You’re lying in bed trying to sleep when you first notice the sound: a beating or perhaps a throbbing, perhaps a whooshing, inside of your ear. The sound is rhythmic in tune with your heartbeat. And regardless of how hard you try, you can’t tune it out. It keeps you awake, which is bad because you need your sleep and you’ve got a big day tomorrow. Not only are you not feeling sleepy, you feel anxious.
Does this seem familiar? Turns out, tinnitus, anxiety, and sleep are closely associated. And you can see how tinnitus and anxiety could easily conspire to generate a vicious cycle, one that deprives you of your sleep, your rest, and can affect your health.
Can tinnitus be triggered by anxiety?
Tinnitus is generally defined as a ringing in the ears. But it’s a little more complicated than that. First of all, the actual noise you hear can take a wide variety of forms, from pulsing to throbbing to ringing and so on. But the noise you’re hearing isn’t an actual outside sound. When people experience stress, for many people, tinnitus can appear.
An anxiety disorder is an affliction in which feelings of dread, worry, or (as the name suggests) anxiety are difficult to control and strong enough to hinder your daily life. Tinnitus is only one of the many ways this can physically materialize. So can anxiety cause tinnitus? Certainly!
What’s bad about this combo of anxiety and tinnitus?
There are a couple of reasons why this particular combo of tinnitus and anxiety can lead to bad news:
- Tinnitus can often be the first indication of a more significant anxiety attack (or similar occurrence). Once you’ve made this connection, any occurrence of tinnitus (whether related to anxiety or not) could cause a spike in your overall anxiety levels.
- Usually, nighttime is when most individuals really notice their tinnitus symptoms. Can ringing in the ears be caused by anxiety? Yes, but the ringing may have also been there during the day but your day-to-day activities simply covered up the symptoms. This can make it harder to get to sleep. And that insomnia can itself cause more anxiety.
There are situations where tinnitus can start in one ear and eventually move to both. Sometimes, it can stick around 24/7–all day every day. In other cases, it might pulsate for a few moments and then disappear. Whether continuous or sporadic, this combo of anxiety and tinnitus can have health consequences.
How is your sleep affected by tinnitus and anxiety?
Your sleep loss could absolutely be the result of anxiety and tinnitus. Here are several examples of how:
- Most people like it to be quiet when they sleep. You turn everything off because it’s bedtime. But your tinnitus can be much more noticeable when everything is quiet.
- The sound of your tinnitus can stress you out and hard to dismiss. In the silence of the night, your tinnitus can be so unrelenting that you lie awake until morning. As your anxiety about not sleeping grows, the sound of the tinnitus symptoms can get louder and even harder to ignore.
- Your stress level will continue to rise the longer you go without sleeping. As your stress level goes up your tinnitus will get worse.
When your anxiety is triggering your tinnitus, you might hear that whooshing sound and worry that an anxiety attack is near. It’s no wonder that you’re losing sleep. The issue is that lack of sleep, well, sort of makes everything worse.
How lack of sleep impacts your health
The effect insomnia has on your health will continue to become more profound as this vicious cycle continues. And your overall wellness can be negatively affected by this. Some of the most common impacts include the following:
- Poor work performance: It should come as no shock that if you can’t get to sleep, your job efficiency will become affected. Your thinking will be sluggish and your mood will be less positive.
- Reduced reaction times: When you aren’t getting enough sleep, your reaction times are more sluggish. Driving and other daily activities will then be more hazardous. And if, for example, you run heavy machinery, it can be particularly dangerous.
- Increased stress and worry: The anxiety symptoms already present will worsen if you’re not sleeping. This can result in a vicious cycle of mental health-related symptoms.
- Increased risk of cardiovascular disease: Over time, lack of sleep can start to impact your long-term health and well-being. You could find yourself at an increased risk of heart disease or stroke.
Other causes of anxiety
Of course, there are other sources of anxiety besides tinnitus. It’s important to know what these causes are so you can try to avoid stress triggers and possibly decrease your tinnitus while you’re at it. Some of the most common causes of anxiety include the following:
- Medical conditions: You might, in some situations, have a heightened anxiety response because of a medical condition.
- Hyperstimulation: An anxiety attack can occur when someone gets overstimulated with too much of any one thing. Being in a crowded environment, for example, can cause some individuals to have an anxiety response.
- Stress response: When something causes us extreme stress, our bodies will naturally go into an anxious mode. If you’re being chased by a wild animal, that’s great. But it’s less good when you’re working on a project for work. Sometimes, the association between the two isn’t obvious. You could have an anxiety attack now from something that caused a stress reaction last week. Even a stressor from a year ago can cause an anxiety attack now.
Other factors: Some of the following, less common factors could also cause anxiety:
- Exhaustion and sleep deprivation (see the vicious cycle once again)
- Use of stimulants (including caffeine)
- Poor nutrition
- Certain recreational drugs
This list is not exhaustive. And you should consult your provider if you think you have an anxiety disorder.
Dealing with anxiety-induced tinnitus
You have two general choices to manage anxiety-related tinnitus. The anxiety can be addressed or the tinnitus can be dealt with. Here’s how that might work in either case:
Treating anxiety
Generally speaking, anxiety disorders are managed in one of two ways:
- Medication: In some cases, medication may help you deal with your symptoms or make your symptoms less pronounced.
- Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT): Certain thought patterns can inadvertently worsen your anxiety symptoms and this approach will help you recognize those thought patterns. Patients are able to better prevent anxiety attacks by disrupting those thought patterns.
Treating tinnitus
Tinnitus can be treated in a variety of different ways, especially if it presents while you’re sleeping. Here are some common treatments:
- Masking device: This is basically a white noise machine that you wear near your ear. This can help reduce how much you notice your tinnitus.
- White noise machine: Use a white noise machine when you’re trying to sleep. This may help mask your tinnitus symptoms.
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): If someone with tinnitus can recognize and accept their tinnitus symptoms they can decrease the disruptive effect it has. CBT is a method that helps them do that by helping them create new thought patterns.
You could get better sleep by dealing with your tinnitus
As long as that thrumming or whooshing is keeping you up at night, you’ll be in danger of falling into one of these vicious cycles, fueled by anxiety and tinnitus. One plan is to focus on fixing your tinnitus first. To do that, you should give us a call.