My Cure for Sound Sensitivity

[bthompsonjr1993]

Very helpful, thanks for all the tools. I have been using just earplugs.

Of course! Just stick with this. It was a miracle for me and many others I know who have tried it

 

[Mrs Stellar]

I have discovered something that has cured my sound sensitivity, it is TINNITUS RETRAINING THERAPY. I had HORRIBLE sensitivity to sound, and tinnitus retraining therapy SAVED me. The sensitivity was so bad that I was literally on the verge of ending it all, I thought there was no hope, I thought there was no chance it would work, but I had to give it a shot, and it WORKED. I highly, highly, highly recommend it to all CFS patients suffering with sound sensitivity (hyperacusis). It works for all types of sound sensitivity, no matter the cause. It is the only CFS symptom that I have ever been able to improve. If sound sensitivity is something you are struggling with, please please please try tinnitus retraining therapy. I did it without spending a dollar.

I find that when I force myself to tolerate noise, I often experience a spell of PEM after. Was this a problem for you with the training?

 

[valentinelynx]

She said that the reason our brains are freaking out at sound is because something has happened to cause them to erroneously believe that these low levels of sound are too loud and will do damage to our hearing, so a large part of fixing it is using your conscious thoughts as much as possible to remind yourself that “No, brain, you need to relax, these levels are WELL below anything that would hurt me.”

I find that a strange thing for your audiologist to tell you. Maybe it's true for some individuals, but it's not my experience. I don't find all noises intrusive. If I'm paying attention to a radio or TV show or music then I need it loud to understand it, but if I'm not listening to it, I find it painfully intrusive. The same is true for me and sources of continuous noise, like air conditioners, heaters, or any kind of fans.

I don't like "white noise", meaning continuous rushing sounds. I'm not fearful that these sounds will injure me, but rather I find them constantly annoying. It's like I don't adapt to it like a normal person would. When a fan shuts off, I immediately feel relief, like a weight has been lifted off of me. On the other hand, truly loud noises, like certain hand drying blowers (those at WalMart and Target are of this kind), make me cringe. These are loud enough to cause hearing damage with frequent exposure (I've actually measured the decibels with a phone app while sitting in a stall ), and I don't understand why they are allowed in public bathrooms.

 

[Hip]

She said that the reason our brains are freaking out at sound is because something has happened to cause them to erroneously believe that these low levels of sound are too loud and will do damage to our hearing, so a large part of fixing it is using your conscious thoughts as much as possible to remind yourself that “No, brain, you need to relax, these levels are WELL below anything that would hurt me.”

I am not sure if this audiologist's explanation of hyperacusis — the idea of soft sounds erroneously being perceived as loud — entirely aligns with my experience of sound sensitivity.

For me, hyperacusis is a brain "firewall" malfunction (sensory gating malfunction): it's the intrusion of the non-relevant sound stimuli into consciousness when the firewall should be filtering them out.

The brain's firewall (sensory gating) constantly performs a vital role of greatly filtering down the amount of sensory stimuli that reaches conscious awareness. If it did not do this, consciousness would be completely overloaded with billions of sensory stimuli from our surrounding environment.

This firewall is a highly intelligent process: have you ever experienced the phenomenon where you are considering buying a particular model of car, and all of a sudden, you become aware of that model whenever one drives past you. You start seeing that car everywhere, whereas previously you never noticed it. This is because the firewall knows what is relevant and irrelevant to you, and filters out the irrelevant sensory stimuli, but passes the relevant into conscious awareness.

More about the brain's firewall and hyperacusis in this post.



So for me, at lot of the hyperacusis is extraneous environmental sounds disturbing my consciousness while I am concentrating on something else. The sounds disturb consciousness because they are not being filtered out by the firewall. In this way, sounds can feel horribly "intrusive" in the mind.

Such sensory gating issues are known to exist in autism and schizophrenia.



I expect your audiologist may be trained in the somewhat dubious central sensitivity syndrome (CSS) notions, which tries to explain the symptoms of diseases like ME/CFS in terms of inappropriate signal amplification in the brain and nervous system. However, even if CSS exists, sound sensitivity may be unrelated to central sensitization. More about CSS and sound sensitivity in this post.



But going back to your white noise video treatment for sound sensitivity: it may that consciously focusing attention on this white noise soundtrack helps train the brain's firewall, so that it becomes more adept at filtering out irrelevant, meaningless auditory stimuli from relevant ones.

 

[bthompsonjr1993]

I find that when I force myself to tolerate noise, I often experience a spell of PEM after. Was this a problem for you with the training?

No, because when I did this training, I was laying down, with my eyes closed, and while deep breathing. My focus was not on pushing my brain to do anything. It was on acceptance. Accept that it is uncomfortable. Passively accept it and lay there long enough that you get lost in thoughts and you can actually forget about the noise

 

[Dainty]

I'm so glad you found something that helped you. Thanks so much for sharing it!

I had really severe hyperacusis that improved when the rest of me did. A lot of mine is/was tried to trauma. I still have pretty severe PTSD from my severe years and certain noises can still result in hyperacusis. A lot of it, for me, depends on the energy behind the sound. E.g. happy dogs at a dog park play barking do not trigger it, but stressed out frantic dogs barking will have me collapsed. My husband doing dishes is fine--my mom's doing dishes makes my brain go blank mid-sentence and I can't think and I have to leave the room ASAP.

My theory behind observing my own hyperacusis is whenever my brain is trying to rest is when it's most sensitive to unwanted sound. During my severe years, that was 24/7. Nowadays it happens when I haven't had enough sleep for a few nights in a row or some similar equivalent exhaustion.

Again, so glad you found something that helps you, that's free, that others can try as well! Maybe I will experiment with it one of these days.

 

[winterschlaf]

All I did was listen to this video

in headphones at a level so low that if I turned it any lower it would not be audible. And I listened to that for every moment of the day that I could, and then when I would get used to it and forget I was even listening to it, I would turn the volume up one, and I just continued that process, but then when I was up to a reasonable volume on that video, I switched over to this video

and did the same thing with that video, starting from a barely audible volume and working my way up.

My rule was that I would spend as little time in silence every day as humanly possible. The more time you spend in silence, the more you allow it to progress. I was so severe that I couldn't tolerate the low, barely audible whirr of the AC in my place. Now I am pretty much back to normal.

If you have any questions, please ask me, I would love to help in any way I can.

Hey @bctjr1993


Thank you for sharing this.


I'm also really right at the end of the line with hyperacusis and trying your version of the retraining/sound therapy method, although I find I cannot tolerate any kind of pink noise yet so have chosen a video by the same creator which is just brown noise, instead of your first one which was brown into pink.


Hopefully a place to start til I can tolerate the full pink spectrum.


Wanted to ask about method -
did mean you would do this gradual upward volume adjustment throughout the day when you would acclimatise to the levels, or that upward adjustment was something which would happen over time eg weeks and months?


Would you also adjust volume down during the day if you became more sensitive, or tough it out, or take a break from listening and resume later at the previous volume setting?


I mean, is it important to be consistent and stick to this very gradual adjustment upward, not losing ground, always resuming at the exact same level as you left off the previous day?


Or can the volume vary through each day, always starting at the lowest audible volume and going from there according to varying sensitivity that day?


Did you also mean you might acclimatise to a kind of "normal" volume during the course of a day, and then switch listening from the brown to pink noise videos that day, or that over the course of time you graduated from brown to pink full time?


How long did it take for you to begin to notice a difference in your hyperacusis?


Did you have periods of setback?


Did/do you also have tinnitus and did it impact that?


Anyone else trying this method who's had some success I'd be glad to hear from.

 

[Jyoti]

Hey @winterschlaf --so glad to hear from you! Hope the above is of some help.

 

[christiankatz]

I was excited to try this, but since I listen to brown noise and have fans going all night and day anyway, I'm not sure if it would help. White noise (like fans), which doesn't bother me, is what I use to block out other noises. Plus, I have instrumental jazz playing all day.

It's the noise that's imposed upon me by other people that drives me nuts, like when my neighbors slam their kitchen drawers and cupboard doors, when they watch loud movies, and when people talk outside.

Thank you so much for sharing this and making this post, @bctjr1993 !

 

[bthompsonjr1993]

Hey @winterschlaf , here are my answers to your questions. I hope they are helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Hey @bctjr1993


Thank you for sharing this.


I'm also really right at the end of the line with hyperacusis and trying your version of the retraining/sound therapy method, although I find I cannot tolerate any kind of pink noise yet so have chosen a video by the same creator which is just brown noise, instead of your first one which was brown into pink.


Hopefully a place to start til I can tolerate the full pink spectrum.


Wanted to ask about method -
did mean you would do this gradual upward volume adjustment throughout the day when you would acclimatise to the levels, or that upward adjustment was something which would happen over time eg weeks and months?

The upward adjustment was something that happened over weeks and months. Each day I would listen to it with the goal of either maintaining the max level I reached the day before, or of upping it by one notch. The goal was to listen to that sound while my thoughts were elsewhere, and get to the point where I would temporarily forget that I was even listening to the sound. Now of course each day, to get to the volume that I amxed out at the day before, and to try to beat that, I would ramp up the volume one notch at a time from zero, and this would take a few minutes of going up by one, sitting at that volume for a bit, then going up by another, and repeating that until I hit or improved upon my target volume for that day.


Would you also adjust volume down during the day if you became more sensitive, or tough it out, or take a break from listening and resume later at the previous volume setting?

I am very stubborn and I was determined not to take a step back. For me, if I was feeling more sensitive, I would pretend that the pain that came with listening to it at the same volume as yesterday was totally unavoidable. i would tell myself I had no choice but to listen to it as the same volume as yesterday. Listening to it at a lower volume was not an option for me. I would submit to the discomfort. I would close my eyes and mentally welcome the discomfort, while mentally telling myself that my brain is incorrect in thinking that the noise is too loud. I told myself that I knew better, and that the discomfort my brain was temporarily feeling was like medicine so that it can receive sound better in the future. I fully accepted the whole experience. I never took a step back.


I mean, is it important to be consistent and stick to this very gradual adjustment upward, not losing ground, always resuming at the exact same level as you left off the previous day?

I think that it is, yes. Simply because I want to be the one in charge. I viewed every day as a fight for ground. In my mind, I visualized my hearing sensitivity like a piercing. If I want to increase it, I have to apply sound. Much like to keep a piercing open, you have to keep the piercing in. And if you're someone who wants gauges which require huge piercing holes, you never go down to a smaller object in your ear. It is either the same or bigger every day. I made sure to either hold my ground or to take over more ground every day. I never allowed regression, because to me that was my wasting a day and being counter productive.


Or can the volume vary through each day, always starting at the lowest audible volume and going from there according to varying sensitivity that day?

I always started at the lowest audible volume each day, but ramped up rather quickly each day so as to ALWAYS spend the majority of each day listening to either the max volume that I listened to the day before, or one higher than that. Ideally it would be one higher.

Did you also mean you might acclimatise to a kind of "normal" volume during the course of a day, and then switch listening from the brown to pink noise videos that day, or that over the course of time you graduated from brown to pink full time?

Over the course of time I graduated from the first video I linked, to the second. Once I graduated to the second video, by enduring full volume of the first video and feeling comfortable with it, I never went back to the first. Of course, when I started listening to the second video, I wasn't able to listen to it comfortably at full volume like I had just been doing with the first one. It was a whole new process of ramping up to full volume over time once I switched over to the second video.


How long did it take for you to begin to notice a difference in your hyperacusis?

I want to say a few weeks, I think it was. But everyone is different. I can say I was extremely happy and had made significant progress once I had been doing it religiously every day for 6 weeks. By 3 months I would say I was pretty much back to normal.


Did you have periods of setback?

I did have some day where things felt more difficult than they had in the preceding days. This was often correlated to my mental and physical stress levels. But I always stuck with my plan and my progress was always pretty steady and consistent.


Did/do you also have tinnitus and did it impact that?

I did also have tinnitus. It was awful when I started this therapy, but by the end it wasn't as bad. I would say the sound sensitivity responded better than the tinnitus. But now a few years later I would say my tinnitus seems pretty mild and its not really an issue for me in my life.


Anyone else trying this method who's had some success I'd be glad to hear from.

My audiologist often asks me to mentor her new and current patients. I have seen many of them through this process, and everyone she has assigned me to has recovered so far. Basically everyone she puts through this process recovers. I could maybe have some of them come on here and share their stories, although none of them have CFS, so I am not sure how relevant they would be. They got hyperacusis from a number of different causes.

 

[winterschlaf]

Hello @bctjr1993

I became too unwell to reply to your helpful message last year, so I wanted at last to respond properly and to give an update for you and anyone else pursuing Tinnitus Retraining / Sound Therapy for ME-related hyperacusis.

I forget what I may/n't have shared in this thread already so I will say I have Very Severe ME (bedbound apart from toilet use), also non-EDS Joint Hypermobility, CCI, "likely" AAI, symptoms of MCAS, POTS and a provisional dx of Occult Tethered Cord Syndrome, pending further testing.

I hope that info will help others considering pursuing this line of treatment, in taking my remarks in context of their own conditions.

Having 'graduated' from Brown Noise since we spoke in Sep '21, I've been using the Pink Noise tracks by Acúfenos Otín Lucas on YouTube 5 days/week for up to 6hrs/daily as tolerated, via Sleepphones flat headphones in a fabric headband, which are the most tolerable kind for laying in a fixed position on my side.

The improvement during that time has been transformative in terms of my quality of life.

When I got in touch with you I was using either foam earplugs with wax earplugs on top, or spiral-shaped sound engineer's earplugs full time and really feeling in hell with all ambient noise.

Over the last 6-7 months I've gradually decreased earplug use and increased Sound Therapy, to the point I now only use earplugs for the second half of sleep when the dawn chorus wakes me, for when someone is in directly my room performing a noisy task, or for when vacuuming or a washing machine spin cycle are taking place directly outside of my room.

6 months ago, the electrical hum of a chest freezer sitting outside my room was torture for me. Now I am not aware of it at all.

I've moved from being unable to tolerate any electronically generated audio input, to being able to listen to audiobooks at lowest volume and 0.7x speed, to recently reintroducing audio with more than one voice and sometimes background music or sounds, which has put comedy and drama back on the menu.

I used selective frequency filtering Flare Audio Calmer Night earplugs to help with this transition and now don't need them at all, except during rare spikes of sound sensitivity.

I'm also less aware of my tinnitus (for context: I had audiometric testing at an ENT surgeon's office several years ago when moderately ill and the technician commented mine was among the worst cases she'd encountered), which was not the focus of this exercise for me, but a definite bonus.

I still struggle with conversation – listening being far worse than speaking, and the phone particularly bad – but this has much more to do with issues of cognition, working memory and general sensory input-based PEM than hyperacusis.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is I can now tolerate the washing machine being used.

It is situated right outside my bedroom door and previously my family had to relocate me to the living room once a month to do the household laundry, which was a negatively anticipated event for all.

I wrote this today while lying with Pink Noise playing in my Sleepphones, as the machine rattled away outside and me without earplugs right up until the spin cycle.

Something like this would have crashed me entirely a year ago.

I have no idea if this retraining method will work across the board and encourage others exploring this therapy to proceed with due caution, especially if you're severely ill.

However, trying this really got me out of a space I was finding unsustainable and I think it's been the first example of a prominent ME symptom moving in the direction of improvement due to an intervention, which has given me hope for other things.

I want to thank you sincerely for sharing your experience and making this possible for me and others.

W

 

[Pyrrhus]

Sleepphones flat headphones in a fabric headband, which are the most tolerable kind for laying in a fixed position on my side.

One thing that I hear people complain about regarding SleepPhones is how the headphones "slide around" inside the fabric headband, requiring constant adjustment.

After a couple of years of such frustration myself, I finally realized that I can keep the headphones from sliding around inside the fabric headband simply by using safety pins! Don't know why I didn't think of that earlier...

 

[Sizzle]

Are those sleepphones worth the money they cost?
Have some cheap headband I found on Amazon

 

[Pyrrhus]

Are those sleepphones worth the money they cost?
Have some cheap headband I found on Amazon

Good question. The SleepPhones headband lasts forever, and is washable. But the SleepPhones headphones themselves only last about 6 months, so I have to buy two pairs of the headphones per year:
https://www.sleepphones.com/products/sleepphones/headband-speakers

So, assuming you already have a headband, it costs about $60/year.

 

[bthompsonjr1993]

Hello @bctjr1993

I became too unwell to reply to your helpful message last year, so I wanted at last to respond properly and to give an update for you and anyone else pursuing Tinnitus Retraining / Sound Therapy for ME-related hyperacusis.

I forget what I may/n't have shared in this thread already so I will say I have Very Severe ME (bedbound apart from toilet use), also non-EDS Joint Hypermobility, CCI, "likely" AAI, symptoms of MCAS, POTS and a provisional dx of Occult Tethered Cord Syndrome, pending further testing.

I hope that info will help others considering pursuing this line of treatment, in taking my remarks in context of their own conditions.

Having 'graduated' from Brown Noise since we spoke in Sep '21, I've been using the Pink Noise tracks by Acúfenos Otín Lucas on YouTube 5 days/week for up to 6hrs/daily as tolerated, via Sleepphones flat headphones in a fabric headband, which are the most tolerable kind for laying in a fixed position on my side.

The improvement during that time has been transformative in terms of my quality of life.

When I got in touch with you I was using either foam earplugs with wax earplugs on top, or spiral-shaped sound engineer's earplugs full time and really feeling in hell with all ambient noise.

Over the last 6-7 months I've gradually decreased earplug use and increased Sound Therapy, to the point I now only use earplugs for the second half of sleep when the dawn chorus wakes me, for when someone is in directly my room performing a noisy task, or for when vacuuming or a washing machine spin cycle are taking place directly outside of my room.

6 months ago, the electrical hum of a chest freezer sitting outside my room was torture for me. Now I am not aware of it at all.

I've moved from being unable to tolerate any electronically generated audio input, to being able to listen to audiobooks at lowest volume and 0.7x speed, to recently reintroducing audio with more than one voice and sometimes background music or sounds, which has put comedy and drama back on the menu.

I used selective frequency filtering Flare Audio Calmer Night earplugs to help with this transition and now don't need them at all, except during rare spikes of sound sensitivity.

I'm also less aware of my tinnitus (for context: I had audiometric testing at an ENT surgeon's office several years ago when moderately ill and the technician commented mine was among the worst cases she'd encountered), which was not the focus of this exercise for me, but a definite bonus.

I still struggle with conversation – listening being far worse than speaking, and the phone particularly bad – but this has much more to do with issues of cognition, working memory and general sensory input-based PEM than hyperacusis.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is I can now tolerate the washing machine being used.

It is situated right outside my bedroom door and previously my family had to relocate me to the living room once a month to do the household laundry, which was a negatively anticipated event for all.

I wrote this today while lying with Pink Noise playing in my Sleepphones, as the machine rattled away outside and me without earplugs right up until the spin cycle.

Something like this would have crashed me entirely a year ago.

I have no idea if this retraining method will work across the board and encourage others exploring this therapy to proceed with due caution, especially if you're severely ill.

However, trying this really got me out of a space I was finding unsustainable and I think it's been the first example of a prominent ME symptom moving in the direction of improvement due to an intervention, which has given me hope for other things.

I want to thank you sincerely for sharing your experience and making this possible for me and others.

W

Your account of how this treatment has gone for you moves me tremendously, it touches my heart to know that you had what sounds like basically the same experience as me with this treatment. I am so glad you slipped out of the special form of hell that is known as severe hyperacusis. My research into this treatment has strongly led me to believe that it should work across the board for CFS patients, and I am so glad that you saw it through.

I know that we are all so used to going to doctor after doctor, and for every one to be unable to improve any of our major symptoms. Severe hyperacusis was the worst CFS symptom I ever have had, in terms of how hard it is to work around and how it impacts quality of life constantly. I was so glad to find that it was able to be helped by a treatment out there. Like you, it is my only symptom that I have been able to drastically improve.

I know what you mean when you say it gives you hope. I still think to myself, if that major CFS symptom was totally reversible, why couldn't the rest be?! And I also know what you mean when you say the hyperacusis was not sustainable for you. I was in the same place, I don't think its a stretch to say that this treatment may have saved my life, because I don't know how much longer I could have hung on through those horrible symptoms brought on by every little vibration around me that most people wouldn't even notice. Which is why it was vital for me to share it on here.

So thank you for sharing your account. It made me feel awesome to read, and it is a valuable testimony for others who are reading this thread. I wish you all the best going forward as hopefully we find more breakthroughs like this one in the future!

 

[winterschlaf]

Are those sleepphones worth the money they cost?

Have some cheap headband I found on Amazon

Hi Sizzle

I did a fair amount of research and decided on the corded SleepPhones, based on user reviews.

It seemed to be the most side-sleeper friendly set up, based on the thinness / flatness / positional adjustability of the earphones – all other types of ear buds or phones were impractical +/ painful in my case.

As my neck is rather weak and I'm lying with the full weight of my head pressing on my ear full time (mainly my right), the speaker still causes some ear pain, which limits use, but that experience depends on your circumstances and sensitivity.

I'm happy with the functionality otherwise and find the headband comfy and easy to position (I have the fleece type).

There was another smaller brand that was USA-based which I might have tried based on positive reviews, if living there myself (customs costs were prohibitive for me):

https://dormiphones.com/products/headband-sleep-headphones-dream?variant=39861057061003

I think the main reservation for me there was that the wireless receiver would have caused pain resting against my skull.

If you're based in the US and not so sensitive to things pressing on the head in terms of allodynia / skull pain, they might be worth a look

I second what @Pyrrhus said: the SleepPhones headband I bought turned out to be too snug so I bought a band the next size up from a seller on eBay.

The seller told me that their corded SleepPhones break roughly once very 12 months so they keep an eye out for cable and speaker sets being sold on eBay more cheaply and keep one in reserve always, which is a good tip.

I do think the SleepPhones are somewhat overpriced for what they are and considering the durability aspect, but haven't found a better solution so far.

I've had mine (the corded kind, as opposed wireless) for 7.5 months and while the speakers appear in tact so far, the cable covering is frayed.

I recommend carefully straightening out the kinks in the cable immediately on receipt – something I neglected to do and that's where the damage is occurring.

Taking care to remove the jack from your device by grasping it directly rather than pulling the lead is important for durability also.

Let me know if you do decide to try, or find a good alternative!

 

[winterschlaf]

I know what you mean when you say it gives you hope. I still think to myself, if that major CFS symptom was totally reversible, why couldn't the rest be?! And I also know what you mean when you say the hyperacusis was not sustainable for you. I was in the same place, I don't think its a stretch to say that this treatment may have saved my life, because I don't know how much longer I could have hung on through those horrible symptoms brought on by every little vibration around me that most people wouldn't even notice. Which is why it was vital for me to share it on here.

So thank you for sharing your account. It made me feel awesome to read, and it is a valuable testimony for others who are reading this thread. I wish you all the best going forward as hopefully we find more breakthroughs like this one in the future!

Thank you again, @bctjr1993 – I definitely related to what you shared about how hyperacusis at this level effects things in the day-to-day: I also find it one of the most isolating aspects of neurological / cognitive / sensory-related dysfunction and tough to convey to others how radical the effects can be, or how it impacts quality of life.

I'm glad to have some positive news to share, thanks to your actions, and I wish you likewise!

 

[Wayne]

I read the book by the creator of the treatment, and he goes into detail about that. It worked for my CFS induced hyperacusis

Hi @bctjr1993 -- I don't know if you posted the name of the book you refer to, but I'd very much appreciate it if you could post the name of the book, and/or a link to it somewhere. -- Thanks!

BTW, I just watched a video which suggested warmed castor oil on the ears to normalize energies around the ears and auditory system. I intend to give that a try. They suggested 4x/day for 20 min. It was mostly referring to tinnitus, but I assume it could be helpful for hyperacusis as well.

Also, thank you for posting your successful experiences here!

 

[Sizzle]

Hi @bctjr1993 -- I don't know if you posted the name of the book you refer to, but I'd very much appreciate it if you could post the name of the book, and/or a link to it somewhere. -- Thanks!

BTW, I just watched a video which suggested warmed castor oil on the ears to normalize energies around the ears and auditory system. I intend to give that a try. They suggested 4x/day for 20 min. It was mostly referring to tinnitus, but I assume it could be helpful for hyperacusis as well.

Also, thank you for posting your successful experiences here!

If you can keep us posted about the castor oil in this thread,
very thankful

 

[bthompsonjr1993]

Hi @bctjr1993 -- I don't know if you posted the name of the book you refer to, but I'd very much appreciate it if you could post the name of the book, and/or a link to it somewhere. -- Thanks!

BTW, I just watched a video which suggested warmed castor oil on the ears to normalize energies around the ears and auditory system. I intend to give that a try. They suggested 4x/day for 20 min. It was mostly referring to tinnitus, but I assume it could be helpful for hyperacusis as well.

Also, thank you for posting your successful experiences here!

Hey @Wayne , yeah here is an amazon link to the book that I read. Don't be fooled by the title. The method is called "Tinnitus Retraining Therapy", but it covers decreased sound tolerance. In fact, this treatment did more for my sound tolerance than it even did for my tinnitus.
https://www.amazon.com/Tinnitus-Ret...t=&hvlocphy=9023225&hvtargid=pla-470141412210