By Spencer T. Parkin
Being a former patient of Treble Health, they reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to share my experience with tinnitus and their TRT (Tinnitus Retraining Therapy) program. So that's what I'm attempting to do here. Upfront, let me say that yes, I am going to whole heartedly endorse their program. And no, I am not being paid. What I want to do is help people with tinnitus understand that there is something you can do to treat this condition, and Treble Health--among other clinics, I'm sure--have the most effective tools for doing so. I'll also explain some of the pitfalls I ran into along the way, and how you can avoid them.
I hope that non-religious readers will bear with me here, because I will occasionally offer a religious perspective. That withstanding, I still think there's a lot here that can be helpful to anyone reading who has recently begun their journey with tinnitus. I don't want to lose those in the audience with, perhaps, an aversion to religion, but my account here can't be genuine or truthful if I don't also explain how I believe the Lord has helped me through this trial. I think it important, therefore, to share a few faith promoting things along the way, especially since the initial stages of tinnitus are for many a serious mental health crisis. But it doesn't have to be a spiritual health crisis as well. Specifically, now is not the time to lose your faith, but to lean on it more than you ever have.
Lastly, I want to reassure you that while my story here has a positive outcome with tinnitus, there is absolutely no reason to believe that your story won't also have a positive resolution. In fact, that's the main point of the story! The most important thing right now is that you believe that you will get better. TRT can accelerate that process, but it's a natural one that the brain already knows how to do and has been doing it all your life. (More on that later.)
No matter how you got tinnitus, the treatment is the same. That said, it may still be helpful to first share how I contracted this condition, because you may have done so a similar way, and there's absolutely nothing special about me. Not only that, but I also want you to see the dramatic contrast between the initial onset of tinnitus with where I am today. In any case, if you got tinnitus a completely different way, remember that it doesn't matter. Your brain is an amazing instrument that has the ability to adapt to anything independent of the cause.
Okay, so here's what happened. I'm an avid backcountry skier. In the Spring of 2023, on the snow-covered slopes of Francis Peak near Fruit Heights, Utah, I had just finished my first corn run of the day. (Some of you may already see where this is going.) While slapping my skins back on my skis, a line caught my eye coming straight off the peak, and, unable to resist the call, I just had to ski it. The peak, however, as some may already know, is marred with cell towers and huge radar domes. That withstanding, and despite it being a restricted area(!), I made the idiotic and fateful decision to go up there and ski the darn thing. And oh what a mistake that was!
Upon reaching the top, the snowpack was so high (it had been a record snow year) that I was put nose to nose with some sort of transmitter thing that would normally have been too high. And my ears? Oh! My ears were abuzz!
Now, a sane person (1) would not have been there in the first place, but at the very least (2) would have immediately left the area. I, however, in all my stupidity, decided to transition as fast as I could, then ski off. So, I ripped the skins off my skis, locked my boots and bindings, secured my helmet, started my go-pro (of all the stupid things!), and skied away, all as fast as I could. SIGH...But, alas, I was not fast enough. By the time I finally skied away and out of range of the high frequency radio-wave radiation, the damage, well...the damage was done.
Interestingly, though, I wouldn't know that until two days later. In those two intervening days my ears were just fine. When I woke up on the third day, my ears were ringing. And, my dear reader, they have been ringing...ever...since!
In hindsight, it's possible that this delay between the ear trauma and the tinnitus signal was due to something called maladaptive neural plasticity. I don't really understand it, but what I recall learning is that my brain tried to compensate for the damage done to my hearing system, but it either failed, or unwittingly produced a negative result for the spirit trapped and living inside my body; namely, me! Perhaps there's some irony in the fact that while neural plasticity helped to create my problem, it's also the key to fixing it, but more on that later.
Alternatively, it may have just taken about two days for my cochlea hairs to wither and die from exposure to the radiation. I just don't know; probably never will. One day, perhaps, I'll discover other negative health consequences (e.g., brain cancer) due to having been near those darn domes. Sometimes we just get what we deserve.
It didn't take me long to make the connection between what my ears were doing and my recent visit to Francis Peak. There was the delay, of course, but all the same, it was too coincidental. I just knew that one had caused the other. The task ahead, then, was to figure out what, if anything, I could do about it.
Enter the internet. Needless to say, I ran into a lot of "information" about tinnitus on the interwebs. Some of it was terrifying; people giving you their horror stories. In other cases, people were trying to prey on those afflicted by the condition to get rich, taking advantage of their desperation. Suffice it to say, Dr. Google is not a good source of information, except that I do recall reading somewhere to go visit my ENT doctor (ear-nose-throat), and so that's what I did next.
The most frustrating thing about going to see any kind of doctor about tinnitus is that they just have to believe you. With many types of conditions, the doctor can diagnose it, because there's something they can physically measure with an instrument of some kind. Not so with tinnitus! You're the only one who can diagnose it! But still, this doesn't mean you shouldn't go see your doctor. There might be something that he or she can treat, and if there is, then doing so may improve your tinnitus situation. Tinnitus might even be a sign of some other condition that has conventional treatments. It could be as simple as removing some earwax from your ears!
Once your due diligence is done, be prepared to hear from your doctor that "there's nothing that can be done" and "you just need to learn to live with it." Here the doctor is only half right. Just smile and nod and say, "thank you doctor," and then reach out to an audiology clinic that provides TRT (e.g., Treble.) Be aware, however, that there are many clinics that claim to treat tinnitus, but really don't, because all they really do is treat hearing loss. If you have hearing loss, then improving it will, at the same time, improve your tinnitus situation; but if you don't have any hearing loss, then you'll be frustrated once again to hear a doctor say that they can't help you.
My ENT had me do an MRI and put me on a round of Prednisone. (Not fun!) Thankfully they gave me earplugs for the MRI, because that machine is loud! Make sure they give you earplugs before you go into that crampy machine, especially since the onset of tinnitus is often accompanied by a condition known as hyperacusis. This is also a real condition that, in addition to tinnitus, you'll have to expend some effort to convince others is really going on.
What has recently caused your tinnitus may have also caused your ears to become extremely sensitive to sound. Just normal talking above a whisper can become an irritant. The good news about this is that it does eventually go away. To this day, I still don't like loud noises, and I'm not as good at tolerating them, but the hyperacusis is gone. It took a few months, and in that time, you just have to protect your ears the best you can, such as with the use of earplugs when appropriate. And yes, when you stick those earplugs in, Mr. Tinnitus will be loud and clear.
MRIs aren't too bad. The only thing that gave me the heebie-jeebies was the idea that they had to put some sort of pigment in my circulatory system.
Of course, the MRI result showed up nothing, but it could have shown something, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, I suppose. (It was expensive, though!) After getting this result over the phone, I was supposed to do a follow-up visit with the ENT guy, but I never did. You should do your follow-up. I just didn't want to hear him say there was nothing that could be done or put me on another round of some medication that wouldn't do anything.
After that I found a local audiology clinic that included the "tinnitus" keyword in their advertising. The doctor I visited with was nice, but like I had said before, there wasn't anything he could do for me. He assured me that everything would be okay, and he was right, but he didn't seem to know anything about TRT, and I didn't know to ask about it at the time. If he had known, then I presume he would have talked to me about it, but he didn't. In hindsight, I'm quite surprised that TRT isn't a common practice among audiologists.
Sigh...And that brought me back to the internet! I, of course, ran into Ben Thomson's You-Tube videos about tinnitus. He's the head audiologist at Treble Health. My wife was very skeptical of him; and, admittedly, the typical You-Tube persona doesn't necessarily boost one's confidence. The videos of his that I appreciated the most were of him interviewing various medical professionals on the subject of tinnitus research. (By the way, do you want to know how they give Guinea pigs tinnitus? They subject them to loud high-frequency noise straight in the face for several minutes. Sound familiar to what happened to me?! Ha! I'm a human Guinea pig experiment!) I watched a lot of his videos, but I didn't reach out to Treble Health for a while.
In the meantime, my mental health deteriorated severely, and each day and night was a suffer-fest. In hindsight, I wish I had reached out to a TRT clinic (such as Treble) sooner. The early stages of tinnitus are the times when you need the most help. My wife had a lot of misgivings, though, about the tele-health thing. I didn't know what to do.
Time passed. As things got worse, I really, truly, thought my life was effectively over. I was going nuts. I was afraid that I was going to lose my family, because I was losing myself. I was afraid I was going to lose my job, because I couldn't sleep, and I thought I would never be able to concentrate again. I'm a programmer by trade, and so earning an income depends on being able to focus and solve hard problems.
It is here that I have to admit that I even started to have thoughts of ending my life. I was so troubled and so distraught that I didn't think I could continue on.
The next thing I remember doing is reaching out to ministering brethren from my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) who hold the priesthood. In the blessing I was given, I was not told that the tinnitus would go away or be healed. I was blessed to be able to "endure the sound until the problem could be resolved." I see now that this resolution is more than likely not to be until the resurrection. Until then, "thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain." (2 Nephi 2:2)
Is there any good that has come of this ordeal? Indeed, I believe there has. If nothing else, I can understand what others are going through who acquire tinnitus, and I can genuinely sympathize with them. And by the way, who can't use a little more humility? Heaven knows I need a great deal more of that.
For 39 years of my life I had absolutely perfect hearing, and then all-of-a-sudden, one day, that stopped. With a thankful heart, I feel to exclaim with Job of old, "the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" (Job 1:21)
Admittedly, I have to add here that a damaged hearing system is pretty small in comparison to what many other people are going through. And on top of all that, I can still hear!
Eventually I convinced my wife Melinda to let me try Treble Health. At the time (not sure if they still do this), they had zoom meetings you can sign up for where they do their pitch. In a break-out room, I met with Ben's brother Garrett, also a doctor of audiology. I expressed to him my suicidal thoughts. He took that seriously and was kind enough to give me a free visit with one of their audiologists, a Dr. Suzanne May.
I can't really speak to Ben or Garrett's character, but I have nothing but great things to say about Dr. May and Dr. Schwartz (whom I'll introduce later.) Yes, they're paid to be your "friend" during a visit, but they sure do a good job of it, they're genuine and sincere, and they're very knowledgeable and sympathetic.
Dr. May infused some hope back into my life with our visit. Maybe she doesn't remember, but I do. (See Matthew 25:39-40) I also expressed to her the regret I was feeling about my stupidity that created this problem in the first place. She then opened up and told me how she got tinnitus. Having told me her story in confidence, I will not share it here. Suffice it to say, if she had made a different decision, she could have avoided tinnitus too. She explained that she's forgiven herself of that, and that I need to do the same so that it doesn't hold me back.
I suppose I should be thankful that I caused my tinnitus. I can see how it would be much harder if someone else's decision had resulted in this permanent hearing defect. Whatever the case, we have to let go of that if we want to get better.
Reaching back into my memory, I recall that Melinda was still quite skeptical of Treble Health, and so I didn't sign up for their "bundle", as they put it, for quite some time. In that time, I continued to suffer, and eventually just told Melinda that I was going to try it. She was reasonably supportive after that. I don't blame her at all, because she has lots of reasons to be skeptical of snake oil salesmen and the like.
I talked with Treble again over zoom to sign up, and they did an assessment to see what kind of ear gadgets I would need. Up to this point, I had been trying to use a cell-phone app that plays nature sounds in order to cope with the ringing.
Everyone's different, but I never had any hesitation about the ear gadgets. They look like hearing aids, but they don't amplify sound for the wearer. Rather, they just pump a soft white noise into your ears. The term "masker" is sometimes used, but this is really a misnomer. I learned from Dr. Schwartz that you don't want to mask the tinnitus. What you want is for your brain to be able to hear both your tinnitus and the sound therapy sound at the same time so that your brain can hear the difference.
The ear gadgets are small and discrete, and no one will know you're wearing them if you have long-enough hair. It never bothered me, though; I don't care what people think; I wear sweatpants everywhere (except for church, of course.) Most people who notice you wearing them don't ask about them anyway.
What I loved about the ear gadgets is that (1) they're hands free, and (2) I don't have to inflict others with my sound therapy. Neither of these were benefits of carrying a cell phone around with me everywhere, which got pretty annoying. I'm already on my cell phone way too much. It should also be noted that the ear gadgets are designed in such a way that they don't impede your ability to hear anyone or anything around you.
Being a curious programmer, I have actually since dived a bit into audio programming, and learned a little bit about signals and signal processing along the way. A pure tone is just a sine wave; the domain is time, and the range is amplitude. The frequency of the peaks and troughs gives the audible pitch. Most sounds are much more complicated than a pure tone, but in any case, you can convert the signal from the time-domain to the frequency-domain using a Fourier Transform. Having done so for a pure tone, you'd see a spike in the graph indicating the fundamental pitch. Doing so with white noise, you'll see the entire floor of the graph raised up above the frequency axis, indicating a gentle mixture of all pitches. Mixing the two sounds (the white noise and the pure tone), the height of the aforementioned spike is the same, but because the floor has been raised, its perceptible height has been lowered, so the pure tone (e.g., tinnitus) is not as intrusive.
Explaining all that is a bit of a digression (sorry), but part of the point is to say that if the floor was raised high enough, then the spike would altogether disappear, and that's called masking the signal. And as Dr. Schwartz said, you don't want to do that. The ear gadgets sooth the signal, but also let your brain hear it in comparison to the white noise.
I always thought of the white noise as an island of safety. I could shift my focus from the tinnitus to the white noise, and then try to shift my focus from the white noise to the things I really cared about in my life. This intermediate step is nice, because initially, the tinnitus evokes a negative feeling when you're noticing it, but not the white noise. (I was never afraid of the white noise, because I knew I could turn it off if I didn't want to hear it!) One of the keys to recovering is coming to a place of neutrality with the tinnitus signal. You no longer want it to elicit a negative reaction. (More on this later.)
Anyway, I got the ear gadgets in the mail, and then was assigned an audiologist from Treble, Dr. Schwartz, who, among so many other things, helped me set them up. Again, I can't say enough good things about her. What she can do for the patient (and what she did for me) is many-fold.
First, she can help explain what in the world is going wrong with your hearing system. Education is part of recovery. If you have some basic understanding of what your brain is doing, then you're taking some of the mystery away, and it doesn't seem as frightening anymore. (Note that other doctors can't seem to do this, and I don't know why.) It also helps you come to terms with it.
Second, she can explain the proper use of sound-therapy. If you're not using it correctly, then you won't get all the benefits of it, and you may not be able to wean yourself off of it. I learned that when I was trying to sleep then sure, masking is fine. (I still use a white noise machine to this day at my bedside, but it is not at all necessary for it to mask my tinnitus.) But during waking hours, you want to hear both sounds. Further, the sound therapy sound, whatever it is, needs to be soothing, and never an annoyance.
Third, she can administer CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.) I tend to think of this as mainly your attitude about the situation, and how you respond to the more or less difficult times you'll experience with tinnitus. For example, when my head hits the pillow at night, it's as if the tinnitus turns on like a lightbulb. It's always there, of course, but it's much more noticeable when an ear is muffled. But you know what? I don't care! I can start thinking about other things, and it's as if the tinnitus turns back off.
Another example of CBT takes place when you start to gain small levels of habituation (more on that in the next section.) When tinnitus manifests itself strongly, you can take it in at least one of two ways. On one hand you can say, "Oh no! I'm hearing it again! I don't want to hear it!" On the other, however, you can see a strong emergence of your tinnitus as a big win. Really! I'm serious! Think about it. Your tinnitus starts to blast you, right? Well, how long has it been since you last noticed it? A few minutes? A few hours? Several hours? The longer the time period (and these time periods will get longer), the bigger the win! Turn your tinnitus times (trademark!) into big wins!
There's a lot more, but here I'll lastly say that she can provide reassurance that things will get better. This may seem simple, but I really needed to hear it. I also came to realize that I needed to shift my focus from getting better from tinnitus to getting better with tinnitus. If you remain bitter about the situation, you'll get stuck, and you won't progress. The audiologist can help you progress.
I also really liked the tele-health model, and tinnitus treatment fits this model very well. I got a hearing test from my ENT doctor's office, but that's the only thing that required leaving my house. They were able to remotely configure the ear gadgets over the internet by connecting with an app on my smart phone. Dr. Schwartz did this occasionally during our visits, making adjustments to the sound therapy as I progressed.
I imagine that most doctors who become audiologists had no intention, or perhaps no interest, in becoming therapists too, but since hearing is linked so closely to our emotional state, such things, whether they like it or not, become the purview of audiological care.
One of the things I learned at Treble is that there's a feedback loop, of sorts, in your brain. When you hear something that troubles you, your brain is wired to have an increased sense of awareness. This causes your brain to amplify the threatening signal, because, for all it knows, your life may depend upon it. So the tinnitus signal causes fear or anxiety, and that fear causes your brain to reinforce the signal! I can hear Darth Vader now: "Cohhhh-Burrrrr. The circle is complete!"
Breaking the cycle comes in two parts: first, habituation of our reaction to the tinnitus signal; and second, habituation to the signal itself. But what is habituation?
I have a clock in my office of sentimental value. Being of such value, I am willing to tolerate it. It requires tolerance, because it goes "tick, tock, tick, tock" all day long. But the funny thing is, I don't actually tolerate the clock. Why? Because I hardly ever notice it! That doesn't mean that the soundwaves from the hands moving aren't reaching my ears and being converted into electrical signals by my cochlea and then being sent to my brain. That's happening all the time. But my brain, more often than not, is simply not perceiving the sounds generated by the clock! Only when I think about it can I start to hear the ticks and the tocks.
This phenomenon, which is real, is called habituation, and you do it all the time in many different contexts. If you think about it, if you were pre-occupied with all the inputs being received in your brain by the rest of your body at all times of the day, then you would have information overload! I can, for example, feel my shoes on my feet right now as I type this, but only because I just now thought of it!
The fact that the tinnitus signal is being generated internally (rather than externally) makes no difference. You can habituate to it along with everything else. Now, clearly, some things are easier to ignore than others, and this is why tinnitus can be a big problem. But as I had said before, you have to believe that you can do it. You also have to realize that the process takes a very, very long time, and you need to be patient with yourself. You also shouldn't compare your timeline of recovery with anyone else's. For some it takes just months; others, years.
Benzos for short, these are a class of drug that produce sedation and hypnosis. Examples include Xanax and Valium. At the time I got tinnitus, I was dependent on Xanax for sleep. When I learned from a You-Tube video featuring a Dr. Jasterboff (inventor of TRT) that there were only two types of tinnitus patients he couldn't treat--those with something to gain from playing a helpless victim, and then those who were on benzos--I was absolutely devastated all over again.
You go through devastation and even a mourning period when your hearing system gets damaged, because, unlike other things in our body, it can't repair itself. (Cochlea hairs don't grow back! Nevertheless, see Alma 40:23) Learning that Xanax might prevent my ability to recover in some measure from tinnitus was like learning I had tinnitus all over again.
My world started to crumble (again!), because I just didn't know how I was going to get any sleep. I had a sleeping disorder before I got tinnitus. Now tinnitus was making it even harder to get to sleep.
Before I tell you what I did, let me say first that you should never change your medications without talking with your doctor. I am not giving any medical advice here. I'm just telling you what I did.
I decided to go off Xanax cold turkey (not recommended), because the tinnitus bothered me more than not being able to sleep. I feel quite blessed that this worked out for me. It was very, very difficult, but I was able to remove my dependency on the drug. Instead, good sleep hygiene went a long way toward helping me sleep. Be ready for bed long before the sandman calls, stay away from screens, no eating late at night, improve your diet, make your bed, etc.
I'm of the opinion today that if you're taking a benzo to manage something in your life, then I think you'll still be able to habituate to your tinnitus, especially if you're just using it to sleep. Don't react the way I did to the news of benzos and tinnitus. Talk with your doctor about what's going on, and maybe come up with a plan to reduce your usage if you think it will help you on the way to habituation. Since those days, I have popped an occasional Xanax when life got hard, but I don't think this has hindered my tinnitus recovery at all. That said, if you're loopy 24/7, then yeah, maybe your brain won't be able to take advantage of neural plasticity, rewiring itself to help you filter the tinnitus out.
Long story short, don't worry too much about it as long as you're not a hard-core addict. Get off it if you can, but until then, don't stress it.
While talking with my doctor about benzos, I recall him mentioning a theory that maybe tinnitus could be treated by pumping the inverse of your tinnitus signal into your brain to cancel it out. He said it jokingly, not realizing what a difficult ordeal it was for me. (You'll notice this a lot from people clueless about tinnitus. They talk about it as if it's no big deal. Ironically, part of getting better is learning to think the same way!) All the while I'm wondering, "Okay, then why don't we do that, doctor?!" Of course, the answer didn't come. I'm guessing that it may be too difficult to find the exact pitch, and if they can't detect the signal in your brain, then how are they going to offset it? Furthermore, everyone's tinnitus is different. For me, it's like a jet engine, or high pitched tone. For others, it may be a static-like noise.
Of course, through my travels of the internet, alternative treatments of tinnitus could be found; some dubious, others seemingly more hopeful; and in my desperate times, they all took me for a ride for some time or other. Of the former, neck tapping, supplements, and wrist-bands come to mind, just to name a few. In the latter case, I was intrigued by something called the Michigan tinnitus device. There's been a lot of hype around this device, but it's not the first of its kind. It's based around the idea of something called "bimodal stimulation." You can read all about it, so I won't try (and fail) to explain it here.
The biggest problem with these devices, as I recall, is that they haven't been proven to show a clinically significant improvement in tinnitus outcomes when compared to the leading conventional treatment which, at the time of this writing, is still tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT.) It's also hard to design accurate studies with control groups for things like tinnitus.
Don't misunderstand me here. I'm not knocking bimodal stimulation at all. I want it to succeed. I hope science finds a break-through in tinnitus research. At the same time, I won't be devastated if one is not found in my lifetime.
There is a tricky balance going on here. I don't want to downplay the affliction that tinnitus causes, because I don't want tinnitus research to be given a low-enough priority that no advancements are ever made. (Like anyone cares what I think, but you get what I mean.) At the same time, it's important to downplay the affliction of tinnitus (when thinking long term) for those who have it, because it's this kind of mindset that is going to help your brain habituate. I hope it's clear to the reader by this point that I do not downplay the affliction tinnitus causes in its initial stages. I was significantly afflicted by it for over a year. Today I'm at peace with the fact that it will be with me for the rest of my life.
I once told a friend of mine that if I could fix just one thing in my life, it wouldn't be my tinnitus, and that it didn't even make it into the top ten. He laughed and said that this either means I've really healed quite well from the condition, or my life must be frought with many maladies. My point, of course, was that I've been able to transition from the subgroup of people with tinnitus who are bothered by it to those who are not. And that's the real goal here.
There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to a cure for tinnitus. The first and most obvious is simply some sort of thing, be it a pill or whatever, that, when administered, simply takes the sound away. (And I will be right there with you celebrating when such a cure is found!) The second, however, is met with a lot of resistence from some people. Essentially, it's the cure of learning to live with, and adapt to, the tinnitus sound. Now, if you think about it, if the sound is there, but you're not noticing it or paying attention to it, then in those moments, that essentially is a cure. For those that strongly disagree, I maintain that until your attitude changes, you'll remain in a place where tinnitus has more power over you than it otherwise would. Furthermore, I can't help here but mention the eternal perspective had by those with a belief in the resurrection--the time when those who have passed from this life (all of us in good time) will be reunited with a physical body, free of defects, never to be separated again. With such a perspective, you realize that (1) there is an end to tinnitus, and (2) this end of tinnitus is not the end of your meaningful existence.
Okay, so this is now where I'm going to sound like a commercial for Treble Health. The other problem I see with bimodal stimulation is that it is very expensive. In my opinion, if you want to get the biggest bang for your buck, then Treble's TRT program is what I would recommend. I strongly considered the bimodal stimulation at one point, but it was expensive, and since I didn't do it, I can't really speak to how effective it is. In any case, it's probably a good idea to try the conventional treatment of the day before moving on to an alternative.
I recall that bimodal stimulation is very helpful for those with a form of tinnitus that falls under the "somatosensory" category. This means that you can modulate the volume or pitch of your tinnitus by moving your body around or clenching your jaw or something like that. I find that I can do that with my tinnitus, so I presume to fall under this category. (Again, it's frustrating, because no doctor can diagnose this; I have to just guess this for myself.) In any case, you know what? I just don't clench my jaw anymore. Problem solved.
You might wonder why there seems to be more negativity surrounding tinnitus online than generally positive stories, and there may be a simple reason. It's because those who have habituated have moved on in their lives; and part of doing that is to simply stop talking about tinnitus altogether. Some people don't share their success stories with tinnitus, because it's part of their recovery to just leave it completely behind and move on with their life. Unfortunately, this also means that most people talking about it in social circles on the internet are those still in the recovery process; or worse, refusing to believe they or anyone else can improve their situation with tinnitus. Consequently, they're typically going to have--shall we say--less positive things to say about the subject.
Take William Shatner for example. All I really know of him is that he's a famous actor; most notably for his role as Captain Kirk on Star Trek. (Big fan here, actually.) I recall reading somewhere (I forget where), however, that he doesn't like it when fans talk to him about tinnitus, or share that they have this in common with him. It's simple, really. He only really seems to notice his tinnitus anymore when people bring up the subject. At the same time, if that's the case, then he's clearly one of the success stories concerning tinnitus; especially when you consider the age at which he contracted the condition, and then go on to compare that with all he's accomplished in his life.
I get a little reminder of my tinnitus every night when my head hits the pillow, but it's become so routine, that it's not a big deal anymore. Something that has helped me when I'm struggling to sleep at night is to remember that my struggle to do so has nothing to do with my tinnitus. Poor diet, anxiety, or generally a lack of drowsiness is the real cause. If you falsely accuse your tinnitus (of keeping you from being able to sleep, or anything else negative in your life), then you won't be able to move on from it.
I once heard a therapist lady online say that "tinnitus isn't the problem, you are." I have to respectfully disagree here. I would say, "tinnitus is the problem (to say otherwise is a bit insulting, really), but more importantly, you are the solution." And the more a solution you are, the less tinnitus is a problem.
The "bundle" that Treble Health sold me included the ear gadgets and a number of online doctor visits spread out about a month or so apart from each other, if I recall correctly. After the last visit, I could have continued to pay for more visits, but I was feeling well-enough that I decided to not spend any more money. (I had plenty in my HSA, so I don't know why I didn't just stay on for as long as I wanted, really.)
Dr. Schwartz' final words of advice told me to just keep wearing the ear gadgets for as long as it takes, and that when I felt I could try going without them for a while, I may find that I need to get back on them for a month or two. Turns out, not too many months later, I started using the ear gadgets about every other day, then only a few times a week, and then one day, I just stopped using them altogether. I haven't used them since. I feel quite blessed by the Lord, because the regular every-day ambient sounds I hear are all I really need now to help me ignore my tinnitus.
Could the Lord have just taken the tinnitus away? Of course He could. But then, He may have also taken away an opportunity for me to learn and grow. How grateful I am that the Lord is "a refiner and purifier of silver." (Malachi 3:3)
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIIgm6xABQ
As I type this, yes, I can hear my tinnitus. But believe me when I tell you that I rarely think about it anymore. It is no longer a focus in my life. "Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not." (D&C 6:36) When we make the Lord our primary focus, we will always win.