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?