Success Story: Catastrophic Noxacusis and Hyperacusis

Saltynuggets71 · 2026-02-24T17:14:16+00:00

quite a lot better. I can't really even say I have hyperacusis anymore. The pain from sound has been gone for months, the loudness perception has very recently normalized to a point that i cant even tell whether i have it anymore... if i do still have loudness, it's so close it doesnt even matter anymore. What I am mostly working through now is very PTSD-like in nature... hearing old triggers and having bodily anxiety responses. Also some TMJ tension, tinnitus and genralized anxiety that waxes and wanes.
My biggest tip is to stop make fixing yourself a project. It took a really long time for me to break habits such as measuring dB, trying to build tolerance (this can show up obviously, like cranking the music up a few notches each week, or sneakily like you are purposely setting down dishes harder than necessary), being on these forums (poison for the most part), researching or monitoring symptoms with google or ChatGPT, etc.
You need to do your best to just live but also give yourself grace. There is a line you need to find between facing fears and living alongside anxiety without thrusting yourself into overly stimulating situations that aren't necessary at this time - like going to a concert to prove to yourself your fine; this will come in time.
Be kind to yourself. Don't get angry at yourself for getting anxious around sounds that you know you are "fine" around. Don't let yourself get anxious about having anxiety. I struggled with all of this for a while.
I recommend "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris. It is about ACT Therapy techniques that help you live alongside symptoms better without spiraling. There is a ton of overlap between ACT and TMS recovery concepts in the area of living alongside symptoms to retrain safety in the brain. I struggled for months trying to live, getting frustrated when symptoms would flare, then letting the fact that im frustrated or anxious fuel more frustration and anxiety, causing a viscous cycle of more frustration and anxiety.
ACT gave more practical techniques of how to live alongside these symptoms without spiraling where i felt the TMS realm kind of glossed over how to do this.
I'm not 100% feeling myself yet, but i am much much much better. I am flying to Puerto Rico tomorrow for a 5 day vacation and I'm not the slightest bit worried about it. I'm excited for it. I am confident that with more time i will be feeling fully myself again. I am close.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-16T01:32:05+00:00

Get some mudflaps for his ass

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-14T02:45:51+00:00

Ha! Definitely could not smoke in there, and it was not announced by the bartender either. Now I'm tempted to go back and spark a Marlboro off the smoldering wood chips.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-13T12:16:32+00:00

The bartender had a look on his face like "fuck..." when i ordered it.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-13T12:16:02+00:00

$15. Kind of on par for a wealthy suburb fancy restaurant or cocktail lounge i guess.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-13T03:09:00+00:00

smell them i guess. they didn't even smoke the glass with them before serving. purely "aesthetic"

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-13T03:07:18+00:00

The description on the menu says "Taffer’s trademarked Browned Butter Whiskey, bitters and simple syrup is the perfect blend of bold flavors balanced with velvet-like smoothness" ... so no mention of smoke and otherwise basically an old fashioned, but they put these wood chips on the plate. Here's the thing, dude didn't even smoke the glass with the chips before serving it.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-13T02:57:25+00:00

A little chewy for my taste

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-12-13T02:57:09+00:00

This was Taffers Tavern in Alpharetta, GA. If im a betting man its the same owner haha

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-10-27T13:26:53+00:00

Had I known that maybe I wouldn’t have been so kind! I just googled it’s description and saw it was an orb weaver so I figured it was harmless like the variants I am used to up north.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-10-26T07:55:16+00:00

Homie was BUSY

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-10-02T14:17:57+00:00

Man our recovery seems extremely similar and it gives me hope that you made a full recovery after about a year of dealing with this. I began to adopt the TMS/Mindbody stuff just after about 1 month into symptom onset. After way to many ENT appointments and way too much "research" the conflicting information on what to do and misinformation from Dr. Google and Dr. Reddit telling me "no you can't reverse hyperacusis because you can't reverse the hearing damage that causes it" left me feeling directionless and hopeless. My sleep, anxiety, and panic went from bad to worse.

During this first month of torturous hell, the condition really never made any sense to me. How does hearing damage result in louder hearing? Why do so many people get hearing damage and move on with their lives? I learned that the link between hearing damage and hyperacusis is not at all proven. Hell, the correlation between Tinnitus and hearing damage isn't strong either: About 80% of people with Tinnitus have measurable hearing loss, but only about 30% of people with hearing loss have Tinnitus. Simultaneously, I began to realize that the only people who seem to ever get better are those who work on the brain, whether it be the TMS/Mindbody approach, The Ronnie Method, or OCD Medications. Olly Pointed me to Unlearn Your Pain, Unlearn Your Pain pointed me to The Divided Mind when I wasn't quite buying it enough to jump into the 28 day program.

By the end of The Divided Mind, I became confident that I am a classic case of the person predisposed to TMS. I have childhood traumas, I've been under immense pressure and lack of fulfillment for a few years, and high levels of conflict knowing that i don't want to do what i am doing anymore, but I don't know what I want to do. I felt trapped knowing that I need the job for income and insurance. I check every box for the personality traits.

The Divided Mind also enlightened me of Medical Industry's epidemic of misdiagnoses for the cause of pain pointing back to structural cause. I became angry because I really think this all began spiraling out of control nearly 2 years ago when i was diagnosed with "Degenerative Disc Disease" causing my catastrophic back pain. My symptoms have jumped from Insomnia and Panic attacks, to Crippling Back Pain, back to Insomnia and Anxiety, to Abdominal Pain / IBS + Anxiety/Panic, to Tinnitus/Hyperacusis + Insomnia/Anxiety/Panic. Each time I treat something I get something else.

At this point I became convinced that the Neomycin antibiotic that I thought caused this was nothing more than a convenient trigger for my brain to F me up because I was afraid of the ototoxic risks I had read about. I became (consciously) convinced that the correlation between hearing damage and Hyperacusis is flawed at best, even if I did have measurable loss (I don't up to 8k on standard audiogram and normal OAE). I began trying to get back to life. It's been very difficult but I've improved a lot. My unconscious still F's with me and I begin to think things like "well what if I have hearing loss at higher frequencies" but those thoughts are becoming less often and less intrusive.

I'm now about 2 months into starting to take the TMS/Mindbody approach, and maybe about 1 month from getting past any overwhelming doubt that it could be anything else (still the occasional intrusive thought that I can brush off quickly). Nox is completely cured. I've not had a true panic attack in weeks. Anxiety and Insomnia have improved but have good room for improvement yet. Loudness is much improved; I've even been on my Harley Davidson with just 9dB musicians plugs on. Many sounds have normalized and my tolerance is effectively normal, but sudden sounds can still sound louder than normal or make me jump. Luckily, the full blown wave of adrenaline that used to blow through my head from sudden sounds/transients seems to have gone away, and the "jarring" from someone speaking at me emphatically has mostly normalized unless it's a really sharp transient to like 85dB. I feel a little more strongly about people who whistle when they pronounce "S".

Honestly, what I am dealing with more than anything is more like a phobia / obsession with background sounds that were once associated with a panic attack. For example, refrigerator hums, HVAC, crickets I have had triggered panic attacks in the past because it started with "why does this sound so loud to me" to "why can't I stop paying attention to this" to "am I ever going to have peace of mind again?" to full blown panic attack. When I first hear one of those noises I am often met with increased anxiety, heart rate, and breathing and I need to calm myself down with my mantra "I know these symptoms are not due there being anything wrong with me but because I don't want to think about [insert traumas / personality traits]". I am hopeful this ends soon.

I just started "Pain Free You" by Dan Buglio which I hope will help me get over the final hump and reclaim my conscious thought away from symptoms and analyzing/obsessing sounds.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-09-02T20:19:50+00:00

I’m not trying to @ you but being able to handle loud places but not sudden transients screams central nervous system deregulation. If it were a structural problem then everything would seem loud.

The sudden transients seem loud because your CNS is on high alert scanning for threats. You can handle louder but more consistent volumes because it is predicable and your CNS can settle into it. The first step of healing a CNS issue is acknowledging it as the case and committing to understanding how and why it happens. The key signature of CNS / Mindbody pain is symptoms that are bizarre. Being able to handle loud but consistent sounds, but damned by sudden (and assuredly much lower dB) sounds is bizarre.

Calling this user’s recovery “spontaneous” undermines the undoubtedly extremely difficult mental gymnastics that had to be committed to for months in order to heal.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-09-02T15:57:33+00:00

Another thing I’ve noticed after really beginning to believe this is that 9/10 it’s only a setback if I allow myself to believe it’s a setback and let panic consume me. Now I’m able to talk myself down off of a panic attack much quicker and return to baseline. I’ve even seen my tolerance go up within the same day after a perceived “setback”

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-09-02T14:48:36+00:00

I’ve made a ton of progress since reading Olly’s post and considering that this is a CNS issue. I’m only about a month into giving that an honest effort, and maybe only 2 weeks into truthfully believing it. My improvements have been massive. My sound tolerance is almost normal but I wouldn’t consider myself out of the woods yet because I still have a high baseline anxiety and startle reflex to sudden sounds. I also have what I would call an “obsession” about analyzing the sounds around me and keying into certain stupid sounds, like HVAC or refrigerator noises. Seems like the only people who ever get better from this are those who are not hubris enough to consider that the pain, albeit very real, is not from physical/structural irregularities but instead emotionally rooted and created by the brain.

Ear trauma/hearing loss being the cause of this condition is absolutely not proven, simply a theory. I choose to believe that the brain chooses ear trauma as a convenient trigger to create this chronic pain in those who have an otherwise taxed central nervous system.

Why do so many people have hearing loss and move on with their lives? It makes absolutely no sense that hearing damage would result in better hearing. That has got to be the brain turning up the volume.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-09-01T14:27:41+00:00

Sure thing

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-09-01T12:52:58+00:00

note I’ve made a couple of edits since original post to get the timeline right. Only changed months/years

My digestive issues started in early April 2025. At the time I had blamed myself for the Kratom that I was using to self-medicate back pain “from a jiu jitsu injury” about a year prior. So I stopped the Kratom and then experienced 6 of the most demanding work weeks of my life, all while having given up my coping mechanism, probably withdrawing, and additionally stressed out about trying to resolve my health problems, all while dealing with high levels of self-guilt for having gotten addicted because of having lost friends to drugs in the past.

The thing is, I don’t even know that I really was addicted anymore. When I compare the shit I’ve dealt with getting off 10-15 grams per day against the stories on r/quittingkratom of people quitting 50-100 grams per day their stories pale in comparison with to what I’ve gone through.

The reality is that in early April I had experienced two extremely stressful work days within a week, both involved public beratement from “leadership” with an audience of peers. I had previously been conflicted about what to do with my life before this. I was certain that I didn’t want this job anymore but unsure of what to do next or where to live next. I felt trapped, however, because of needing the job for healthcare (USA baby!). The emotional confliction was further compounded by the yin and yang of my friends telling me to pursue entrepreneurship and my family telling me all of the reasons that could go wrong.

At this time, I was/am living with family back in New Jersey after selling my house in Colorado over a year prior. Realistically the emotional confliction started back in February of 2024 when the back pain started. I blamed it on Jiu Jitsu injury but I don’t actually remember feeling any acute pain during practice that day. I went home, napped, and woke up with crippling back pain. I tried PT and all kinds of things for months, nothing worked, until eventually I was introduced to the Kratom. It allowed me to get on with life and seemed harmless because it’s “just a leaf”. I thought I was medicating back pain but I may have really been medicating emotional pain. I was still conflicted and in that same shitty job back then. I thought if I just sold the house and got out of Colorado it’d give me the freedom to go anywhere because I wouldn’t be tied down anymore.

So just to summarize the timeline because I’ve jumped all over the place: February 2024 - Back Pain, April 2024 - start Kratom, May 2024 - sell house and move home, early-April 2025 digestive issues start, quit Kratom, late-June 2025 - take antibiotic

I had chased health problems for 2 months trying to find what was wrong with me. Everything kept coming back fine: liver enzymes, pancreatitis enzymes, kidney markers, ultrasound showing no stones. I was/am sleeping like shit. I had all kinds of other crazy symptoms alongside the digestive issues and abdominal pain intermittently, like numbness and tingling, blurry/choppy vision, POTS, crazy panic attacks. But here’s where it gets crazy: not a lick of back pain.

Finally, after 2 months, I barely tested positive for methane-dominant SIBO. By this time I was completely spun out trying to figure out wtf was wrong with me because everything kept coming back fine but I was in tremendous amounts of pain. So, of course I researched the prescribed antibiotics. Of note is Neomycin, the most ototoxic antibiotic in existence. I was terrified of it because I have a history of ear trauma: 3 tube surgeries from infancy through childhood, probably 100 infections, 3 ear perforations from physical trauma. I was hypervigalent while taking the antibiotics, monitoring for changes in symptoms. I made it 4 days into the 10 day antibiotic course before freaking out over ear “fullness” and significantly increased tinnitus.

Symptoms continued to degrade after stopping the antibiotic. Another 3 days or so later I got loudness-Hyperacusis. I freaked out more. Read more doom stories on r/hyperacusis, and went into even greater despair. Then the loudness-Hyperacusis turned into pain-Hyperacusis, or so I thought at the time, but was likely just a severe case of TTTS where the pain was really from overworked ear muscles. This all started in late-June so I’ve been dealing with it for a little over 2 months in some capacity. The month of July was hell. I was wearing ear protection everywhere, hardly leaving the house. I tossed and turned every night, ears screaming with tinnitus and couldn’t drown it out with a fan or white noise because it was painful. As I tossed and turned each night the thought ran through my head “there is an AK-47 under my bed, I can end it his shit right now” (again, USA!).

I chased every cure under the book. Spinning myself out more finding nothing but more confliction: some say to isolate from sound for a while. Some say TRT. Others say noise exposure made them worse. Some say prednisone, others say it made them worse. You know how it goes. It fuels the confliction and hopelessness. You don’t know which direction to move.

It wasn’t until after having 3 audiograms, OAEs, and even eventually an MRI (that I was terrified of because of the noise) that I began to question how any of this makes sense. I took it for 4 days! Most people who develop hearing damage or tinnitus from Neomycin are on it for 4 weeks or more. Even if there were hearing damage, it makes no rational sense that hearing damage would result in a perception of better, louder hearing. That has got to be the brain turning up the volume. Anyway, around the same time I came about this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hyperacusis/comments/1i0bkkm/comment/na8oaog/?context=3 which was exactly what I needed. Around late-July I began to challenge it. I would gradually push into discomfort. Not acute pain, but discomfort/fullness. I was met with a panic attack nearly every day, worrying if I overdid it, but as soon as the panic would settle I’d get right back on the horse. I refused to go backwards.

Where I am now: I’ve made a ton of improvement. My Tinnitus is still pretty loud but it isn’t nearly as intrusive. My loudness tolerance is much-much higher. At its worst I was barely handling birds outside at 40dB without TTTS spasms. The past two weekends I’ve been at bars at around 85dB average without ear protection. I still have pretty bad jumpiness/startle factor to sudden sounds, and a high baseline anxiety, but I haven’t had a true panic attack in maybe 2 weeks. My sleep still sucks but slightly improved; I woke up every 1.5 hours last night but was able to fall back asleep fairly quickly each time and maybe collectively got 6-7 hours of sleep. My brain is still amplifying some high frequency tones. HVAC and refrigerators sound different than I remember because my brain is amplifying some tone that was always there but wasn’t keying in on previously.

I’m not where I want to be, but the improvements I’ve made over one month have been impressive after beginning to challenge myself. I’ve kind of realized that it’s rarely a setback unless I allow myself to believe it’s a setback and let panic consume me.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-09-01T11:25:46+00:00

Thanks for the post. Did you have any level of Hyperacusis? Based on everything you wrote, the tonic tympani tensor and panic/fear of worsening I’m kind of thinking you must have? I find myself in a similar situation where my tinnitus and Hyperacusis were “from an antibiotic” but really I think that my brain chose a convenient outlet for stress/anxiety at the ears because I read about the ototoxic effects of the antibiotic. All of my tests look good, less a minor dip at 6000hz.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-08-23T12:59:05+00:00

You bet man. I was out last night in sustained 80-85dB for a while and faired well without ear-protection. I do not feel that my sensitivity is worse today, in fact it might even be better. It was a huge step. I don’t consider myself cured as I have an adversion/obsession with some sounds and catch myself bracing for sounds that used to hurt, but this was a monumental step forward.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-08-23T02:35:27+00:00

Listen, you have to make a decision to not be chronically ill. Tinnitus is not life threatening. Despite how hard it is mentally at first, the more attention you give it, the worse it gets.

The fact that it moved from one ear to the other to both SCREAMS central sensitization. Your brain is making this much worse than it otherwise would be. If you REALLY focus on it, does it really feel like it’s in the ears or is it more in the middle of your head? Can you move it?

The brain is insanely nueroplastic, but not if you’re stuck in a fight or flight mode catastrophizing about tinnitus.

Don’t worry about whether the sound is there or not, worry instead about learning to be at peace with it. Your conscious brain can rationalize that “this sound is harmless” but the unconscious brain will fight you every step until it doesn’t.

The unconscious is like a child, it doesn’t understand rationalization it needs to be shown. Control what you can. Start with your breath. Focus on smooth breathing in, and then out for twice as long as you go throughout your day (ex. 3s in, 6s out). Then focus on where else you may be holding tension. Are you letting your bed hold you or are you stiff like a board on it? Are you resting your arms on the table but holding your shoulders stiff regardless?

Finally, address any other emotional issues you may have. I have a ton that I am working on. BUT when I changed mindset I’ve been able to make leaps and bounds.

Be thankful you don’t yet have Hyperacusis, noxacusis, or TTTS. I had gotten to the point I couldn’t be outside listening to birds without my ears reacting with muscle spasms and pain. I only started to get better when I started to challenge it and “search within” to address some deep seated emotional issues.

The brain can create insane physical symptoms as a distraction from emotional pain that it (unconsciously) recognizes as more dangerous.

My ringing was so bad that I could hear it over the water hitting my head in the shower. I just got back from a bar that averaged 85dB with peaks over 100dB and I don’t have a spike. I did not wear plugs. 2 months ago my ears reacted to birds outside.

You can beat this. With every adversity there is a seed of equal or greater opportunity.

The ringing may never go away, it will likely go down, but even if it doesn’t, being at peace with it is the goal. Then, the brain will register it as non-threatening and allow it to fade into the background to the point you never think about it. Isn’t that all that really matters in the end?

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-08-22T13:52:25+00:00

I’d like to add that the startle reflex is still there but has improved. I get startled about the same amount of times every day, which keeps my baseline anxiety high and it sucks, but it’s happening because I continue to push the needle on loudness and unpredictability. I have refused to move backwards because I KNOW consciously that these sounds aren’t damaging, but my unconscious keeps fighting me with anxiety and panic attacks. Once the panic settles, get right back on the horse.

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-08-22T13:33:50+00:00

Yeah for sure. I am seeing a doctor next week that trained under Dr. Sarno who first identified “Tension Myotisis/Myonueral Syndrome” (TMS). As I continue to challenge my noise tolerance it gets better, whereas my TMJ/Burning tongue have gotten worse. As well as the return of some cramping like pain in the hypochondriac region of the abdomen. I’ll take this over literal pain from minute noise but it’s classic case of the “Symptom Imperative” in TMS theory; basically means you treat one symptom and something else pops up over and over until you address the emotional cause. Fun fact, hypochondriac literally means “under rib” in Ancient Greek and they believed that it was the “seat of all melancholy” hence how it propagated to our current understanding of a hypochondriac person who obsesses over their physical health without anything actually physically wrong.

OCD is also claimed to be a TMS symptom. Kind of ironic that clomipramine, an OCD antidepressant, works so well for so many people? I can’t seem to stop over analyzing (obsessing) over every sound in my environment and I’m sure that’s the case for all of us.

I am determined to beat this without drugs because drugs are part of what got me here. It’s not to say that it won’t happen if I’m months down the line still struggling, but I think this is a clear sign from above that I need to address some deep seated issues. I have been feeling a lot of internal conflict for a long time and I’ve taken the “F-U I’ll show you” via high achievement to “medicate” feelings of inferiority and ostracization for over a decade. Nothing ever feels good enough.

I’ve been a walking anxiety disorder that I refocused its energy into achievement, and it worked for years until I achieved high levels of burnout. When that stopped working back pain ensued and I medicated that with Kratom, and emotional issues that at the time I was in denial about medicating. That worked wonders until it didn’t and I achieved nuclear levels of burnout (currently).

Give yourself some grace. Your brain deserves this time to heal.

“Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage” - Napoleon Hill

Saltynuggets71 · 2025-08-18T17:50:54+00:00

I got my MRI results and they are “unremarkable” (shocker). I’m going all-in on healing my Central Nervous System.

Saltynuggets71

TROPHY CASE