"Don't sweat it" is the most important thing, I've found, especially with tinnitus.

As with a number of things, I've found I can actually move the needle when I give myself grace to fail, as long as I can genuinely try again and resolve to do better. A recent example being stopping telling myself I'm tired in the morning. Such a bad habit that self perpetuated. I was always feeling tired, in part, because I was telling myself I was tired.

Chewing fingernails on the other hand, damn... that hasn't worked so far because I give myself grace, but never really resolve to do better. Someday I'll figure that out.

Re fingernails: I bought keep a set of sharp fingernail clippers at my work desk. Any time I notice my fingernails being more than tiny, I neatly trim them. It turns out I mainly just couldn't abide having long fingernails. When I stopped having them, I stopped reflexively nipping at them.

I've heard people apply a foul tasting chemicals to their fingers for a while to help condition yourself to not bite on them.

"Stop'n'grow" is a famous example product. Doesn't work for me, I'm apparently that determined to chew them, and clearly not bothered to the point of actually breaking that habit! I think part of the problem is, by the time I get the taste, I've cut the nail enough that I can't just leave it. Maybe I need to do both that kind of stuff, and ensure I have nail trimmers near to hand :D

When I first started experiencing tinnitus, it was a nightmare. I'm a naturally anxious, catastrophizing person. All the reading I did about it made it so, so much worse, both in terms of perceived severity of symptoms and psychological impact. It had a profound effect on my life. I genuinely had intrusive, obsessive "I'll never be happy again" type thoughts.

A few years later, it has basically zero impact on my life. I am not aware of it 99.9% of the time, and when I am aware of it, I don't go down the same psychological rabbit holes, and I quickly and reliably move out of awareness of it.

Obviously, everyone's experiences and particular symptoms are different. But I think it's really, really important to spread the message that it really can be a mild, almost inconsequential condition, for many people - even anxious, dare-I-say neurotic people.

There was no single silver-bullet treatment path for me, but a combination of very normal, mundane things like therapy, relaxation (massage, hot baths, exercise) and limited use of safe levels of white noise helped me. Perhaps the biggest thing was shrinking my time horizon from "how can I live the rest of my life like this?" to "how can I enjoy today as best as I can?"

The internet is full of horror stories from people, often written during their darkest moments, about how awful it can be. I could easily have written a hopeless, dark, scary account of my symptoms when I was at my lowest points.

Reading such accounts is of absolutely no utility to anyone. If anyone is struggling with this condition, I highly advise you to avoid reading such material at all costs. Try to maintain an awareness of the millions upon millions of people for whom tinnitus is a mild, transitory condition they almost never think about (and, as a consequence, never write about their experiences on the internet)

Did you ever try massaging the back of your head & neck specifically? That seems to work well for me.

I have crazy tight traps & neck. I have started a routine of stretching and dead hangs and I'm interested to see what that does for my tinnitus. Like the poster above. I just try not to think about it. TBH this thread reminded me I had it XD.

Meditation helped me shift from resistance to acceptance. When it's quiet and still in the room and I hear The Whine, I greet it. "Hi there, little Eeeeeee!" For me, that demotes it to an innocuous background sensation no worse, or even different, than realizing that oh, my foot is pushing against the floor. Fighting it is futile. Accepting it let me stop caring about it.

Of course I don't claim that's the universal fix for everyone. It sure helped me.