I received this question in my mailbag on Quora, and it’s quite a common mistake. Here’s my advice…
Hearing protection dulls your hearing, creating an artificial level of quiet. One of the main triggers (almost universal) for tinnitus is a quiet environment. So using noise cancellation headphones, for example, creates good conditions for your tinnitus to pop up.
Being in a quiet place also removes the cues that you would normally measure your tinnitus against. Whenever audiologists try and work out how ‘loud’ tinnitus is (perhaps by measuring the volume of sound required to cover it up), they come up with something very small. If you are in an office with a bit of background noise, you can usually tell your tinnitus is quiet in comparison.
However, in silence, you have nothing to gauge it against. The tinnitus signal grows in size to fill the gap.
This is because hearing is psychoacoustic, so it’s partly dependent on the sound level, partly dependent on how much attention we are paying to it.
If you wear noise cancelling headphones because you’re sensitive to too much noise, it’s best to “feed” your ears with low level sound/music/white noise at the same time.
If you’re using regular earplugs, go for the smallest level of sound reduction possible, and wear them sparingly.
Don’t allow yourself to sit quietly, focusing on your tinnitus. It will only get louder.
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