What Is the Possibility of Tinnitus Getting Better on Its Own?

[Widex]

Hi folks.

As some of you know, my tinnitus worsened several times since onset and now it is multitonal in both ears. It's awful!

My tinnitus is not getting better, actually my sound is not getting better at all, but my perception to it is very very very slightly better since it started to worsen even though my tinnitus is louder and tougher.

My question to all moderate and severe tinnitus sufferers is; can this thing get better without reason, just on its own?

Can it settle back to, let's say baseline, after some period. I know it can get progressively worse without reason or with reason but I would like to know if there is any hope for me. I'm getting tired of this shit!

Kind regards,
Widex

 

[Drone Draper]

Yes dude. I'll PM you some stories.

 

[linearb]

overall the odds are really, really good


though you may not get that idea if you use this forum as a data set, since most people with tinnitus never register here

 

[Allan1967]

It happens.

 

[Bill Bauer]

can this thing get better without reason, just on its own?

It can.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/spontaneous-recovery-stats-many-recover-3-studies.21441/

Could it be that you got worse as a result of being exposed to loud noises? Even moderate noises (e.g., loud phone, slamming doors) can sometimes lead to T setbacks...

 

[Michael Leigh]

My question to all moderate and severe tinnitus sufferers is; can this thing get better without reason, just on its own?

Can it settle back to, let's say baseline, after some period. I know it can get progressively worse without reason or with reason but I would like to know if there is any hope for me. I'm getting tired of this shit!

HI @Widex

It is important to know what caused your tinnitus? Usually this condition doesn't appear out of nowhere as something almost always causes it. I will assume that your tinnitus was "noise induced". Probably listening to music through headphones or going to places where loud music is played: clubs, concerts etc. If this is the case, your tinnitus will not usually get worse, unless you use headphones or put yourself in a situation where you are around loud sounds. So you need to be careful. Please click on the links below and read my posts.

If your tinnitus wasn't "noise induced" and was caused by a medical problem within your auditory system or elsewhere in your body: TMJ for example, then you need to be seen at ENT for tests and treatment. Whatever the case, if your tinnitus is getting worse then try and get treatment at ENT.

All the best
Michael

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/new-to-tinnitus-what-to-do.12558/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-a-personal-view.18668/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/hyperacusis-as-i-see-it.19174/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/is-positivity-important.23150/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-and-the-negative-mindset.23705/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/acquiring-a-positive-mindset.23969/

 

[Silvine]

I agree with Michael Leigh. If your T seems to be getting louder and you haven't been exposed to a new acoustic trauma then it's your perception of T which is getting worse and it's most likely because you're focusing on it more (you're conscious mind is focusing your unconscious mind on it) or you're stressed and the heightened activity in your amygdala is bootstrapping the signal along with everything else going on in your stress potentiated mind. Some people even use their T level as a barometer of when they should start taking it a bit easier as it's a good early warning of stress on its way.

As you can imagine this can result in a runaway feedback loop. There's an old saying in psychology (attributed to Jung) that what you most want to find is where you most least like to look. To trick your mind into lowering your T perception you need to do something which you would least want to do when you have a T (perception) spike. By doing this the brain has to square the circle of hearing your T and the feedback coming back from your body and the environment which is indicating that you're acting as if you're in blissful silence.

The two things are incompatible at the same time so something has to give way and it's usually T perception.

The perception of your foot in your sock is always there (just like your perception of the T sound) but your brain isn't constantly attaching an emotional "look at me" signal too it to get you all agitated about the fact and your conscious mind isn't constantly having a "sense" of it and instructing the amygdala to keep an eye on it.

A lot of researchers think this is the crux of habituation. The sound is alway there but life goes on and it gets shunted into silence by signal filtering mechanisms in your thalamus by new more important things happening.

Now and then you will meet people who when you tell them you have T they'll reply "Oh I get that too" but too them it's no big deal so they don't "hear it". It's a chicken and egg situation in that it never gets louder to them "(in perception) as they don't care about it in the first place (my friend calls this "The silence of idiocy") but hey...good for them; they nipped it straight in the bud.

Consider: Why do people with huge age related hearing loss not get extremely loud T? The answer is, their hearing loss is gradual and there's no big defining moment when it happens such as a one off acoustic trauma. In people who experience T it's because when it reared its head they attached great emotional valence or "weight" to it and thus potentiated their limbic brain to monitor it.

Your thalamus wants to filter it out but the signal has heavy duty emotional credentials attached to it by your limbic system so it forwards the signal to your pre-frontal cortex for you to "hear" it.

Consider again: People can have surgery under hypnosis and not "feel" any pain or for those of us who have had an accident and been on valium can still "feel" the pain but don't "care" about it. The emotional valence hits a metaphorical road block and no way is that attachment getting into the thalamus.

The emotional valence of undergoing surgery without anesthesia as it's attached to the pain signal is about as high as you can get. If T comes in the room at the same time it gets punched straight in the mouth and put on its ass. That mother isn't even getting a look in the window let alone coming in the room. The big boys are in town and pulling rank on who gets to visit pre-frontal cortex.

Here's an experiment for you: Go do a bungee jump. I guarantee you won't hear your T on the way down.

 

[PortalNaut]

@Silvine very interesting stuff! The mind is so powerful (and complex), so please keep posting. I've found myself sometimes totally forgetting about T and not noticing it when deeply involved in some project. I'm not sure I can program myself to ignore it when not busy or when it's louder than usual.

Can you give an example of that Jungian doing of the least wanting to do? Thanks!

 

[Silvine]

It's a complex subject but it means that the problem you have is inoculating the rest of your brain against the action which will solve the problem. An example would be depression: The best treatment (or one of the best) for depression is intensive exercise but guess what...the last thing you want to do when you're depressed is exercise. The depression has inoculated your mind against the cure.

It's an archetypical story throughout history. In the King Arthur stories the knights of the round table are told to look for the holy grail (redemption) in the part of the forest they most fear. Jung (who studied ancient mythologies) connected the dots in all these similar stories and applied them to psychology and reached the conclusion that the problems you face are protected by a "dragon" and that dragon is a belief structure programmed into your limbic system [tinnitus is bad]. To claim the "gold" of silence you have to fight and slay the dragon, go into the belly of the whale etc.

The dragon is actually a nebulous concept which only has power over you when you give it such. If you've ever seen the 80's film labyrinthe, the heroic girl in the story journeys into the land of the Goblin King to find her little brother. During her trials and tribulations against the Goblin King (David Bowie) she's constantly trying to remember the last verse of a rhyme on how to defeat him. Eventually she remembers and the Goblin King disappears.

This type of story reoccurs across history for the precise reason that the mechanism is hard wired into the human brain (an archetype) because the value of having such a mental model pre built into you is huge.

Here's the clip; think of the Goblin King as tinnitus...

 

[Contrast]

Why do people ask these same questions?Q

Q&A
normie : will my tinnitus fade?
answer: We don't know, but if it has to do with SNHL then don't guarantee anything.

They just want a answer to give them peace of mind, a comforting doctor will tell you it will resolve when it possibly couldn't just to keep you sane for a while but sooner or later you are going to have to accept reality that it will stay until there is medicine for tinnitus.

Asking the same question "will tinnitus fade" to someone hoping to get a positive answer isn't going to have any effect on the hyperactive fusiform cells in your audiotory brain causing tinnitus. So don't lie to yourself you know better.

 

[Widex]

Thank you guys, I really appreciate all of this!

@Michael Leigh;
I don't know the cause of my tinnitus but most likely it is noise trauma. The thing is that I'm not new in this, I'm in 2 years and 2 months and first time I habituated in like 30 days. Now I struggle since October 2017 and it is getting worse and worse . I really need to calm my ears a little bit and take some break from everything. I think that's the only way for my recover.

Kind regards,
Widex

 

[PortalNaut]

@Widex there are a lot of variables, and as I can say my T does very, so does my perception of it. I hope yours calms down (in whatever way). Hold on.

@Silvine Very interesting, and thank you for writing up on the dragon motif. We as T sufferers get tested and the cure isn't always visible, like running or seeking the giant's gold, but perhaps there is "some" kind of gold we can still get.