Your hearing system has an automatic property of selectivity.  That is, parts of the hearing system within your brain increase the degree to which they select out certain important, strange, or worrying sounds (including tinnitus) for special attention, and filter out the hearing of other sounds.  In addition, as you get older, your ability to hear external sounds reduces, and the resulting lack of contrasting sound makes you become more aware of internal tinnitus noises.  Any other form of hearing disorders or damage, such as from repeated exposure to loud noise (for example, gunshots, noise at work, or very loud music), can add to this natural hearing loss and make tinnitus even more noticeable.

Habituation

Imagine you have a new clock.  At first, you cannot help but hear its ticking, but after a while, you find you are no longer aware of it.  Other people hearing your new clock for the first time say how loud it is, but you have habituated to it – you are no longer conscious of it, your brain has decided to stop monitoring it constant, meaningless, non threatening ticking.  This is a natural process, called habituation, that your brain uses to stop overloading itself with the need to monitor all sorts of harmless information – and that applies to tinnitus too.

Tinnitus naturally subsides over time.  It is not a progressive condition that gets worse the longer you have it or that older and harder of hearing you become – it is quite the opposite!  However, you can do things to speed up this habituation process, and to alleviate some of the effects tinnitus causes until it does subside

As a first step, read these notes again to make sure you understand how worrying about your tinnitus and constantly listening to it will feed this vicious cycle.  Monitoring your tinnitus and worrying about it will only make it worse.