You first notice the sound when you’re lying in bed attempting to sleep: Your ear has a whooshing or throbbing in it. The sound is rhythmic and tuned in to your heartbeat. And once you hear that sound, you can’t tune it out. It keeps you up, which is not good because you need your sleep and you’ve got a big day tomorrow. Not only are you not feeling tired, you feel anxious.
Does this sound familiar? Turns out, tinnitus, anxiety, and sleep are closely associated. And you can understand how tinnitus and anxiety could easily conspire to generate a vicious cycle, one that robs you of your sleep, your rest, and can impact your health.
Can tinnitus be caused by anxiety?
Tinnitus is typically referred to as a ringing in the ears. But it’s not as simple as that. Firstly, many different noises can manifest from a ringing, buzzing, or humming to a beating or whooshing. But the noise you’re hearing isn’t an actual external sound. For many people, tinnitus can happen when you’re feeling stressed out, which means that stress-related tinnitus is definitely a thing.
An anxiety disorder is a condition where feelings of dread, worry, or (as the name suggests) anxiety are hard to control and severe enough to hinder your daily life. Tinnitus is only one of the many ways this can physically materialize. So can tinnitus be caused by anxiety? Definitely!
What’s bad about this combo of anxiety and tinnitus?
There are a couple of reasons why this specific combo of tinnitus and anxiety can lead to bad news:
- Tinnitus can often be the first sign of a more severe anxiety attack (or similar episode). Once you’ve made this association, any occurrence of tinnitus (whether due to anxiety or not) could cause a spike in your overall anxiety levels.
- Normally, nighttime is when most people really notice their tinnitus symptoms. Can anxiety trigger ringing in the ear? Yes, but the ringing might have also been there during the day but your daily activities simply masked the symptoms. This can make getting to sleep a bit tricky. And that insomnia can itself cause more anxiety.
Often, tinnitus can start in one ear and then change to the other. There are some cases where tinnitus is constant day and night. There are other situations where it comes and goes. Either way, this anxiety-tinnitus-combination can present some negative impacts on your health.
How is your sleep impacted by tinnitus and anxiety?
So, yes, anxiety-driven tinnitus could definitely be causing your sleep problems. Some examples of how are as follows:
- Most people sleep in locations that are intentionally quiet. You turn everything off because it’s bedtime. But your tinnitus can be much more obvious when everything is silent.
- It can be challenging to disregard your tinnitus and that can be really stressful. If you’re laying there just trying to fall asleep, your tinnitus can become the metaphorical dripping faucet, keeping you awake all night. As your anxiety about not sleeping increases, the sound of the tinnitus symptoms can grow louder and even harder to ignore.
- The level of your stress will keep rising the longer you go without sleep. As your stress level goes up your tinnitus gets worse.
When your tinnitus is caused by anxiety, you might worry that an anxiety attack is coming as soon as you hear that whooshing noise. This can, naturally, make it very difficult to sleep. The problem 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 significant as this vicious cycle carries on. And this can really have a detrimental impact on your wellness. Here are some of the most common impacts:
- Reduced reaction times: Your reaction times will be slower when you’re exhausted. This can make daily tasks such as driving a little more dangerous. And it’s particularly hazardous if you operate heavy machinery, for example.
- Elevated stress and worry: When you’re not sleeping, it makes those anxiety symptoms you already have even worse. This can result in a vicious cycle of mental health-related problems.
- Poor work performance: It should come as no shock that if you can’t sleep, your job performance will suffer. You won’t be as enthusiastic or be able to think clearly and quickly.
- Increased risk of cardiovascular disease: Over time, lack of sleep can begin to affect your long-term health and well-being. Increased risk of a stroke or heart disease can be the result.
Other causes of anxiety
Of course, there are other sources of anxiety besides tinnitus. It’s essential to recognize what these causes are so you can stay away from stress triggers and maybe decrease your tinnitus while you’re at it. Some of the most common causes of anxiety include the following:
- Stress response: Our bodies will have a natural anxiety response when something stresses us. If you are being chased by a wild animal, that’s great. But it’s not so good when you’re working on a project for work. Often, it’s not so clear what the relationship between the two is. You could have an anxiety attack today from something that caused a stress response last week. Even a stressor from last year can cause an anxiety attack now.
- Hyperstimulation: For some individuals, getting too much of any one thing, even a good thing, can bring on an anxiety attack. Being in a crowded environment, for example, can cause some people to have an anxiety response.
- Medical conditions: In some cases, you may simply have a medical condition that makes you more prone to an increased anxiety response.
Other factors: Some of the following, less common factors could also cause anxiety:
- Certain recreational drugs
- Fatigue and sleep deprivation (see the vicious cycle once again)
- Stimulant usage (that includes caffeine)
- Poor nutrition
This list is not exhaustive. And you should consult your provider if you think you have an anxiety disorder.
Treating anxiety-related tinnitus
You have two basic options to treat anxiety-induced tinnitus. The anxiety can be addressed or the tinnitus can be dealt with. Here’s how that may work in either case:
Addressing anxiety
There are a couple of possibilities for treating anxiety:
- Medication: In some instances, medication could help you deal with your symptoms or make your symptoms less obvious.
- Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT): Certain thought patterns can inadvertently exacerbate your anxiety symptoms and this method will help you identify those thought patterns. By interrupting these thought patterns, patients are able to more successfully avoid anxiety attacks.
Treating tinnitus
Tinnitus can be treated in a variety of different ways, especially if it presents while you’re sleeping. Some of the most common treatments include:
- Masking device: Think of this as a white noise machine you wear next to your ears. This might help your tinnitus to be less obvious.
- White noise machine: When you’re attempting to sleep, use a white noise machine. This could help mask your tinnitus symptoms.
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): If someone with tinnitus can acknowledge and accept their tinnitus symptoms they can decrease the disruptive impact it has. CBT is an approach that helps them do that by helping them generate new thought patterns.
Dealing with your tinnitus may help you sleep better
As long as that thrumming or whooshing is keeping you up at night, you’ll be at risk of falling into one of these vicious cycles, fueled by anxiety and tinnitus. Managing your tinnitus first is one possible option. To do that, you should give us a call.
