literally deafining silence

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Curious if anyone else has experienced this.

When there is silence and I mean real silence, no fridge humming or crickets chirping etc.

I start to hear and feel a high pitched buzz, that gets louder and louder with every passing moment.

I usually find a way to make noise, but once it starts it's hard to stop as it seems the noise cannot be made by me... Humming doesn't work, tapping wall etc. But TV will, or someone talking or even some form of background noise. Once it's over I'm really unsettled, shaken up and disorientated. It feels like the noise is still there even though I know it has stopped for minutes afterwards.

It also feels as if the silence didn't stop my brain would explode.

It's called tinnitus, and is pretty common. Nearly everyone, when it is quiet, will be able to hear a high-pitched buzzing which is the result of hearing damage. (We all have hearing damage unless you like, grew up in the woods, everyday life around us is too loud to not cause small amounts of it.)

Your description of it getting louder is more unusual. Could easily be an ASD thing, working in the same way that some people will find everyday sounds too loud at some point and not others. And this is a sound like any other sound for those purposes. Could also mean you just have tinnitus worse than other people. People who have it strongly will nearly always notice it more when it's quiet, and for many it does not exist when there's something to focus on. Plainly, the lack of focus of something else is making you focus on it, and that coupled with the ASD thing where a sense's salience is not well-controlled, it becomes out of hand quite easily.

Older people are the ones who tend to report more serious issues with tinnitus, and also weirdness, like instead of it being buzzing they might hear music, or the same song, over and over but like it's actually there like tinnitus, and not just in their mind's ear, and it will go away if there's other music on.

Yah - I get tinnitus. Seems to have gotten a bit worse as I get older.

You do get used to it and are able to ignore it but as soon as you think about it --> there it is. It's a bit of a pain in the hindquarters but there's nada to be done about it.

Yes, I have some moderate tinnitus also. For years, I can't get to sleep without a fan to block it out.

I don't know. It could be tinnitus, as several here have said.

The first time I heard it, my mother said she had heard that it was the sound of electricity. We have both heard a high pitched sound late at night when it's quiet, but we've heard it at the same time but only when listening in the same direction or from the same spot, so that at least couldn't be tinnitus.

Can anyone else hear it? Do you hear it regardless of where you are, or just from one location or when listening in one direction?


IDK how valid this one is, but it's interesting.

Your description reminds me of my tinnitus. Mine becomes worse after I have been in a noisy environment, so I try to avoid them. Even driving a car with the window down can make it worse for several hours.

Yes. It´s tinnitus.
Only 5-6% of people in our world has a "clean" (noise free) ear.
Furthermore, our bodies are noisy in themselves. There is heartbeat, pulses, blood running, valves working, sinuses squeeking and muscles firing off impulses like a machinegun if we even think of a movement. Another thing is, that the ears have their own sound, that can sometimes be recorded - and the brain will "percieve" noise if we are deprived of sound all together.
Oh, blessed silence!

An easy way to tell the difference between real high-pitched sounds from external sources and tinnitus is to block your ears with earplugs or your fingers. If you have tinnitus, it will just get louder. If it's real, you'll block it out.