I could hear my neighbor's garage opening a block away in San Francisco and had a frequency sensitivity that was totally abnormal. It was also really painful so I'm glad I got my normal hearing range back.
I have been trying to describe my hearing symptoms to people and I could only say that I thought I was more sensitive than almost all of my peers. I thought it was because I was mildly on the spectrum(this is listed as an associated condition)
I will try to get a doctor to confirm if possible.
It doesn't cause me physical pain but certain many sounds will cause great discomfort in my life. It also keeps me from good sleep because I can't tune out sounds.
I wear earplugs to concerts and have a decibel monitor app on my phone.
I enjoy producing music in my free time and also enjoy taking the occasional psychedelic. Which is probably making it worse.
It is the most horrible condition you can ever imagine. I'm over two years in and am only recently back to being able to live a somewhat normal life, but I easily get "setbacks" due to loud sounds. In the hyperacusis community it's well known that these can become your new normal -- it's happened to me multiple times.
Protect your ears and try your best to not get concussions, folks. Though I can't confirm that one or either is the cause, it's my best guess and is good advice anyway.
All of these can cause setbacks, some permanent (for instance, a random fire alarm permanently increased my hearing sensitivity/pain). Wearing earplugs full time isn't a solution, partially because that's just an untenable way to go through life, and partially because your brain will compensate by turning up its "input gain," effectively making your hyperacusis even worse.
Most people with severe hyperacusis have no choice but to become shut-ins. A large percentage eventually kill themselves, to the point that I had to stop going to support forums because it happened to often.
It is truly a hellish condition. I've thankfully always come back from the points in which you could describe my condition as "severe" -- there have been times where even my own speaking voice caused me pain -- but many, many people don't, and I'm always walking a tightrope, fully aware that my somewhat normal life I've clawed my way back to could be over at any moment.
I'm not suggesting you had any sort of psychiatric issue. I'm sure your increased sensitivity was very real and very grounded in realistic expectations of reality. But, are you sure that there were no false positives that came with the heightened sensory experience? Did you ever check that the thing you recognized as a garage door opening down the block was in fact a garage door opening down the block? Could it have been some other subtle sound you normally don't pick up on?
With that said, was certainly hearing all sorts of things that I didn't know what they were, typically very low frequencies. Another comment mentioned my own heartbeat which I could hear, and I couldn't go into work for a few days due to how painful and distracting ambient noise was.
For the duration of the period I was wearing noise-canceling airpods, and it was the only way trucks passing by outside wouldn't make me wince.
No history of psychiatric issues fwiw, but have had my share of ENT irregularities (I can't properly equalize while diving, for example).
Very interested in the ultra low frequency bit. Any estimate at how many hertz it was? Somewhere under 20 hz it has to stop being sound and start being a consciously perceptible "puff of air".
I had a bad sinus infection that has mostly healed. Sometimes I can hear this very low rhythmic beating in my ear. It’s like someone banging on my furnace or doing some sort of distant construction (banging on sheet metal). I can even hear it with noise canceling headphones on (but no music, that drowns it out). The rhythm makes me wonder if it’s my heartbeat somehow.
For a long time I thought it was distant construction but I’m in a very rural area with no construction around, and I’ve noticed it over the span of months. It’s either something like tinnitus or maybe my neighbor is tunneling under my house.
I think the brain tends to filter the body sounds out of our consciousness in general and sometimes it sort of forgets to, or becomes rewired to notice or focus on something that is normally filtered.
When I was still healing, I would also get phantom choral voices! That was really disturbing. It usually was triggered and filtered by the bathroom fan, so I basically got to crap in a heavenly soundscape, lol.