With chronic tinnitus, it’s not the ringing in your ears that’s the actual issue. The real problem is that the ringing doesn’t stop.

The continuous noise, perhaps somewhat moderate in volume, might start as little more than a nuisance. But the ringing can become frustrating and even incapacitating if it continues for days or months or more.

That’s why it’s critical that if you are living with tinnitus you follow some tips to make life easier. It can make a huge difference if you have a plan when you’re lying in bed struggling to fall asleep because of the ringing or buzzing in your ear.

Your Tinnitus Can be Made Worse

Chronic tinnitus, after all, is frequently not a static problem. There are spikes and valleys in the presentation of symptoms. Sometimes, your tinnitus might be an afterthought, lost in the background of everyday life. At other times the sounds will be screeching in your ears so loudly it’s impossible to ignore.

This can be a very uncertain and scary situation. You may be so worried about your tinnitus flaring up during a meeting that you get a panic attack while you’re driving to work. And the very panic attack brought on by this worry can itself trigger the tinnitus.

Tips For Coping With Tinnitus

The more you know about tinnitus, the better you can prepare for and manage the effects. And, because there’s no known cure for tinnitus, management of symptoms is essential. With the proper treatment, there’s no reason that chronic tinnitus needs to negatively impact your quality of life.

Consider Tinnitus Retraining Therapy

Many treatments for tinnitus involve some kind of tinnitus retraining therapy (or TRT). The sound of rain on a rooftop is a common analogy: very noticeable at the start of a storm, but you stop paying attention to it after a while and that rain-on-rooftops sound fades into the background. TRT uses the same principle to train your brain to move the tinnitus symptoms into the background of your thoughts so you will have an easier time tuning it out.

Mastering this method can take some practice.

Distract Your Brain

Your brain is constantly searching for the source of the sound and that’s one of the reasons why tinnitus can be so frustrating. So giving your brain a variety of different sounds to concentrate on can be very helpful. Try these:

• Read a book while soaking in a bubble bath.
• Have music playing while painting a picture.
• Bring a book to the park and listen to the birds while reading.

You get the idea: Your tinnitus may be able to be decreased by engaging your brain.

Alternately, many individuals have discovered that meditation helps because it concentrates your attention on something else, your breathing, a mantra, and etc. Some individuals have found that meditation decreases their blood pressure, which can also help with tinnitus.

Manage Tinnitus With a Hearing Aid

Several hearing aid companies have developed hearing aids that help decrease the ringing in your ear. Hearing aids are an ideal solution because you put them in and can forget about them the entire day, you don’t need to carry around a white noise generator or constantly use an app. The ringing will be handled by the hearing aid and you can relax and enjoy your life.

Make a Plan (And Follow-Through)

Having a plan for unforeseen spikes can help you control your stress-out response, and that can help you minimize certain tinnitus episodes (or at least keep from exacerbating them). Pack a bag of useful items to bring with you. Anything that will help you be more ready and keep you from panicking, like making a list of helpful exercises, will go a long way toward management.

Management is Key

There is no cure for tinnitus which is often chronic. But management and treatment of tinnitus is a very real potential. These everyday tips (and more like them) can help make certain you are living with tinnitus, and not suffering from tinnitus.

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References

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3303565/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5050200/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17956798/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4447068/
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008664