> Nobody complains about tinnitus while playing Playstation
As a long time sufferer, I want to support the general sentiment of this post, and I hope it helps someone who finds this that is currently suffering. My core message is that managing your psychological response to your condition matters immensely. I've noticed over the years that my perception of my tinnitus gets worse when my stress levels are high, even if for unrelated reasons. For example, reading about this post might remind me of it when I wasn't thinking about it for a long while. And suddenly this might bring back unpleasant feelings I have about it and it might suddenly feel very loud and overpowering when half an hour ago I wasn't even aware of it. But then an hour or two later I'll catch myself having a normal, quiet, unimpeded conversation with someone, which can feel like a contradiction.
Unmanaged, this kind of thing can turn into an unchecked, self reinforcing doom loop that's not always necessary or helpful. As with anxiety (another long term problem I manage), one unhelpful thing doctors might say when you first get tinnitus is that it doesn't go away - this is one of those technically true statements that patients can misinterpret. The reality is that just like anxiety, in many cases there's plenty reason for hope: it's often quite possible to improve quality of life that's mostly the same as it was before. It's still there if you check, and time to time you need to manage it, but also you might go days and weeks without even noticing, living a perfectly normal and happy life rather than a miserable existence.
On the other hand, leaving your primary care doctor with "yup, it's tinnitus" (my interpretation at the time: you're fucked for life, good luck) can lead to deep feelings of despair, panic, lack of sleep, over-sensitivity to noise of any kind even within normal thresholds, and many more terrible things. And "just ignore it, you'll be fine" is trite advice that can be difficult to achieve without help, like telling someone to ignore a siren in the next room. And it might be difficult for others to understand how debilitating it can be. But slowly and step by step it's possible to get there.
Sadly compassionate and competent care for tinnitus, even among audiology specialists, is few and far between and patients are left to suffer and / or try to figure stuff out on their own, which like a hypochondriac on webmd, can leave you feeling even worse. Luckily it is more possible to find tinnitus specific care these days and I encourage you to find a clinic that does this if you can - it's worth traveling for IMHO. There's a cocktail of potential causes that indicate different treaments so take this with a grain of salt but what worked for me was a combination of various things first to manage my current state and give me some relief during my initial crisis state (psychological help with how to deal with the reality of your condition, various things to help mask it and allow me to get normal sleep), clearing out wax (it's hilariously gross and also wild how it can affect your hearing perception and tinnitus in the most unexpected ways), common sense non-doomer information on the nature of the disease, what to do next and how to slowly transition to focusing on normal life ("playing playstation"): doing things with people, being outside, working out, focusing on your interests, as opposed to catastrophizing at home in bed. This feels like a non-cure cure but the results for me are night and day - if it's a placebo, I'll take it. I still have trouble with it time to time, but lead a normal happy life most days.
That aside, while we don't have the technology to make it fully go away yet, there have been a lot of recent changes and advances in our understanding of how it works which might lead to new therapies. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and might be butchering this so take this with a grain of salt: There seem to now be competing theories on the exact causes e.g. arguments about whether it's the the little hairs in the ear are sending no signal or incorrect signals. Also a recent understanding that you can have a seemingly unaffected hearing AND a normal audiogram but still have tinnitus is leading people to question if it's a different type of damage (different, larger hairs) that cause it which might mean different therapies. There's promising new treatments like Lenire which seem to be low risk and whose early study results seem to be much more promising than earlier versions of similar ideas (haven't tried it). I wouldn't be shocked if we eventually got much much more in our lifetimes.
TLDR: of course you'd rather not have it - please do be careful in protecting your hearing as much as possible. But if you're at the point where you do have it, just take a bit of solace maybe that it's not always a terrible prognosis and more improvement might be possible than you think. And the psychology and managing my emotional perception of it was very helpful for me. I hope this helps you, dear reader.
I can't comment on how mainstream of a scientific opinion his response is, but I know it certainly reframed the way I thought about my own tinnitus and inspired my original comment, including the Playstation bit. That was a lightbulb moment for me. "Wow, he's right, I NEVER think about tinnitus when I'm otherwise engaged mentally..."
As a long time sufferer, I want to support the general sentiment of this post, and I hope it helps someone who finds this that is currently suffering. My core message is that managing your psychological response to your condition matters immensely. I've noticed over the years that my perception of my tinnitus gets worse when my stress levels are high, even if for unrelated reasons. For example, reading about this post might remind me of it when I wasn't thinking about it for a long while. And suddenly this might bring back unpleasant feelings I have about it and it might suddenly feel very loud and overpowering when half an hour ago I wasn't even aware of it. But then an hour or two later I'll catch myself having a normal, quiet, unimpeded conversation with someone, which can feel like a contradiction.
Unmanaged, this kind of thing can turn into an unchecked, self reinforcing doom loop that's not always necessary or helpful. As with anxiety (another long term problem I manage), one unhelpful thing doctors might say when you first get tinnitus is that it doesn't go away - this is one of those technically true statements that patients can misinterpret. The reality is that just like anxiety, in many cases there's plenty reason for hope: it's often quite possible to improve quality of life that's mostly the same as it was before. It's still there if you check, and time to time you need to manage it, but also you might go days and weeks without even noticing, living a perfectly normal and happy life rather than a miserable existence.
On the other hand, leaving your primary care doctor with "yup, it's tinnitus" (my interpretation at the time: you're fucked for life, good luck) can lead to deep feelings of despair, panic, lack of sleep, over-sensitivity to noise of any kind even within normal thresholds, and many more terrible things. And "just ignore it, you'll be fine" is trite advice that can be difficult to achieve without help, like telling someone to ignore a siren in the next room. And it might be difficult for others to understand how debilitating it can be. But slowly and step by step it's possible to get there.
Sadly compassionate and competent care for tinnitus, even among audiology specialists, is few and far between and patients are left to suffer and / or try to figure stuff out on their own, which like a hypochondriac on webmd, can leave you feeling even worse. Luckily it is more possible to find tinnitus specific care these days and I encourage you to find a clinic that does this if you can - it's worth traveling for IMHO. There's a cocktail of potential causes that indicate different treaments so take this with a grain of salt but what worked for me was a combination of various things first to manage my current state and give me some relief during my initial crisis state (psychological help with how to deal with the reality of your condition, various things to help mask it and allow me to get normal sleep), clearing out wax (it's hilariously gross and also wild how it can affect your hearing perception and tinnitus in the most unexpected ways), common sense non-doomer information on the nature of the disease, what to do next and how to slowly transition to focusing on normal life ("playing playstation"): doing things with people, being outside, working out, focusing on your interests, as opposed to catastrophizing at home in bed. This feels like a non-cure cure but the results for me are night and day - if it's a placebo, I'll take it. I still have trouble with it time to time, but lead a normal happy life most days.
That aside, while we don't have the technology to make it fully go away yet, there have been a lot of recent changes and advances in our understanding of how it works which might lead to new therapies. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and might be butchering this so take this with a grain of salt: There seem to now be competing theories on the exact causes e.g. arguments about whether it's the the little hairs in the ear are sending no signal or incorrect signals. Also a recent understanding that you can have a seemingly unaffected hearing AND a normal audiogram but still have tinnitus is leading people to question if it's a different type of damage (different, larger hairs) that cause it which might mean different therapies. There's promising new treatments like Lenire which seem to be low risk and whose early study results seem to be much more promising than earlier versions of similar ideas (haven't tried it). I wouldn't be shocked if we eventually got much much more in our lifetimes.
TLDR: of course you'd rather not have it - please do be careful in protecting your hearing as much as possible. But if you're at the point where you do have it, just take a bit of solace maybe that it's not always a terrible prognosis and more improvement might be possible than you think. And the psychology and managing my emotional perception of it was very helpful for me. I hope this helps you, dear reader.