I told myself I wouldn’t make a Reddit account after creating and deleting them multiple times, but I really need to get this off my chest.
Today, I was getting dropped off to college by my narcissistic egg donor. She was talking loudly on the phone, and I just wanted a moment of peace so I put my headphones on. That apparently set her off—she hung up and immediately accused me of ignoring her. Then, when traffic built up near the entrance, she started blaring the car horn repeatedly, right next to me. Over and over again, and in typical martyr fashion said something like, “Why do I always have to be the one to speak up?”
When I was getting out of the car, she had the nerve to say, “I must’ve ruptured your eardrums,” like it was some kind of joke. It’s been four hours and my ears still hurt. There’s no bleeding but I feel like someone took a sledgehammer to both ears.
I don’t even know what to make of this. I’m so mad at myself for putting them on. Had I known she would act like this, I would’ve stewed in silence.
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You can tell yourself over and over that I shouldn’t have done this, or I should have known that this would bother her, etc… no matter what you did, she would have raged. Nothing can make people like her happy. I know from experience. They expect you to know what’s going on in their head at all times. It’s exhausting because it’s impossible.
I’m sorry she hurt you and laughed about it. She’s awful. I just wanted to point out the potential that you may have auditory processing disorder or something along those lines. It makes your hearing more sensitive and sometimes makes it impossible to hear what is going on when there are too many student sounds. Due to my APD, I get headaches from certain tones. I can imagine it causing the pain you are describing from a sharp honk.
Please try not to beat yourself up. There was no “winning” in this situation, just surviving. I wish you well.
Yeah ain’t no way you are at fault.
Now there is something of importance i need to tell you. Normal people i know won’t get ear pain for 4 hours after several honks near them. I wouldn’t know since i wasn’t born with normal hearing. I have hyperacusis which you too might have meaning there is a chance you might be hearing things louder. There are several causes and the most common are infection or exposure to loud noise.
Hyperacusis characteristics / symptoms include:
-Hearing things louder
-Tinnus
-Ear pain (randomly but especially after loud sound exposure or mid high for an extended period of time)
-Dizzyness (rare symptom)
-Feeling like your drums are vibrating (more common after loud sound exposure)
-Headache when exposed to loud sound (especially in the temples)
-Being more sensitive than usual to high-frequency sounds.
Some notes to keep in mind:
-You might feel like your hearing is worse and you are far from hearing louder in loud background noise environments as this usually limits what you can hear in the foreground.
-Hyperacusis is unlike what people think a problem in the brain. To be specific a mis-calibration. So you hear normal and the brain raises what you hear. Meaning a stressed brain /mentality and sleep quality and pretty much anything that affects the mind and brain can contribute to a better / worse day(s). So you need to take care of your mentality and body.
-If you get into an episode of symptoms due to exposure to loud sound, you tend to have even more senstive hearing for a while. This can result in a kind of chain reaction. Which to be fair is difficult to deal with and the best way is to protect your ears till they return to normal hyperacusis mode and the best way to do this at home is to tell the people around you to be mindful which we want to avoid because if you tell them, they will probably do the exact opposite. So you might have to figure out how to cope on this aspect.
-Remember, this is jist an assumption. It is advised to seek professional help. You can ask on r/hyperacusis for a good ENT in your area. Since this is a rare condition, you will have a hard time finding an ENT that can diagnose this. And in case if you do have it, it is definitely treatable. So never give up bud. Oh wait, forgot that people like us have strong tenacities.
Also feel free to ask about anything that seems unclear. And good luck mate!