Personally, having tinnitus for so long I don't even notice it anymore; it would be nice to experience complete "silence" again though.
My understanding of the underlying cause of tinnitus iirc, is that it's caused by damage to hair cells in your inner ear. Our brains interpret this damage and loss of signal as a signal; thus, we hear a high-pitched tone even when it is silent.
Training your brain to ignore this seems like treating the underlying cause, which is a misinterpretation of auditory signals or the lack thereof.
I have tinnitus but most times I don't notice it. Go to a loud venue for a while and even with earplugs it noticeably comes back for up to a week or two.
I have tinnitus as well and after months of focusing on it trying to “cure” it, I learned to adapt and now it is better and doesn’t keep me up at night or interfere with anything. This sounds like a shortcut to the acceptance that patients need to achieve in order to move on. But maybe it would make a real difference to very high intensity patients.
A few years back I got a bad wax buildup in one ear and stopped hearing anything. After they took the wax out, my ear was hypersensitive for a day or so. I heard every little rustle, shifting in my chair, even fabric moving when I moved my arm.
"Place the palms of your hands over your ears with fingers resting gently on the back of your head. Your middle fingers should point toward one another just above the base of your skull. Place your index fingers on top of your middle fingers and snap them (the index fingers) onto the skull making a loud, drumming noise. Repeat 40-50 times"
I think of it a little like phantom limb pains If you feel pain in a hand or foot that you no longer have, retraining your brain is one way to fix it. Maybe regrowing a foot would be better, but we don't know how to do that.