Mine was the sound of ocean waves. I used to play rain and ocean waves to get my kids to fall asleep. To my surprise, I turned off the sound when they fell asleep but the waves were still crashing on the shore. I assumed the neighbors were playing it for their children as well.<p>The same thing the next day, I thought the neighbors had just left their noise machine on all day. At night it became louder and I went outside to check if I was the only one bothered by the noise. I finally asked my wife, she said she hadn't noticed it. Thought she was going deaf. It was starting to really bother me, it was as if they had dialed the sound to 11.<p>I went outside, and surprisingly I saw a neighbor looking out as well. I went back in, plugged my earphones and played an audiobook. Unfortunately I chose a Lord of the rings rendition with sound effects.<p>I got up in the middle of the night, and noticed that the sound was just as loud in the bathroom as in the bedroom. Kitchen and living room, all the same. Whether I covered my ears or not, it all sounded just the same. I laughed to myself.<p>I still spent several weeks of sleepless nights until it went away on it's own. What a terrible experience it was.
For me what helped was creating a long white noise sample, then filtering it to have a peak around the frequency of my particular tinnitus and playing it in a loop at barely audible levels from a good stereo in my bedroom. I'm not exactly sure why that works but to me it seems like having an actual irregular audio signal entering your ears prevents your brain/ear from maintaining a self-oscillating tinnitus.
PSA anytime tinnitus is brought up. I thought I had tinnitus but it turned out to be ear wax resting against my ear drum, and the doctor fixed it in about 5 minutes.
Thank you so much for posting this.<p>The narration was charming and funny. I suspect a lot of us find ourselves yelling at the man in the boat.<p>"The Empty Boat" impacted me to such an extent that I had to take a long walk.<p>I'm someone who often finds poetry really difficult to process, especially in realtime. This poem was just so profound that it cut through today's BS and I am somewhat changed for it.
Empty boat makes me think of support of digital services.<p>Google saves millions upon millions every month by claiming "it's an automated system, we didn't choose that action, so we aren't responsible". There is no chat support to complain to for most of their products.<p>This model is spreading across the economy: intentionally "leaving boats empty" so people feel like there isn't a person to be mad at.<p>But corporations are not faceless autonomous entities: they are collections of people willfully choosing to craft this facade of emptiness to avoid responsibility, costs, or even awareness of when they do harm.<p>These boats are not empty, but the people in them want you to believe they are.
"the sound would disappear when I stood up" - doesn't sound like tinnitus.
There are things like heavy machinery which produce low frequency vibrations which are audible in some rooms depending on acoustics. I once lived near a rail line which was having work done. In one room I experienced the hum, no others, and it would stop when I stuck my head out the window. See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum</a>
This happened to my wife and I (so immediately knew it was real). Turns out it was container ships at the nearby port. I live in Hamburg and the port is quite huge. One night I decided to bike down to the river and it became immediately obvious. Not an empty boat, though knowing did make it easier
One odd thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that in a quiet enough room you can hear the blood flowing through your body. Is this phenomenon considered tinnitus? For me, earplugs allow me to hear this sound better (similar to being under water). I write “better” because it’s calming for my sleep and lets me get to sleep faster. Even stranger, I find it hard to sleep without earplugs for this reason.
For me it turned out to be an instant water heater trying to keep pipes hot. Went at the electrical stuff first l. But even after engaging local power company and long distance distribution folks, nothing was done. But, turning off water heater at night stops it. So much relief after years of noise.
Exactly what did happen to me. Actually my condition is a bit worse, as I have also low freq parastesia (irregular ~70Hz), I "hear my parastesia" (I have also a weak high freq tinitus in the other ear, and on "crisis" my parastesia is so intense, it can give me muscle cramps, it is usually worse during summer).<p>I was sure it was from "outside", and when I moved out to the other side of the world, it followed me... was actually my body giving me hell.<p>Nowadays, my body decides how I live and nobody else, not even me. But the hard part came after that: it took more than 10 years for my administration to aknowledge it and even with that...
I’ve been bothered by a low frequency noise the last few days and I’ve yet to find the source.<p>It’s not quite constant, can hear through my earplugs. It’s almost like a busy set of hard spinning drives in a noisy old PC as heard from a floor below.<p>I need to talk to my neighbour today to see if he’s got any new appliances/devices etc. And invite a friend over to see if they hear it too…<p>Pretty sure I don’t hear it elsewhere so luckily not tinnitus but it’s been driving me a bit crazy!
wow, I have a very similar problem but I have always considered it more like a motorcycle slowly revving in the distance than a washing machine. It does occasionally stop and then start again without a clear pattern.<p>Rather than the drastic attempts at vibration dampening the author took, I discovered the problem was in my head by spending time in very distant locations and noticing the issue remains.
For a while when I was younger I could sometimes hear a steam train when trying to sleep. I had no illusions that it was from outside however, and the rhythm synced to my heartrate.<p>It turned out that I had an undiscovered hole in on of my eardrums that sometimes caused moisture and odd pressure build up in my inner ear. I got it fixed and haven't heard the train since.
If you create a suction over your ears with your palms and fingers facing backwards, flicking your fingers onto your skull for a few seconds, it gives some release of the tinnitus.<p>I didn't even know the slight ringing in my ears was tinnitus until I did the above. I don't listen to loud music but I do use earphones solely to listen to any audio.
I've always found the MyNoise tinnitus track to be mysterious but it seems to work at least for a short amount of time:<p><a href="https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenerator.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/neuromodulationTonesGenera...</a>
I don't think it is an empty boat for me. I think it is the Air Conditioner motor of neighbors (I don't have one). It is especially grating in winter - as I would switch off my fan and sounds are amplified in the cold. Insects chirping (Cicadas?) during rainy seasons are the worst.
depravity or deprivation though? (last line of article)<p>depravity: moral corruption; wickedness
deprivation: an absence or too little of something important<p>Sleep depravity would be a sleep that is morally corrupt. How does that look like? ;-)
Happened to me before, I thought it was a generator running at a construction site down the street. It wasn't that long ago but I don't recall exactly when it stopped or if anything correlated.
I wonder if The Hum is actually tinnitus.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum</a>