Why has my tinnitus got so much worse?

I’ve described this in clinic a few times this last month or so. Patients want to understand why their tinnitus, which they have had for months or years without issue, has suddenly got louder, more persistent, more intrusive.

There are a variety of underlying factors, and these are personal to each patient. Recent loud noise exposure (such as the dull hearing after a concert). A recent virus or middle ear / sinus problem. A new layer of hearing loss, such as that we acquire as we age.

Mostly though, you find that the patient has been through a stressful life event. Or, for many in mid-life, a confluence of stressful life events. Ill parents plus job stress. Divorce plus newly-teenaged kids. Neighbour disputes, that promotion that turned out to be a bad move. Unemployment for the first time in a decade.

The stress, isolation and financial worries of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 saw a flood of patients come to me for assistance. But it doesn’t have to be a global pandemic to upturn someone’s life.

The tinnitus you perceive is a mixture of

hearing damage + subconscious attention + conscious attention

These 3 combine at any one time to give you the ‘volume’ of the tinnitus signal you are currently hearing. Stress will contribute to the subconscious attention load, by making you more aware of sound. You may have noticed that some people become grumpy when in a noisy place. You may likewise notice that grumpy, stressed people rarely relax in a noisy place. Noise is a stressor, and stress makes noise seem louder.

Once the subconscious is amplifying your tinnitus, your conscious thoughts can latch on to it. Once you are actively thinking about it, you’ve completed the loop and often people cannot get out of that loop. It causes stress, stress feeds the tinnitus and so on.

This is where I come in. You don’t have to be local to have a session with me, as I work via Video Call too - or at least I do for as long as my hearing will allow. Book an Active Habituation session and we can unpick what’s happening to you, and how to get out of the cycle.

Sally Jackson BSc (Audiology) RHAD MSHAA

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