I've been meaning to throw in with this discussion for a couple of months now, ever since I first read a different thread on the same topic where someone mentioned the idea of adjusting the frequency of the noise.
I'll preface all of this by admitting that no, I don't know what the h... any of this is.![]()
The tones I hear are constant and always with me, but they're just as easy to ignore as they are to tune into and become consciously aware of them again. Sometimes my awareness will be brought to them abruptly when I hear another tone -- usually somehow richer and more substantial, perhaps of a lower frequency, or at least in some way different enough from the constant, almost-inaudible whine to grab my attention. It's the kind of sound I associate with someone turning on a TV in the house, so I usually take a moment and try to figure out who might have done so, though that's usually not the case. The sound is usually gone somewhere over the next minute or two.
Also, I remember once reading a conspiracy theory about government agents stalking through the nation with supersonic sound cannons, attributing ear-ringing to them firing upon you from outside on the street, in the woods outside your home, etc. I don't really think I buy this one, though -- I'm not really that big a crackpot, as much as I would love to play one on TV.
Anyway, back in like March or so, upon reading that post I mentioned above, I began experimenting, playing with the sound. I found immediately that I could indeed raise the "frequency" or the "octave" or whatever. The sound, I feel, normally resides somewhere near the top of my ears, and as I raise the pitch, I usually feel a reflexive pulse on each side of my skull -- the pulse seems to travel in an arc up the sides of my skull, above my ears, with each conscious raising of pitch, if that makes any sense.
It's as if the ringing itself is coming from a pair of specific points in space near the top of my ears, and I can feel a physical representation of it moving as I play with the sound.
Either way, all I've been able to do so far is raise the pitch of the sound high enough to get these pulsing points of awareness to converge at the top of my head.
For the first few weeks or so after figuring this all out, raising past a certain frequency (the pulsations usually near the top of my skull by this time) would cause a sensation in my left ear canal, feeling like it was swelling shut and pulsing in time with my heart, and the actual audible pulsing of blood was really loud. This sensation of having a full ear usually went away fairly quickly, as it would distract me from holding the ringing at the tone where I wanted it and it would slide back down to whatever octave at which it normally resides. I don't know what this controllable ear-closing sensation was, but it was really cool, and it seems to have disappeared in the past weeks.
Either way, I can still hear the ringing and I can still increase the frequency, and I can still feel those points of awareness move when I do so.
Oh, also -- I don't know if it's related, but the top of my right ear likes to twitch sometimes, and it usually stays for a day or two, twitching every couple of minutes, then it disappears for a few weeks. It feels like sometime is tugging on it, though there's no sensation of fingers actually grasping the cartilage. I'm experiencing it right now, which is probably why I was reminded to finally weigh in on this discussion.
Let me know if you guys figure any of this out.
Best,
--V
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