this...

 

[Ava Lugo]

I have the same problem during spikes. Sometimes I lose track of conversations with my husband and can't watch a TV show. And I also go to drugs or alcohol and sleep to get thru it. Do you ever have periods of improvement or is it always the same?

I have finally started habituating a little, at nine months, so the conversation thing comes and goes now. This last week has been bad and worsening, which is why I'm here tonight.

So you are not alone and I'm sorry you are going thru this...

To tell you the truth there's hasn't been much improvement unfortunately. I really pray there will be some in the next year or two as I can't live this way. It's been going on for a year. It might be just a tiny bit better at times after resting my ears for an hour or so or when I wake up in the mornings but yeah after that I think I just get spiked during the day and the tinnitus is loudest at night. It competes with everything including voices even in the day time it's just I think the worst at night. So when it's hard for you to follow conversations is it like the tinnitus gets too distracting as if it's like competing with every word being said? Another thing is I read your posts how you have days where your unaware of it. I always thought it can't be severe if a person can be unaware of it cause I'm always aware of mine no matter what I do. I'd love to be in aware of it but I've only gone maybe 5 or 6 maybe 10 seconds at the most the entire year I had it when I was unaware of it but usually I'm only unaware of it a lot of times maybe 4 seconds twice a day...you said in a post that it's loud and unmaskable so is it unmaskable everyday even though you have days where it's less?

 

[Poseidon65]

Hugs to everyone who responded "Yes" or "Sometimes".

 

[Lilah]

I struggle more in quiet environments (and with sleep). Whenever my tinnitus gets instrusive at work, I chat with a coworker as a form of distraction. During meetings, I don't think about my tinnitus. Watching TV also distracts me from the tinnitus, even though I can still hear it.

 

[Ava Lugo]

Hugs to everyone who responded "Yes" or "Sometimes".

Consider yourself blessed you don't have tinnitus disabling or debilitating enough to where it distracts from conversation. More than anything I'd like to be in the position where that doesn't happen. I weep everyday for my mild maskable tinnitus that I was never aware of til sleeping.

 

[Ava Lugo]

Sorry you are suffering like this.

I heard of a couple of people whose tinnitus used to make conversation very hard during benzo withdrawal. For both it improved within 14 months. Are you taking any medications?

I don't know what caused it honestly. I did take benzos like 4 months after my tinnitus became super reactive for what seems to be no reason. I know that I got a cold a year ago and while I was at work like a few days after the cold was going away, I heard a beep go off at work and I was hoping it was fleeting tinnitus but while it went down a little after a minute, it was still heard over everything the rest of the day and I was scared. The next day it went down but once I was around noise, reactive tinnitus started and never went away since.

 

[Ava Lugo]

Suffice it to say, I've been dealing with what you describe for a long time, particularly watching TV when tinnitus is bad. Just wanted you to know you're not alone.

I got questions for you. I read some of your posts and think in one you mentioned how you still enjoy and listen to music so how do you enjoy it with severe tinnitus? Is your tinnitus masked by music or something? It doesn't ride on top of the music? It never makes music sound distorted?

I wonder why when I listen to music even classical, it sounds distorted to me but others with severe tinnitus say they can listen to music just fine. I wonder why it sounds weird to me but not for others with severe tinnitus.

Maybe because their tinnitus is so high pitch it doesn't change the sound of music so much?

 

[Psych]

I have tinnitus so intrusive, it will literally ring with every word spoken to me, so it's that bad.

It's been a year with this living nightmare and I'm so devastated. It's hard to watch TV or talk to someone.

Anyone else have this? If so, how do you deal with it?

I'm only 24 and before this garbage started I thought I had a future ahead of me and now it looks scarce... Only escape from this is sleep or alcohol and that's it.

How do others deal with this living hell?

I'm so sorry you're going through this. Mine has gone up today to where it is hard even to concentrate if there is no other noise, and that is many, many times throughout the day. I'm also going through some hormonal changes, which seem to be affecting it in different ways, making it worse. It's harder to listen to the TV, and it does seem to react to the sound. I'd never really heard of, or, at least, paid attention to the name "reactive tinnitus," but now I'm probably going to need to become an armchair expert! Hope you get some positive change soon.

 

[Ava Lugo]

My reactive tinnitus competes with other people's voices and my own. When it's bad enough it can go BEEP when I talk. It always competes with voices, it's just when it's really bad it'll let out a loudish beep that is 2 seconds long.

What on earth could be causing that??

I wonder if anyone else has reactive tinnitus extreme enough to where it competes with voices including your own? How do you deal with that?

 

[valeri]

Last week I met, yet again, with another dickhead "professional", psychiatrist to be precise! He said in his 25 years of practice he's never met anyone whose life was affected by tinnitus (apart from me obviously)!!!

As if tinnitus suffering is not enough...

 

[Kriszti]

Last week I met, yet again, with another dickhead "professional", psychiatrist to be precise! He said in his 25 years of practice he's never met anyone whose life was affected by tinnitus (apart from me obviously)!!!

As if tinnitus suffering is not enough...

I'm so sorry, valeri. It's such a shame that the professionals who are supposed to help are often the ones with the least amount of empathy.

 

[Pulsing Ear]

I'm only 24 and before this garbage started I thought I had a future ahead of me and now it looks scarce... Only escape from this is sleep or alcohol and that's it.

I'm wondering, if you drink alcohol, how does that affect it? Does it get more quiet?

I'm curious about the physiology of that. Perhaps since it is a CNS depressant it suppresses the problem some. I have tinnitus but its not nearly as bad as yours, but I never noticed alcohol helping it any. Just one week ago another problem started for me, what I think is middle ear myoclonus. I wonder if alcohol would affect that.

 

[Ava Lugo]

I'm wondering, if you drink alcohol, how does that affect it? Does it get more quiet?

I'm curious about the physiology of that. Perhaps since it is a CNS depressant it suppresses the problem some. I have tinnitus but its not nearly as bad as yours, but I never noticed alcohol helping it any. Just one week ago another problem started for me, what I think is middle ear myoclonus. I wonder if alcohol would affect that.

When I drink alcohol, depending on how much I drink, the distortions become less noticeable. Like if I get tipsy for example, then music sounds better and the reactive tinnitus becomes less noticeable.

 

[JohnFox]

I wonder why when I listen to music even classical, it sounds distorted to me but others with severe tinnitus say they can listen to music just fine.

Everyone's tinnitus is unique to them. Tinnitus is like a fingerprint, no two exactly alike. You and I share a portion of the same symptoms, but not all of them. When my tinnitus first struck me, I too did not know how I was going to continue. I was in a state of disbelief. Of all the things that feared happening to me, this was not one of them.

It's been almost two years now and I do notice a lot of things that tell me I am habituating at least a little bit. My tinnitus is extremely reactive. Noises that I encounter during the day are often like pouring gasoline on my tinnitus (a hissing/static noise). At first I could not tolerate going into any kind of store, coffee shop, etc; without inserting ear plugs in my one good ear. BTW, I completely lost all my hearing in right ear at same time the tinnitus struck. Anyway, I can now shop without the need for an earplug, but if I'm sitting in a coffee shop I still often need them. Small steps.

A couple of tips that helped me, but may not be helpful to you. Everyone is different, so it's good to experiment with some different formulas that others are doing to see if you may get a little help living with this scourge. Watching TV was pretty unbearable to me when the tinnitus hit me. Through trial and error I found that using a noise canceling Bluetooth headset allows me to watch TV with much less discomfort than without. I'm not sure why it helps, but it does. I also use those noise canceling Apple ear buds that have become popular. I don't listen to music or TV through them, but just utilize the noise canceling feature when I am in a room with people talking. They seem to take the edge off of the tinnitus and make it more tolerable. It's like installing shock absorbers for your ears/tinnitus.

There is no great "fix" out there for everyone. You can gain a lot of info reading through the stories in here and maybe you will learn some techniques that will help your own case. I have fully excepted that this is with me to stay and am not expecting it to ever go away. But I think I have gotten to a point through utilizing some techniques that I described, habituation (time and acceptance), and my faith (important to me in any human challenge) I have reached a point where I know I can go on and know that this is not going to destroy me. That in itself is a huge mountain to get over, where you realize that... "Okay, I can do this".

 

[Ava Lugo]

Everyone's tinnitus is unique to them. Tinnitus is like a fingerprint, no two exactly alike. You and I share a portion of the same symptoms, but not all of them. When my tinnitus first struck me, I too did not know how I was going to continue. I was in a state of disbelief. Of all the things that feared happening to me, this was not one of them.

It's been almost two years now and I do notice a lot of things that tell me I am habituating at least a little bit. My tinnitus is extremely reactive. Noises that I encounter during the day are often like pouring gasoline on my tinnitus (a hissing/static noise). At first I could not tolerate going into any kind of store, coffee shop, etc; without inserting ear plugs in my one good ear. BTW, I completely lost all my hearing in right ear at same time the tinnitus struck. Anyway, I can now shop without the need for an earplug, but if I'm sitting in a coffee shop I still often need them. Small steps.

A couple of tips that helped me, but may not be helpful to you. Everyone is different, so it's good to experiment with some different formulas that others are doing to see if you may get a little help living with this scourge. Watching TV was pretty unbearable to me when the tinnitus hit me. Through trial and error I found that using a noise canceling Bluetooth headset allows me to watch TV with much less discomfort than without. I'm not sure why it helps, but it does. I also use those noise canceling Apple ear buds that have become popular. I don't listen to music or TV through them, but just utilize the noise canceling feature when I am in a room with people talking. They seem to take the edge off of the tinnitus and make it more tolerable. It's like installing shock absorbers for your ears/tinnitus.

There is no great "fix" out there for everyone. You can gain a lot of info reading through the stories in here and maybe you will learn some techniques that will help your own case. I have fully excepted that this is with me to stay and am not expecting it to ever go away. But I think I have gotten to a point through utilizing some techniques that I described, habituation (time and acceptance), and my faith (important to me in any human challenge) I have reached a point where I know I can go on and know that this is not going to destroy me. That in itself is a huge mountain to get over, where you realize that... "Okay, I can do this".

So basically you just deal with the reactivity without earplugs a lot of times because you are used to it by now?

 

[JohnFox]

So basically you just deal with the reactivity without earplugs a lot of times because you are used to it by now?

Well, I guess you could say that. I always carry earplugs with me, but my goal is to be able to go places without using them. Not sure if "used to it" is the best way to describe it, but the fact is there are places I can now be without them that I could not go before without putting the earplugs in, I guess I am experiencing a degree of habituation. I almost never have to use earplugs when outside, and when I am indoors it has a lot to do with the acoustics of the structure I am in. Anyplace that has poor echoing acoustics is the worst. When in a bad environment I don't always use ear plugs. Sometimes if I am just sitting there listening to people talk I might just lightly hold a finger against my left ear (my right ear is deaf) and gently press on it as needed to block sound waves. Sometimes it doesn't take much to make it tolerable. It seems that if I can just block sound waves from directly entering my ear I can do better.

I try to do as little as possible with the hope that I will continue to habituate to the point where maybe some day I won't have to use earplugs at all.

 

[JohnFox]

particularly watching TV when tinnitus is bad.

Not sure if this would help with your tinnitus, but I discovered that watching TV is much more tolerable for me if I utilize wearing a set of high end noise cancelling (Bluetooth) headsets. There are a few name brand good headsets like this out there. I chose the Sony model. Not cheap, about $350, but was very much worth the cost for me. Of course you need a Bluetooth compatible TV to do this. My tinnitus is very reactive and for whatever reason the noise cancelling helped calm the tinnitus at the same time allowing me to hear the TV thru the headset instead of outside TV speakers. Also, hard to explain, but by wearing the headset my brain is tricked into feeling like the tinnitus noise (hissing/static) that I still hear is now coming through the "headset" instead of coming from inside my head.

Anyway, it works for me and was a small victory that I latched on to.

 

[Ava Lugo]

Well, I guess you could say that. I always carry earplugs with me, but my goal is to be able to go places without using them. Not sure if "used to it" is the best way to describe it, but the fact is there are places I can now be without them that I could not go before without putting the earplugs in, I guess I am experiencing a degree of habituation. I almost never have to use earplugs when outside, and when I am indoors it has a lot to do with the acoustics of the structure I am in. Anyplace that has poor echoing acoustics is the worst. When in a bad environment I don't always use ear plugs. Sometimes if I am just sitting there listening to people talk I might just lightly hold a finger against my left ear (my right ear is deaf) and gently press on it as needed to block sound waves. Sometimes it doesn't take much to make it tolerable. It seems that if I can just block sound waves from directly entering my ear I can do better.

I try to do as little as possible with the hope that I will continue to habituate to the point where maybe some day I won't have to use earplugs at all.

So basically when you put your finger gently over your hearing ear, since you said sometimes it's tolerable when you do that, is it to the point you don't hear reactive tinnitus at all because your blocking out sound or is it just quieter when you use earplugs and fingers?

I don't have the option of earplugs because I have no ear hole opening on my left ear because I was born with that and the right ear has opening and I have sensorineural deafness, like 85 percent deaf, even though that ear is opened up. I have bone conductive hearing loss and sensorineural hearing loss. I'm thinking of ways to reduce the reactiveness if I can't wear earplugs.

 

[JohnFox]

So basically when you put your finger gently over your hearing ear, since you said sometimes it's tolerable when you do that, is it to the point you don't hear reactive tinnitus at all because your blocking out sound or is it just quieter when you use earplugs and fingers?

I don't have the option of earplugs because I have no ear hole opening on my left ear because I was born with that and the right ear has opening and I have sensorineural deafness, like 85 percent deaf, even though that ear is opened up. I have bone conductive hearing loss and sensorineural hearing loss. I'm thinking of ways to reduce the reactiveness if I can't wear earplugs.

It really just depends on my environment. I don't like wearing earplugs if at all possible, and I really don't like wearing them when I am trying to hold a conversation with others. So sometimes when I am in a room maybe just sitting there visiting, I will just hold my finger up on my ear to regulate the amount of noise intrusion that effects my tinnitus. That way when I am talking I can just release my finger. I don't like talking to others with an ear plug in. But, if I'm just in someplace with a lot other people talking I will often just insert an ear plug into my good ear.

The way you describe your condition, you may be a good candidate for some type of hearing aid. You say you are 85% deaf, yet still have tinnitus too? There are a lot of different kinds of hearing aids out there now and I would definitely give that a try in your case. You might be able to find a type that has "noise cancelling" to help with the tinnitus, but also gives you increased hearing capacity for the type of sound waves you want to hear. Good luck.