What Does Tinnitus Sound Like?
A couple of months ago, what had been very mild tinnitus suddenly became deafening. For a couple of weeks, I was barely able to concentrate on anything...and then learned that the best way to manage it is to focus on other things. To train your brain to ignore it.
Mine is like the electrical noise with a thread of the jet engine at a lower pitch.
Thankfully, I notice it less and less over time, but it can be maddening.
@tyghebright oof, that is rough. Glad you're getting a handle on it
I still don't know whether it's tinnitus if I only notice when I decide to pay attention to it. It's like white noise, but generally higher-pitched. It never interferes with my hearing anything real, I rarely notice it unless I try to.
John Lilly described hearing something similar in an anechoic chamber and came to the conclusion he was hearing his nervous system. Dunno about that.
i hear high frequency bursts that often sound like wild birdsong. Drove Sherry nuts when she'd point out a bird call and I couldn't distinguish it from my internal noise.
clearing my ears as though i was swimming helps reduce the level.
I've satisfied myself that there's nothing I can do physically which has any effect on it.
@tyghebright Mine has been going crazy during this respiratory virus. It's kept me awake at night.
@misslovelymess @tyghebright yeah I had a cold recently and my tinnitus became almost impossible to escape. Getting my ear checked out though
owie owie
It *suuuuucks*
@tyghebright My sympathies; I've had it since I was a child. Sometimes I can ignore it, but sometimes it drives me to distraction. Stress, fatigue, too much caffeine, head congestion & exposure to loud noise can all temporarily make it worse for me. Masking with music, white noise, or some types of ASMR videos can sometimes help.
@tyghebright You're not alone. I have it also. In really crowded gatherings where everyone is talking, all I hear is a murmur and I can't actually hear what people are saying. The tinnitus is in my left ear. I'm always telling people, "Talk into my good ear." It's been this way since my teens. Thanks for sharing!
@tyghebright Good info. It can be loud.
Your description is pretty much spot on what mine sounds like. Good luck with it.
The wildest thing about tinnitus, which makes it very hard to treat, is it's not actually a thing: it's the absence of a thing.
Basically, when you lose the capacity to hear a certain wavelength--your brain creates a sound to fill the space.
(So much of what seems to be perception of things around us is actually our brain interpreting and synthesizing stimuli.)
Since I already have sensory processing issues and have trouble ignoring irrelevant input, that makes this challenging.