Imagine Tinnitus is a giant wall (like the Pink Floyd album) just an endless row of white bricks stretching as wide and as high as the sky.
At first you cannot see a way through and everything seems hopeless.
Then one brick falls away and then a while later another. These first few bricks are so isolated you do not notice them but they keep falling every day, week after week, month after month.
Then as time passes you start to notice some more bricks falling (you have moments when you do not notice Tinnitus at all). Then a brick that was holding up several rows falls away and brings down tons more. You start to have moments where you can see a way through and life returns.
But Tinnitus feels vulnerable and tries to get you to focus on the parts of the wall that are still intact (you have a set back). But as you stare at the bricks still irritated at the fact the wall is there at all, the bricks just keep on falling.
Then another main support gives way and 1000s of bricks fall away and this time you can really see the other side. You still don’t like the bricks but you can see they really are falling now and nothing is putting them back up.
The way ahead is to look through the gaps in the wall and trust they will get bigger until the last few bricks fall away.
This is how it felt to me. I could start to walk through the gaps in the wall and taste habituation. Every so often I would trip over a brick or look at a part of it that was still standing. However, I knew it was continuing to fall and habituation was real.
Time and patience were my weapons and the more I concentrated on life away from the subject the faster the remaining bricks came down.
Phil