I’ve had permanent ringing in my ears for almost 10 years. I first noticed it after waking up on a random Sunday morning, my sinuses and ears felt plugged up, and it reminded me of mornings years earlier after having had a long night at a rock concert. I hadn’t been anywhere extremely loud that night before — just out for a drink or two with some friends at a local bar.

Eventually, after a few days, the ringing started to get annoying and that’s when the fear began to creep in. I didn’t know why my ears were ringing, and this fear deep down inside me started to question, “What if it’s not going away?” Of course, I did the first thing anyone at age 25 does when they have a medical issue — I started searching on the Internet! If I wasn’t scared before, I was after learning that ear ringing is called tinnitus, involves mysterious things like the inner ear and the brain, and science doesn’t understand it very well.

I scheduled an appointment with an Ear Nose and Throat doctor (ENT). He found some excess ear wax in my ears, did an extensive hearing test, and reported my hearing was excellent and sent me away with a tri-fold pamphlet about tinnitus. I also had a follow-up appointment with my primary physician and he said it was probably allergy related, take an antihistamine, and try not to focus on the ringing.

After realizing the doctors weren’t going to be able to fix me I realized I could either freak-out and have a miserable existence, or I could focus all my conscious mental power to chill-out, accept the tinnitus instead of try to run from it, and practice methods I read about online that spoke of things like “retraining your brain to not hear it”. This included things like keeping a fan or some other noise in the background to fix my attention on, using a nature sound maker while sleeping, and keeping myself calm as much as possible.

I’m happy to say that after a few months I got to the point where the tinnitus really did fade into the background a lot! It was still there and I still perceived it from time to time (especially a couple times a year when it could get worse and seemed to increase in volume). Whenever it got worse, I remembered to stay calm, accept it, and focus back on my tasks at hand. It eventually would attenuate again and life remained normal.

About 2 months ago, my tinnitus increased in volume and came back with a vengeance that felt almost as bad as the first time I got it. I had to relive some of my initial anxiety of the past, but the one thing I had going for me was remembering I conquered it years ago (I couldn’t believe it had been 10 years). It has already drastically improved and the inner scientist in me is trying to correlate potential causes and triggers of the tinnitus volume increases — potentially examining everything from cold weather to loud computer fans to an allergy to eggs!

I don’t advocate for only self diagnosis (I visited the ENT again last month and my experience was exactly the same with same results), but it’s important for people to take responsibility for exploring answers to their tinnitus through their own inner examination as well as external tools and resources. I haven’t figured-out the cause of my tinnitus, and maybe I never will, but I’m a stronger person because of the struggles I’ve gone through with it.

If you’re reading this at a time when you’re struggling with tinnitus please know you have the power inside of you to deal with tinnitus and conquer it. You’ve got to be the General in your very personal battle with tinnitus through exploring different tools like education, doctors, practice, and persistence. There will be times when you want to try to run from the anxiety causing sound that lives inside of you, but remember you must choose to be disciplined, stay calm, and stay positive. Life goes on and you have it inside of you to live a productive, great life with tinnitus like millions of people do everyday.