In a perfect world, everyone who develops tinnitus and visits an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist should receive a sympathetic and helpful response. If your experience was less than helpful, I sympathise!
What I would like every ENT doc to do is:
Explain why you, personally, have developed tinnitus, or tell you that it’s idiopathic (no clear medical cause).
Explain that, although it may be for life, it gets better over time, not worse.
Explain that you habituate to the signal, and 98% of people successfully do this.
Explain that habituation, in the psychological sense of the term, is not just “getting used to it”. When your brain habituates to sensory information, it stops perceiving them so intensely. You will end up not ‘hearing’ your tinnitus most of the time, it won’t exist for you. Sometimes you’ll have triggers and at those times it will seem loud. But they will be fewer and farther as time goes by.
Give you information on what tinnitus is (brain falsely perceiving a sound where there isn’t one).
Give you the website of Tinnitus UK, or similar service in the country you’re in. Along with support group information.
Tell you that you’re not alone. There are millions of people with tinnitus, most are happy and it hasn’t impacted their success in life. The ones who are happy just aren’t talking about it, because they’re happy! But we are all over the world, and 10-20% of the people you meet in any given week probably have tinnitus.
I run a private, personalised, face to face course for people who are struggling to cope with tinnitus. Over 2 hours we get you ready for habituation. It doesn’t matter what your journey has been so far, we start afresh.
You’ve probably sought information so far and had a vast array of advice. Some of it will be untrue, some will be factual. Some will be helpful but doesn’t apply to you! We can find out what will work for you personally, and start over with a new plan.
If £250 is out of reach for you at this time, I recommend looking at Tinnitus UK for information that is reliable. I also run a support group on Facebook that’s free to use. Ultimately though, I recommend my personal Active Habitation course, because I’ve put everything I know about tinnitus and tinnitus supporters into it. I know what will help and how to deliver the messages you need.