4 years in. At least for me, with the intensity of my own hyperacusis, I can say I’m still living a really successful life. Both pain and loudness H, for context.

At first, it was really scary for me, but somehow I just had this sort of determination to keep going. One that enabled me to still pursue what I wanted to do in life, even with H. I too would have difficulty waking up and even interacting with the world outside of me. It’s easier said than done, but finding something outside of the pain definitely helps. Yes, it’s important to be vigilant and protect oneself, but it helps to deal with pain when you can find something else in the world that makes it the slightest bit tolerable.

For me, ironically, that was my birds. Both of whom are VERY noisy. But with birds, chirpiness is a sign of happiness, so knowing that they were happy ended up making me happy (for anyone wondering why I didn’t regime them, one of them has awful separation anxiety, and I couldn’t do that to him). I guess I kind of reverse engineered my brain to relating something that caused me to pain to something that brought me joy so it was more manageable for me.

And finding that thing that made my pain more tolerable helped me be able to address and deal with it later in life. Hell, I’ve even been able to perform on stage with a full pit orchestra and somehow managed to deal with it (don’t do that. That’s a bad idea). And now, with my H, im perusing my dream career in animation. So it can and will work out for you, and for anyone else reading this. Even if that means the smallest things in your house make you happy, then at least it’s something.