It’s March now, but spring hasn’t fully started yet. This quiet period between winter and spring can be a great time for reflection and relaxation, but this might be seriously hampered if you are one of the 50 million people who suffer from tinnitus. Many people with tinnitus find that this time of year brings a worsening of symptoms, and that could be due to the relative quiet. Let’s explore why this is.
Lack of Masking Sounds
Throughout the day, you probably rely (consciously or unconsciously) on masking sounds to cope with your tinnitus. Masking sounds are any sounds in your environment—the heater, music, people talking nearby, etc.—that cover up the sounds of tinnitus, allowing your brain to focus on something else, relegating tinnitus to the background. If you’re staying indoors and trying to luxuriate in the quiet, the masking sounds you once relied on are gone, making the tinnitus the most prominent sound that you perceive.
Heightened Focus
Because tinnitus is the loudest sound you can hear, you’re going to naturally focus on it more. In environments with some background noise, you can distract yourself with the ambient sounds, but without it, tinnitus takes center stage. And since tinnitus is an entirely subjective condition (i.e., the sound comes from your brain and not from an external source), perceiving it will make it even more prominent in a vicious catch-22.
Stress
Stress and anxiety are common byproducts of a heightened focus on tinnitus; since you’re forced to focus on it, you begin to dwell and fret, which makes you focus on it more, which stresses you out even further. Moreover, it’s well-known that stress can exacerbate tinnitus, so the more you get psyched out by the presence of tinnitus, the worse it becomes.
How to Cope
You can break the cycle of heightened focus and stress that’s making your tinnitus worse by adding sounds into your environment to take the focus off tinnitus. Using sounds to mask tinnitus is one of the most common forms of tinnitus management. This can be called acoustic therapy or tinnitus sound masking, and it’s the intentional use of background noise to mask tinnitus. You can use a dedicated tinnitus masking sound library online, a white noise machine or any other household object that creates ambient noise.
You might also consider consulting an audiologist about your tinnitus symptoms and ways to cope. An audiologist may be able to help you determine the root cause of your tinnitus and what the best coping strategy is to manage the ringing in your ears. Contact Beneficial Hearing Aid Center today to learn more.