Learn what tinnitus is and how it can affect people's lives. If you suddenly hear whistling, ringing or roaring in your ears, it could be tinnitus. These constant companions in everyday life can end the silence. In her article, Karina Lübke describes how these annoying noises have affected her life. Read more about tinnitus and its effects now.
by Karina Lübke
Silence was my favourite sound. The fact that I have not been able to hear it for over twenty years is one of the misfortunes in my life that I have had to come to terms with, but never resigned myself to: I mourn for down-pillow-thick evening silence. Tender summer stillness in the countryside. Snow-dampened winter night silence. City silence early in the morning shortly before four. The suspended silence between the last note of a concert and the burst of applause. The highly potentised silence in the meditation of a group. The sacred silence in the chapel of an old Cistercian monastery in Provence. I live in silent memory of them all, but can no longer feel them. Because in front of the entrance into the silence, my tinnitus rushes for me like an electric waterfall around which there is no way through or around.
18 million people in Germany suffer from ringing in the ears at some point in their lives, 3 million of them chronically - i.e. permanently for more than three months. The trend is increasing because the triggers - stress, noise and excessive demands - are also on the rise and form the basis of the "modern" lifestyle. There is a permanent buzz that you can filter out for a long time - until suddenly you can't anymore. Because our totally anachronistic auditory nerves are simply not made for the permanent overload of stimuli, alarm signals and information. Ears are always vigilantly open, while one can well close one's eyes to something. In this respect, tinnitus is THE symptomatic disease of our time: there is no cure, at best relief by "not listening", positively reinterpreting or ignoring the constant alarm. "You have to live with it" is currently true for many things. My environment can live with it without suffering, because the overactivity of the auditory centres in the brain is neither contagious nor visible from the outside.
But why me? WHY? My path to tinnitus was not predictable: I always liked the quiet sounds; was never one to dance in front of the box at concerts. I was not a drummer in a punk band; avoided firecrackers, firearms and fireworks. I only knew this roaring in my head when I had come out of a disco as a teenager, where people had shouted phrases into each other's ears while dancing and waited for the last bus in the nightly silence at a bus stop. Then that roaring in my ears - like the entrance stamp on my hand - was a distinction. Off and on signs that I had been there. Rock 'n roll. And just like the stamp, reliably disappeared again the next day.
"Against pain, you can at least buy some freedom from pain with pills from time to time.
There is no pill for silence. Nevertheless, I have tried almost everything..."
But then, in my early thirties and with two small children, there came a day when first my left ear and then, a few days later, my right ear suddenly began to emit high-frequency noise. It quickly developed into full blown noise. Not only in my ears, but in my whole head. As if I was cursed to wear invisible stereo headphones 24/7, which invisible sadists blasted with high frequencies. Unfortunately without any party fun beforehand and without any other obvious reason. Day and night went this invisible torture - I say the fabled sufferings of Tantalus, Sisyphus and Tinnitus have the same agony quotient. The only difference is that giant stones rolling senselessly uphill and eagles regularly pecking at your liver are visible from the outside and explain why you are not so socially resilient in the process. I hear something you don't? Not exactly a party theme!
"Good luck!".
For pain, you can at least buy some freedom from pain with pills now and then. There is no pill for silence. Nevertheless, I have tried almost everything - aspirin, magnesium, ginkgo. Over the years, I must have spent the equivalent of a mid-range house on alternative glimmers of hope in the form of self-blood treatment, bio-resonance procedures, healing hypnosis, homeopathy, acupuncture, dental splints, osteopathy, Reiki, and an indoor fountain. This not only drove me further into madness, but also permanently to the toilet. In our modern times, when artificial hearts are transplanted and people fly to Mars, tinnitus remains as incurable as in the Middle Ages: get used to it. But HOW? And haven't the methods of minimising the body's own background noise been absolutely frowned upon for at least a generation: listening away, suppressing, ignoring? If you can't do that - well, it's your own fault. No pressure!
In any case, silence is contraindicated with tinnitus and "do yoga, meditate" is probably the shittiest advice in the acute phase. I knew what impotent despair was at the moment when everyone else was blissfully resting in the silence of their hearts during meditation, while the high-voltage line through my head hummed louder than ever. I was sure you could see my head vibrating from the outside! The ENT doctor recommended that I take a six-week cure at a specialised tinnitus clinic - but who would have looked after my two very young children for that long? My son was still a baby! It seemed easier for me to stay. Frantically ignored the alarm. One of the big wrong decisions, seen in the rear-view mirror of my life, because the tinnitus stayed too. At the time, I hoped it would go away. Unfortunately it hasn't, but it's much better. Tolerable to unheard of. I wash over stressful moments with the "rocky beach" surf sound of my ZEN Tinnitus App. Couldn't the health insurance just pay me for a house by the sea? Unfortunately, the only sounds I can no longer hear are those that are on exactly the same frequency as my phantom sounds - such as cicada chirps on a summer night in the south. There are worse things.
When I ask around, quite a few of my friends and acquaintances have tinnitus. We don't like to talk about it. Because we can really listen to advice like "you really need to relax" more. There is also the worry of being seen as less resilient in this high-performance society because we need more quiet to compensate for the lack of silence. No, we are not bulletproof. So what? But should someone permanently blast our house with terrible music, as dictator Noriega once did, as a strategy of attrition, we will be the coolest. Because we'll just listen to it.
The tinnitus is now like an over-ambitious caretaker who drives around between my ears with a hoover. In the beginning, I felt stuck in a one-room flat with it, while it vacuumed around me full blast. Nothing could unplug him. What worked over time was to keep expanding my head in my mind, building it up, making a huge castle out of the small room. I mentally pushed him out to continue sucking in the corridor, then one floor down at a time, until at last he was driving around far down on the ground floor. It got quieter and quieter, sometimes I have to really listen to see if he's still there. We got used to each other, he became much more considerate and I actually more relaxed. Most of the time I just have better things to do than listen to what he's up to. But the silence that I loved so much in all its forms is something I will probably only find again with eternal peace.
About Karina:
Karina first studied design, took a diploma in fashion and then graduated from the Hamburg School of Journalism with Wolf Schneider. She went on to become an editor and columnist at TEMPO and then wrote freelance for a few magazines. Her monthly column "Bitte recht feindlich" in BARBARA magazine has a large following and will be published as a book early this year, as will her next novel. In between, she married, raised a daughter and a son. Find out more here.
