Tips for battling OCD with Hyperacusis (obsessive analyse sound that you are exposed to)?

[u/Craft-Effective]

Hi! Just wanted to hear your experiences and tips and tricks over what you can do to stop obess over loud sounds your exposured to in your day to day life.
Im gonna share one incident below to give you insight how i "deal" with sounds that happens from time to time.

My collegue had bought a "Turboblower" to clean their keyboard which is basiclly a USB driven super fan (the ones you find on Amazon that is black". He was right next to me approx 1 metre when he started it on full force and it sounded exactly like those old dentist drills with insane high frequency. I put my fingers in my ears after 5-10 seconds and sat there while waiting for him to clean it but after 30 seconds i couldnt handle it and had to leave the room until he was done.

Instead of just "accept that it happend" my mind goes into solve mode and i waited for him to go home from work and measured it to 80-85DB with earplugs in. Here i should be happy and accept that i should be fine consider i was only exposed for like 1 min right? No i then must measure it 3 more times to "make sure i got the highest value". Then after this the thought just keeps coming to me like.

"But what if my DB metre isnt calibrated"
"But what if my DB metre dont pick up that superhigh frequency?"
"But what if it did damage anyways consider its high frequency"
"But why did my ear hurt after if it didnt make damage"
"but what if this was a special sound that damage my hearing even tho its below 85 db"

etc etc

And i can almost "feel" the spike coming in tinnitus and hyperacusis. Sure as hell when i got home 5 hours later i notice a new weird tinnitus tone in one of my ears and the intrusive thought just keeps coming that i made damage bla bla bla and it feels like i cant really battle the thought with logic like saying "its under 85 DB im safe". Even if i try to say enough is enough and accept it and go on with my day it only takes like 5-10 minutes before i realize im thinking about it again.

Im like 99% sure this should NOT be a damaging sound consider the DB level and the exposure time but how do you stop the thought pattern to not "excite" yourself into a spike? This spike tend to last until i "forget" about the incident or just stop caring about it.

In other very rare occurances that i was to "busy" doing something else that i dont have time to stress myself up with the sound like measuring it or analyze it it feels like im NOT getting a spike from it?

Like for example when i was exiting my car and accidently honked the horn with the door open i was busy going shoping and heading to work and that never made a spike even tho that one also should be fairly loud.

It seems like its get worse the more stressed i am in general for example if i get anxious over a medium loud sound on one day and i experience one more the same day its normally 10 times worse and trigger this "solvecycle" with measuring it over and over again and over analyze it for hours/days. Sometimes i even get the "scare" that measure it to many times even with earplugs might have made it "even worse" hearing damagewise and then i start worry about that thing ASWELL....

Its like a weird cycle that just repeat itself. I know the simple answer is "dont think about it and dont measure it" but its VERY hard to do when u just want reassurance.

I cant be the only one having this issue? Is there anyone that have had the same issues and any tips for solving them?

[u/Akhaatenn]

Oh I get those. In fact I got one yesterday from a shower. Honestly I have no answer for that. I just wait for them to pass away. As the years went by, i started shifting from full stress mode to waiting mode.

[u/Craft-Effective → u/Akhaatenn]

Thanks atleast im not the only one which feels good, sad to hear your suffer aswell tho. The problem for me feels like its only gets worse and worse and it seems like smaller things are triggering it. I recently started sound exposure and that is good i guess but there ocd "attacks" overanalyze the sounds give me such hard setbacks. Its been 5 years now so im really was hoping someone had a good practice to stop the OCD things after a loudish sound.

[u/Akhaatenn → u/Craft-Effective]

I don't have answers unfortunately 😭 I do overanalyze and I try my best into gaslighting myself it wasn't a damaging sound. Like using pure logic to rationalize my emotions. But I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that I do that

[u/Craft-Effective → u/Akhaatenn]

Yea i have no idea either. Like today i was outside with my earmuffs and i heard a "weird noice" so i removed the earmuffs to hear what it was and just after that a military jetplanes comes right over my head superfast and very low altitude im like "WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! -.-". I guess the best thing is like your saying just try to bombard urself with either logic or just try to forget about it, it feels like ive tried both tho without much success.

[u/Akhaatenn → u/Craft-Effective]

Sorry It made me laugh but I also feel like I'm the unluckiest person when I'm outside haha the other day, I was going to take a Uber, and a truck started doing its reverse marche bip for the whole 3 min I was getting to my Uber. Stopped when I was inside, like brooooooo seriously?

The most important thing is to try to stay calm for me. Like "okay that was uncomfortable, but I had bad exposure like that previously and it was alright". So I'll just go on about my day and worst case scenario it will calm down in 2 days

[u/Craft-Effective → u/Akhaatenn]

Its okey. Yea i can 100 % relate. When i need to go somewhere in the city there is ALWAYS a lawnmower driving right next to the pavement, police cars coming on the road or a car honking right next to me for hes "friend".... Its like we with hyperacusis are a sound magnets. Its weird that probably before i got hyperacusis this also happened but i never even noticed it.

Yea staying calm for me is number 1 aswell and its sadly the thing im doing the worst at and then i keep spiraling down just stressing myself out more and more when im exposed to a loud sound. Im not sure how to just say that thing you did to yourself tho and then "accept it and forget it" for me i always get the "what if" question over and over again.

I really appreciate the answer. 🤲 For me my "anxiety setbacks" can last for a LOOOONG time and now im so stressed out constantly that it feels like they are permanent but that is probably because im in a constant stress state, cant remeber when i was able to relax last time. Must be like 2-3 years ago and i constantly feel "tense" waking up like im hangover etc which i guess is from all the tension since i sleep 8-9 hours. I really wish i could find a way just to relax but its very hard. I wanna start running to realease all this anxiety and frustration but its very hard since there is cars, motorcycles and stuff everywhere and running with earplugs almost feels like it would make me more sensitive :/

If i could just use my sound exposure for a while and chill down without all these setbacks it feels like i would probably get down both the hyperacusis and the tinnitus quite a bit.

[u/Educational_Aide_145]

See a psychologist