How I Stopped the Ringing in My Ear (on most days)
To me, it feels like I made a full recovery from tinnitus, something I never imagined would be possible when my tinnitus was at its worst. The ringing isn’t gone, but I often hear nothing at all. And when I do hear the ringing, it no longer bothers me. I enjoy life to the fullest without tinnitus holding me back, including going to music festivals and doing intensive sports.
I don’t mean to say that you will achieve exactly the same result – everyone is different. I simply want to show you that I was in a very dark place, and even with hearing loss, stress, anxiety, and a busy life, there is something you can do about tinnitus!
This is my story.
How I Stopped the Ringing in My Ear (on most days)
To me, it feels like I made a full recovery from tinnitus, something I never imagined would be possible when my tinnitus was at its worst.
The ringing isn’t gone, but I often hear nothing at all. And when I do hear the ringing, it no longer bothers me. I enjoy life to the fullest without tinnitus holding me back, including going to music festivals and doing intensive sports.
I don’t mean to say that you will achieve exactly the same result – everyone is different. I simply want to show you that I was in a very dark place, and even with hearing loss, stress, anxiety, and a busy life, there is something you can do about tinnitus!
This is my story.
What? No Cure For Tinnitus?
How my tinnitus started and everything changed.
There I was, running to the bathroom again and closing the door. Was the high-pitched noise in my left ear still there?
Yes. I could clearly hear it, the same sound that started when a wave crashed into my ear while I was kitesurfing.
It happened during a period of intense stress. I was overworked and exhausted at home. I had a very busy job that involved a lot of travel which eventually burned me out, and I had to call in sick. Just when I thought I was recovering, the tinnitus started.
Scared about what was happening to me, I searched online for answers. It quickly became clear that I had tinnitus, something I had always been afraid of because of the stories I’d heard.
What I read next made me even more scared. There was no cure. People on forums were talking about depression and how tinnitus was affecting their daily lives.
I remember thinking, Is this really happening to me? Did the Harvard Medical website really just tell me I’d have to live with a horrible noise in my ear for the rest of my life? That thought sent shivers down my spine.
From Hope to Frustration
What I tried to make the ringing stop.
The months that followed quickly became the most frustrating time of my life. Desperate to fix the problem, I ended up on tinnitus forums where people claimed they had cured their tinnitus in all kinds of alternative ways. For a moment, I felt hopeful again.
People said certain vitamins and pills would help, so I bought ginkgo biloba online. It did nothing.
I listened to white noise all day to distract myself, because I read somewhere this could help me. I masked my tinnitus as much as I could, and I was constantly pausing it to check if the tinnitus was still there. The moment I turned the noise off, it came back, seeming even louder than before.
I also walked around all day with noise-canceling headphones, trying to “protect” my ears because I was afraid of making my tinnitus worse. I used to enjoy going to music festivals, but now I even stopped listening to music altogether.
At first, some of these things seemed to help a little. But over the weeks and months that followed, they actually made the ringing worse.
Every time I tried something new and it didn’t work, I went from feeling hopeful to completely discouraged. I already had a lot of stress from work, and now the tinnitus was added on top of that. Why me? I kept thinking. Why now?
Insignificant.
“I later realized that it doesn’t really matter what caused my tinnitus, whether it was the hearing loss, stress, anxiety or something else. What mattered was that because I didn’t know what to do and I was under severe stress, I was turning an insignificant beep into a hellish noise myself.”
Then It Got Much Worse
It was spiraling out of control.
As I focused more and more on my tinnitus, a second sound started to appear. The constant high pitched beep in my left ear was now joined by a lower whooshing sound, like water running.
Wait, this can actually get worse? I thought. The high pitched ringing already felt unbearable and now there was another sound on top of it. What is going on here? The tinnitus was no longer just affecting my mood. It started to affect my sleep too.
I actually became afraid to go to sleep. I hoped the tinnitus would be gone by morning, only to be disappointed again when I woke up and the noise was still there. My sleep had already been bad because of stress from work and this only made it worse.
Trying to protect my ears, I started wearing earplugs more and more, even in the cinema. I remember having friends over when someone laughed and it actually felt like it hurt my ears. I had to cover my ears with my hands because it felt painful.
I later realized that, because I was over-protecting my ears, I developed hyperacusis, an oversensitivity to sound. Without knowing it, I was actually making things worse and worse with unhelpful behavior.
Irreversible Hearing Loss
Some answers, but no solution in sight.
I went back to my doctor, which is always the first and right thing to do when you get tinnitus. He recommended that I see an ENT specialist who could do some thorough checks. I started to feel hopeful again. Maybe they would find a physical problem that could be fixed with surgery.
I took a hearing test to check the condition of my ears. The results showed hearing loss in both ears, with the left ear slightly worse than the right. My hearing was weakest around 6000 Hz, which was the same frequency as my tinnitus. Even though my hearing was still within the normal range, the ENT said this hearing loss could be a major factor contributing to my tinnitus. He also said stress could definitely make it worse, or might even have been the trigger, along with the wave during kitesurfing.
Even though I had now found at least one major cause of my tinnitus, it did not really help me. The doctors confirmed this and said “sorry, there is no cure, there’s nothing we can do. Just ignore it!” Sure, how could I ignore this horrible sound?!
On top of feeling disappointed by the advice I received, I also felt angry at myself. Why did I not start wearing earplugs at parties when I was younger? Why did I not use ear protection while kitesurfing? And why did I let myself get so stressed from work?
I Developed a Method
No more searching for miracle cures.
Completely exhausted from the process and with no solution in sight, my sleep became even worse. I remember having nightmares that I woke up from sweating, with the noise feeling much louder. The lack of sleep and constant stress reached a point where I could not take it anymore.
Out of desperation, I said to myself, come on Roel, you are a biomedical engineer. You should be able to fix this yourself. It’s time to stop chasing miracle cures, forget the forums and do some proper research.
I applied structured problem solving, something I had learned during my Master’s in Biomedical Engineering. I realized I first needed to understand what was actually happening in my head and what was causing the tinnitus to become louder.
I went on PubMed, followed courses, and bought every science-based book on tinnitus I could find. By researching the leading tinnitus experts in the world, I discovered treatments that could actually help and realized that something could, in fact, be done. When I learned about the neurophysiological tinnitus model by Drs. Jastreboff and Hazell, something finally clicked.
I began to understand why my tinnitus had not been getting better. Since the stone age, our brains have been wired to survive threats by becoming hyper alert, a reaction known as the fight or flight response. That same system was causing my brain to treat tinnitus as a threat, creating a vicious cycle that kept reinforcing the sound.
Contradicting Advice
Combining 4 seemingly opposing methods.
I eventually found four tinnitus treatments that were being used around the world with solid research behind them: Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. I tried them out on myself and combined the parts that worked best for me. That wasn’t easy to do, because they seemed to contradict each other:
- TRT: “mask the tinnitus with hearing-aid type devices”
- Mindfulness: “listen to your tinnitus in silence”
- CBT: “change your thoughts towards tinnitus”
- ACT: “accept it and focus on other things”
Do you see how that left me confused? At the same time, I could see good ideas in each approach.
My Method Worked!
Tinnitus was no longer in control.
Over time, I adapted these methods in a way that actually worked for me. I also made some serious changes in my life to reduce stress. I realized that if I did not change the underlying stress and behaviors that were already there, I would never get the best possible results.
Little by little, my approach started to work. My sleep improved and I felt less stressed. The months that followed were not a straight line up. It was often two steps forward and one step back, but overall I was clearly improving. I could still hear the tinnitus, but I was no longer reacting to it in the same way.
As my stress and anxiety went down and my sleep improved, I started doing things I enjoyed again, like kitesurfing and going to music festivals. Over time, I even began to have moments when I did not notice my tinnitus at all. These days, I can go several days in a row where I don’t hear the ringing, not even in a silent room. And on the days when I do hear it, it does not upset me anymore.
Years later, I realized I could potentially help others like me avoid the emotional rollercoaster I went through.
Helping Others
Creating the Still Tinnitus course.
Working on Still Tinnitus alongside my regular job, I set myself a clear mission: to help 10,000 people find relief from tinnitus without the downsides of conventional tinnitus therapy. I wanted to create tinnitus care that is accessible, without group therapy, travel, long wait lists, or expensive devices.
In 2023, I quit my job and decided to work on Still Tinnitus full time. It took me years creating and refining a 5-step course that incorporated everything I had learned.
I wasn’t sure if it would work, because I’m a biomedical engineer, not an audiologist, doctor, or psychologist. Later, I realized this was actually a strength. While tinnitus researchers around the world often promote one single method as the solution, I was able to take a broader view. I believe in combining the best elements from different approaches works best because everyone’s different.
I’m very proud the effectiveness of the course was demonstrated by an independent study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. My course is not a miracle cure, but it can help spare you some of the misery I went through myself.
Please stay hopeful and stay away from negative messages. Because there is something you can do. If you would like to know more about the course, click here.
Stay hopeful ♥️
Roel van Gorkum
Learn From My Experience
My relevant tinnitus education.
Here is some of my relevant education, experience and training related to tinnitus. Both theory, my own experience, and helping many others shaped the way I understand tinnitus and work with it today.
- Tinnitus Retraining Therapy trainer personally certified and trained by Dr. Pawel & Dr. Margaret Jastreboff
- Masters in BioMedical Engineering from the Technical University of Delft
- Trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy by Dr. Stephen Hayes
- Trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
- Studied over 250+ articles and books on tinnitus
- Helped over 1400+ people with tinnitus so far.
If you’re interested in my help, I have a free tinnitus webinar you are welcome to attend.
What? No Cure For Tinnitus?
How my tinnitus started and everything changed.
There I was, running to the bathroom again and closing the door. Was the high-pitched noise in my left ear still there?
Yes. I could clearly hear it, the same sound that started when a wave crashed into my ear while I was kitesurfing.
It happened during a period of intense stress. I was overworked and exhausted at home. I had a very busy job that involved a lot of travel which eventually burned me out, and I had to call in sick. Just when I thought I was recovering, the tinnitus started.
Scared about what was happening to me, I searched online for answers. It quickly became clear that I had tinnitus, something I had always been afraid of because of the stories I’d heard.
What I read next made me even more scared. There was no cure. People on forums were talking about depression and how tinnitus was affecting their daily lives.
I remember thinking, Is this really happening to me? Did the Harvard Medical website really just tell me I’d have to live with a horrible noise in my ear for the rest of my life? That thought sent shivers down my spine.
From Hope to Frustration
What I tried to make the ringing stop.
The months that followed quickly became the most frustrating time of my life. Desperate to fix the problem, I ended up on tinnitus forums where people claimed they had cured their tinnitus in all kinds of alternative ways. For a moment, I felt hopeful again.
People said certain vitamins and pills would help, so I bought ginkgo biloba online. It did nothing.
I listened to white noise all day to distract myself, because I read somewhere this could help me. I masked my tinnitus as much as I could, and I was constantly pausing it to check if the tinnitus was still there. The moment I turned the noise off, it came back, seeming even louder than before.
I also walked around all day with noise-canceling headphones, trying to “protect” my ears because I was afraid of making my tinnitus worse. I used to enjoy going to music festivals, but now I even stopped listening to music altogether.
At first, some of these things seemed to help a little. But over the weeks and months that followed, they actually made the ringing worse.
Every time I tried something new and it didn’t work, I went from feeling hopeful to completely discouraged. I already had a lot of stress from work, and now the tinnitus was added on top of that. Why me? I kept thinking. Why now?
Insignificant.
“I later realized that it doesn’t really matter what caused my tinnitus, whether it was the hearing loss, stress, anxiety or something else. What mattered was that because I didn’t know what to do and I was under severe stress, I was turning an insignificant beep into a hellish noise myself.”
Then It Got Much Worse
It was spiraling out of control.
As I focused more and more on my tinnitus, a second sound started to appear. The constant high pitched beep in my left ear was now joined by a lower whooshing sound, like water running.
Wait, this can actually get worse? I thought. The high pitched ringing already felt unbearable and now there was another sound on top of it. What is going on here? The tinnitus was no longer just affecting my mood. It started to affect my sleep too.
I actually became afraid to go to sleep. I hoped the tinnitus would be gone by morning, only to be disappointed again when I woke up and the noise was still there. My sleep had already been bad because of stress from work and this only made it worse.
Trying to protect my ears, I started wearing earplugs more and more, even in the cinema. I remember having friends over when someone laughed and it actually felt like it hurt my ears. I had to cover my ears with my hands because it felt painful.
I later realized that, because I was over-protecting my ears, I developed mild hyperacusis, an oversensitivity to sound. Without knowing it, I was actually making things worse and worse with unhelpful behavior.
Irreversible Hearing Loss
Some answers, but no solution in sight.
I went back to my doctor, which is always the first and right thing to do when you get tinnitus. He recommended that I see an ENT specialist who could do some thorough checks. I started to feel hopeful again. Maybe they would find a physical problem that could be fixed with surgery.
I took a hearing test to check the condition of my ears. The results showed hearing loss in both ears, with the left ear slightly worse than the right. My hearing was weakest around 6000 Hz, which was the same frequency as my tinnitus. Even though my hearing was still within the normal range, the ENT said this hearing loss could be a major factor contributing to my tinnitus. He also said stress could definitely make it worse, or might even have been the trigger, along with the wave during kitesurfing.
Even though I had now found at least one major cause of my tinnitus, it did not really help me. The doctors confirmed this and said “sorry, there is no cure, there’s nothing we can do. Just ignore it!” Sure, how could I ignore this horrible sound?!
On top of feeling disappointed by the advice I received, I also felt angry at myself. Why did I not start wearing earplugs at parties when I was younger? Why did I not use ear protection while kitesurfing? And why did I let myself get so stressed from work?
I Developed a Method
No more searching for miracle cures.
Completely exhausted from the process and with no solution in sight, my sleep became even worse. I remember having nightmares that I woke up from sweating, with the noise feeling much louder. The lack of sleep and constant stress reached a point where I could not take it anymore.
Out of desperation, I said to myself, come on Roel, you are a biomedical engineer. You should be able to fix this yourself. It’s time to stop chasing miracle cures, forget the forums and do some proper research.
I applied structured problem solving, something I had learned during my Master’s in Biomedical Engineering. I realized I first needed to understand what was actually happening in my head and what was causing the tinnitus to become louder.
I went on PubMed, followed courses, and bought every science-based book on tinnitus I could find. By researching the leading tinnitus experts in the world, I discovered treatments that could actually help and realized that something could, in fact, be done. When I learned about the neurophysiological tinnitus model by Drs. Jastreboff and Hazell, something finally clicked.
I began to understand why my tinnitus had not been getting better. Since the stone age, our brains have been wired to survive threats by becoming hyper alert, a reaction known as the fight or flight response. That same system was causing my brain to treat tinnitus as a threat, creating a vicious cycle that kept reinforcing the sound.
Contradicting Advice
Combining 4 seemingly opposing methods.
I eventually found four tinnitus treatments that were being used around the world with solid research behind them: Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. I tried them out on myself and combined the parts that worked best for me. That wasn’t easy to do, because they seemed to contradict each other:
- TRT: “mask the tinnitus with hearing-aid type devices”
- Mindfulness: “listen to your tinnitus in silence”
- CBT: “change your thoughts towards tinnitus”
- ACT: “accept it and focus on other things”
Do you see how that left me confused? At the same time, I could see good ideas in each approach.
My Method Worked!
Tinnitus was no longer in control.
Over time, I adapted these methods in a way that actually worked for me. I also made some serious changes in my life to reduce stress. I realized that if I did not change the underlying stress and behaviors that were already there, I would never get the best possible results.
Little by little, my approach started to work. My sleep improved and I felt less stressed. The months that followed were not a straight line up. It was often two steps forward and one step back, but overall I was clearly improving. I could still hear the tinnitus, but I was no longer reacting to it in the same way.
As my stress and anxiety went down and my sleep improved, I started doing things I enjoyed again, like kitesurfing and going to music festivals. Over time, I even began to have moments when I did not notice my tinnitus at all. These days, I can go several days in a row where I don’t hear the ringing, not even in a silent room. And on the days when I do hear it, it does not upset me anymore.
Years later, I realized I could potentially help others like me avoid the emotional rollercoaster I went through.
Helping Others
Creating the Still Tinnitus course.
Working on Still Tinnitus alongside my regular job, I set myself a clear mission: to help 10,000 people find relief from tinnitus without the downsides of conventional tinnitus therapy. I wanted to create tinnitus care that is accessible, without group therapy, travel, long wait lists, or expensive devices.
In 2023, I quit my job and decided to work on Still Tinnitus full time. It took me years creating and refining a 5-step course that incorporated everything I had learned.
I wasn’t sure if it would work, because I’m a biomedical engineer, not an audiologist, doctor, or psychologist. Later, I realized this was actually a strength. While tinnitus researchers around the world often promote one single method as the solution, I was able to take a broader view. I believe in combining the best elements from different approaches works best because everyone’s different.
I’m very proud the effectiveness of the course was demonstrated by an independent study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. My course is not a miracle cure, but it can help spare you some of the misery I went through myself.
Please stay hopeful and stay away from negative messages. Because there is something you can do. If you would like to know more about the course, click here.
Stay hopeful ♥️
Roel van Gorkum
Learn From My Experience
My relevant tinnitus education.
Here is some of my relevant education, experience and training related to tinnitus. Both theory, my own experience, and helping many others shaped the way I understand tinnitus and work with it today.
- Tinnitus Retraining Therapy trainer personally certified and trained by Dr. Pawel & Dr. Margaret Jastreboff
- Masters in BioMedical Engineering from the Technical University of Delft
- Trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy by Dr. Stephen Hayes
- Trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
- Studied over 250+ articles and books on tinnitus
- Helped over 1400+ people with tinnitus so far.
If you’re interested in my help, I have a free tinnitus webinar you are welcome to attend.