[JayStavis]

I had a pretty brutal headcold a few years back and for about two weeks afterwards I had what I described as "supersonic hearing" though my doctor called it tinnitus.

I could hear my neighbor's garage opening a block away in San Francisco and had a frequency sensitivity that was totally abnormal. It was also really painful so I'm glad I got my normal hearing range back.

[1970-01-01]

This is called hyperacusis, and it's related to tinnitus. Hearing the door bell, unrolling a strip of packing tape, or even walking down a busy street can make you feel physical pain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis

[stephenitis]

Thank you, this describes me!

I have been trying to describe my hearing symptoms to people and I could only say that I thought I was more sensitive than almost all of my peers. I thought it was because I was mildly on the spectrum(this is listed as an associated condition)

I will try to get a doctor to confirm if possible.

It doesn't cause me physical pain but certain many sounds will cause great discomfort in my life. It also keeps me from good sleep because I can't tune out sounds.

I wear earplugs to concerts and have a decibel monitor app on my phone.

I enjoy producing music in my free time and also enjoy taking the occasional psychedelic. Which is probably making it worse.

[rewgs]

I have this, as well as multiple very loud permanent tinnitus tones. The latter sucks, but hyperacusis ruined my life, as well as stopping my career as a (I think it's fair to describe myself this way) promising film/video game composer dead in its track.

It is the most horrible condition you can ever imagine. I'm over two years in and am only recently back to being able to live a somewhat normal life, but I easily get "setbacks" due to loud sounds. In the hyperacusis community it's well known that these can become your new normal -- it's happened to me multiple times.

Protect your ears and try your best to not get concussions, folks. Though I can't confirm that one or either is the cause, it's my best guess and is good advice anyway.

[pyinstallwoes]

Does ear protection work? Maybe a custom fitted one would help?

[rewgs]

Depends on what I'm protecting from. The problem, though, is that loud-enough-to-cause-a-setback noises happen all the time. You of course won't notice if they don't cause you pain, but people yell, drop things, trucks clang and their breaks squeak, fire alarms go off...

All of these can cause setbacks, some permanent (for instance, a random fire alarm permanently increased my hearing sensitivity/pain). Wearing earplugs full time isn't a solution, partially because that's just an untenable way to go through life, and partially because your brain will compensate by turning up its "input gain," effectively making your hyperacusis even worse.

Most people with severe hyperacusis have no choice but to become shut-ins. A large percentage eventually kill themselves, to the point that I had to stop going to support forums because it happened to often.

It is truly a hellish condition. I've thankfully always come back from the points in which you could describe my condition as "severe" -- there have been times where even my own speaking voice caused me pain -- but many, many people don't, and I'm always walking a tightrope, fully aware that my somewhat normal life I've clawed my way back to could be over at any moment.

[pyinstallwoes]

Thank you for sharing and replying. I feel for you.

[unvs]

Thanks for this. I remember having this as a child, where the sound of walking down the stairs at home would be painful and almost threatening. It hasn't returned since then, thankfully.

[JayStavis]

TIL. I was semi-hoping someone would fill in the gap! At the same time I'm wondering why the heck my doctor won't tell me these things.

[sbierwagen]

The average doctor does not have an encyclopedic knowledge of all human disease, and if they do, they are discouraged from using it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine)

[samplatt]

Doctors only know what they've been taught or experienced. You'd hope specialists would know these things, but even they miss things and forget things. And GP's? fuggeddaboutit

[IIAOPSW]

I have an uncle that has this funny habit of answering the door before you ring the bell. That sounds impressive until you learn how many times a day he opens the door and no one is there. He's schizophrenic. The cost of increased sensitivity is a higher false positive rate. If there were no drawbacks, evolution would have given us heightened senses 100% of the time.

I'm not suggesting you had any sort of psychiatric issue. I'm sure your increased sensitivity was very real and very grounded in realistic expectations of reality. But, are you sure that there were no false positives that came with the heightened sensory experience? Did you ever check that the thing you recognized as a garage door opening down the block was in fact a garage door opening down the block? Could it have been some other subtle sound you normally don't pick up on?

[JayStavis]

On the garage door bit, yes I actually did confirm this.

With that said, was certainly hearing all sorts of things that I didn't know what they were, typically very low frequencies. Another comment mentioned my own heartbeat which I could hear, and I couldn't go into work for a few days due to how painful and distracting ambient noise was.

For the duration of the period I was wearing noise-canceling airpods, and it was the only way trucks passing by outside wouldn't make me wince.

No history of psychiatric issues fwiw, but have had my share of ENT irregularities (I can't properly equalize while diving, for example).

[IIAOPSW]

Really really want to clarify I was in no way implying a psychiatric issue. Just that anything which turns up the sensitivity of our perception also turns up our false positive rate. Everyone experiences false positives sometimes: occasional, temporary, erroneous perceptions. Its only psychiatric when the signal to noise ratio is too low to correct.

Very interested in the ultra low frequency bit. Any estimate at how many hertz it was? Somewhere under 20 hz it has to stop being sound and start being a consciously perceptible "puff of air".

[nonethewiser]

Hmm I didn’t think that was tinnitus. Maybe symptoms are broader than I thought. I wonder if that’s what I have.

I had a bad sinus infection that has mostly healed. Sometimes I can hear this very low rhythmic beating in my ear. It’s like someone banging on my furnace or doing some sort of distant construction (banging on sheet metal). I can even hear it with noise canceling headphones on (but no music, that drowns it out). The rhythm makes me wonder if it’s my heartbeat somehow.

For a long time I thought it was distant construction but I’m in a very rural area with no construction around, and I’ve noticed it over the span of months. It’s either something like tinnitus or maybe my neighbor is tunneling under my house.

[rocketbop]

It likely is your heartbeat. I had a similar thing for a long time. Advice would be to try and forget about it, and it will go away. The more attention. You give it the more prominent it will become.

I think the brain tends to filter the body sounds out of our consciousness in general and sometimes it sort of forgets to, or becomes rewired to notice or focus on something that is normally filtered.

[ksaj]

This is straight-up tinnitus. Ever since I had ear surgery, I have various types of tinnitus. When the low form started, it reminded me of an idling diesel engine. But of course I mainly get the kind that is easy to mistake for cicadas. Sometimes I've had static sounds, too.

When I was still healing, I would also get phantom choral voices! That was really disturbing. It usually was triggered and filtered by the bathroom fan, so I basically got to crap in a heavenly soundscape, lol.