I made tinnitus my friend, then it disappeared [video]

of course even reading a thread on tinnitus makes mine worse. The mere fact of paying attention to it makes it worse, so I have a hard time seeing how a drug is going to help much. I do wish there was something.

Ostensibly mine is from high frequency hearing loss, which I absolutely have, but I now wear hearing aids and it has no measurable impact from my point of view.

I take comfort in that I can go long periods of time without noticing it, and I know that even though I'm focused on it now and it's loud, it will slowly drift to the background and below conscious notice before too long.

I certainly don't befriend it, but I when I notice it, I acknowledge that I notice it and move on with whatever I'm doing. Eventually I'll notice again, days or weeks later and realize I hadn't noticed it at all in the intervening time. So I just relax and move on.

The post beneath this one is titled:

How Golden Is Silence, Actually?

Over the years I have seen a few threads on tinnitus. I have it very mildly and doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand I have had “floaters” in my eyes since I was a teenager (probably just when I noticed them). Until I saw a doc I thought I was going blind but apparently they run in my family. They are like visual tinnitus and my god do they drive me crazy. I find wearing sunglasses helps me ignore them but they can be brutal. I am a big skier and in flat light they drive me bonkers. Not sure I have seen these discussed here but maybe I missed it.

I remember about twenty years ago reading a method on a forum somewhere for dealing with tinnitus to create temporary relief. Many folks claimed to experience relief from trying it. Maybe it will help you?

It was text back then but nowadays there are videos. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YyT9ZwWy5Jc

>tinitus sure as hell isn't my friend.

what the author is advocating for "befriending tinnitus" is a well established form of therapy (Acceptance and Commitment/ACT), it's generally very effective because avoidance or compensatory behavior ("trying to make the tinnitus go away / distract myself") is teaching the brain that tinnitus is a problem and is only going to increase the kind of alertness that leads people to focus on their tinnitus. It's the same way with insomnia, people who try to produce sleep efforts tend to worsen their insomnia, you need to befriend being awake.

There's a big psychological component to tinnitus that sustains itself because people view tinnitus as a problem, that's often larger than the physical impairment.