Tinnitus is the effects of your brain trying to process the sound from your damaged ear follicles. You can train yourself to ignore it or make it quieter. In a way, it's similar to cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic pain management.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Wait, the CBT I was supposed to be doing for my bad back stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Well as soon as I'm done sitting on this ice pack, I have some calls to make.
Counselling is for dealing with it mentally.
No, it's literally in your head. There is no actual sound in your ears.
My vague understanding is that having background sound helps make it more ignorable, and I assume that there are other things that one can do to make it less of an irritant.
I mean, let's say that your leg is blown off by a landmine. That may make you depressed or whatnot. You can treat secondary factors, even if you can't regenerate the leg.
searches
https://audiologyblog.phonakpro.com/tinnitus-counseling-strategies-to-help-your-patients/
The benefits of counseling intervention for patients with bothersome tinnitus is well-established. The American Academy of Otolaryngology strongly recommends counseling and education to help mitigate its functional and emotional health effects.
Counselling can be useful for undoing, or avoiding maladaptive behaviours (behaviours that are intended to help one problem, but cause other, often more severe problems elsewhere). It's mostly covering the emotional results but the line is quite blurry.
If your tinnitus is bad enough for it to be offered, your likely experiencing emotional based stress from it's fallout. Unpicking that, can avoid developing worse behaviours e.g. using alcohol to get drunk each night, to help fall asleep.
I would guess, with tinnitus, you would also want more specialist help. Tinnitus itself is in the brain, it's very often caused by physical problems in the inner ear. It's possible to reprogram the brain to ignore the rogue signals (ghost or real). That would likely fall under the CBT umbrella, if not something even more specialised.
Fun Fact: The inside of your ears is also inside your head.
Therapy can help your body carry less stress and trauma. Stress and trauma cause muscles to tug and pull on each other, putting pressure on all parts of the body. The physical effects are far more significant than you are probably aware unless you've gone through it. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an indirect impact on multiple parts of the ear and its connection to the brain.
When mine started the doctor mentioned that for some people they listen to the noise so much that it seems in the forefront rather than the background, and has led to suicide. So therapy could be to learn techniques to distract yourself from the sound, or to check in on your overall coping and ensure you aren't thinking of drastic ways to rid yourself of the noise
I've been living with tinnitus for over 10 years.
I was a dumb kid who used to listen to music in my car with my windows up.
Don't do this.
Wind your windows down if you wanna blast it.
(Though your ears would rather you don't).
On the therapy question: understanding that you will end up coping with it relieves a great deal of stress.
There are times when i can lean into the 'sound' and it is actually comforting.
Other times it's maddening.
Similarly: if you're on a train and your music is too loud, take your headphones off and use the speaker. This way you distribute the problem to everyone around you.
Seriously though, in both cases turn the volume down. Everyone in the neighborhood can hear it. And I can assure you that 99% don't want to.
Mind over matter, if you don't mind, it don't matter.
(That is meant to be grammatically incorrect)
I believe the idea is to help you deal with the issue as the root cause can't necessarily be fixed.
I can turn My tinnitus on or off at will if I focus for a minute, because I'm a wizard. Your reality is in your mind. Master your mind, and you become master of reality.