there is a lot here. If I fail to respond to it all, or something vital, re-ask- it's okay. I am with my son today, and we're taking quiet breaks...
The tinnitus sucks. Hands down! Interestingly, I don't have it in my sleep! It's a dream trigger to be aware of. I would seriously like to lucid dream up a control panel and turn it down, or have someone hypnotize me and we create the sound board of the mind.
There is a fountain at the fort worth water gardens, you may have seen it in the movie Logan's Run, where they come out of the city. that's fort worth! The interesting thing there is when you meditate at the bottom, you hear the water rushing all around you, and then there are moments of silence, then rushing water sound louder than before, and then quiet... It is a serious wave pattern of near and far and absent noise! It's the weirdest thing ever. Conscious awareness of anything and everything is like this- it waxes and wanes, but because we are always jumping from task to task and stimulus to stimulus, we never experiences the waxing and waning to this degree
Ever been in a movie and you forgot about everyone around you? This is that! Ever been at a light and it changed but you didn't notice until someone honked? This is that!
This waterfall is simply a great example because you at the center of the sound and I would take you to visit it if you were here. Coming into a house where someone is cooking is like this- you smell it on entry, and then it goes away.
Tinnitus can be like this. Nothing is going to make it go away. You can hide it with pink noise. Damaging your ears will make it worse, because it's not a ear thing- it's a brain thing. Little brain cells attached to these frequencies are responding as if it's on. This is the waterfall exercise- being aware of it, being not aware of it- Some days I struggle, some days I don't- and it is progressively getting 'louder.' The only thing I have to suggest in this regards is reframing- this is the sound of the universe- kind of thing. I think this is one of the few things CBT may actually help with, as the treatment modality that was scheduled to help reduce my hyperacusis was CBT.
As for lucid dream thing, I will tell you what got me my first, breakout LD. Obsessiveness! Seriously, you can't be obsessive enough. While reading a book on LD, i began practicing triggers. I set my watch alarm for every hour and when it went off, I would ask am I dreaming. I wrote on my mirror. I wrote on my the back of my hand and the palm of my R U Dreaming. I wrote in notebooks every night before bed about dream intention, and every morning I recorded my dreams. I was just over a month into this practice when I had my first lucid dream! Seriously, I was so stoked I woke myself up! I had regular lucid dreams where I woke myself up and I had to practice staying in the dream.
They say meditation helps. It might. I am a fan, but I am not telling people this is the pathway to do anything- or than to reduce stress. I recommend the puppy dog method of mindfulness as the way to learn meditation. You treat your brain like a puppy. It will wander. You call back to task. It will wander, gently call it back to task. Don't hit it with a newspaper! You keep doing this, and don't worry about the time. If you do it for one minute, you do it for one minute then build to five. Make a goal of making it to twenty minutes, but don't obsess about this. Obsess about the lucid dream trigger-
Make that your mindfulness exercise... A random alarm might be okay, but if you just have alarm go off every hour, and you ask are you dreaming- and you do that for a week- you're going to find that damn alarm ringing in your dream world. And you will ask. Talk about lucid dreaming with someone. If your partner is interested, make a team work? When her alarm goes off, have her ask you, are you dreaming? If she knows when you're in REM sleep? Have her whisper "You are dreaming." Or speak it softly. Have her wake you up at a random time to see if you were dreaming... Read as many books and essays as you can. You be 'weirdly' obsessive until you get that first dream... Then you relax, cause once you have one, the hardest part is over.
What you do when you're awake, you will eventually do in your dream.
Meditate on the tinnitus. Do a session to see how loud you can make it, another how soft. How distant can you make it seem... Tinnitus is not you, this is your brain. Play with your brain! Right now it may seem like an annoying hook or a web- because you feel like you can't escape... Turning it into a door or window or a carrier wave or the note the band needs to tune into in order to harmonize- that's where you will find the liberty from it.
