Illusions prove our brains can lie to us. That helped me rethink tinnitus.
We think of our senses as reliable. But illusions prove otherwise.
We can look at two identical shapes and swear one is bigger. We can hear a silent video and imagine a sound. We can feel pain in a shoulder that’s actually coming from the heart, or from a part of the brain reacting to something that feels wrong, intrusive, or out of place even when it isn’t harmful.
Referred pain, phantom limb pain, and stress-induced nausea are all accepted examples of how our brains can misattribute signals and turn harmless sensations into something that feels overwhelming or impossible to ignore.
So why not tinnitus?
Why is it so hard to believe that the sound isn’t just coming from our ears, but from a brain struggling to make sense of something unfamiliar, intrusive, and seemingly uncontrollable?
That’s the question these illusions forced me to ask. And what I realized changed everything.
I used to wake up every day dreading the first 10 minutes. That’s how long it took to figure out whether it would be a “loud” day or a “good” one.
Mornings always started loud, but sometimes, after being up and about for a bit, it would settle down. Once a week, maybe, it would dwindle down to little or nothing. But then the next day, it would come roaring back.
It drove me nuts that every time I thought it was getting better, my hopes would be crushed the next day, and I’d struggle to get used to it all over again.
Once I stopped looking for cures and started approaching my tinnitus psychologically, things began to look up.
One day, I stumbled onto some illusion videos on YouTube, which prompted me to start reading a lot about perception and how flexible it really is.
None of that cured my tinnitus (in fact, none of it was directly related to tinnitus), but it changed the way I understood tinnitus, which was very helpful on the road to getting better.
Four of those illusions changed the way I thought about tinnitus and helped me start getting better. Here’s what I learned:
1. The same thing can feel different depending on context
There’s this illusion where two identical batteries are placed on different parts of graph paper. One background has small grid lines, the other has big ones. Suddenly one battery looks bigger or smaller than the other depending on where it is.
You know they’re the same. But your brain still gets it wrong.
That’s exactly what I realized was happening with tinnitus. The tone wasn’t changing, but how it felt did, depending on how tired I was, how anxious I was, and where my attention was.
I saw how context could amplify or turn down the signal.
2. The mind can turn a real symptom into a greater burden.
Tinnitus wasn’t painful for me, but my brain treated it like an intruder I couldn’t remove.
Recently, I came across a classic experiment that helps explain what was going on.
In the setup, a subject’s real hand is hidden, and a fake rubber hand is placed in front of them, positioned to look like it’s theirs. Both are stroked at the same time, and after a while, the subject starts to feel like the rubber hand is theirs. Later, when the rubber hand is hit hard with a hammer, the subject reacts as if he really felt the pain.
That blew my mind.
The brain can come to believe something is part of our reality, even when it isn’t. Once that belief takes hold, the brain can respond as if it’s dealing with a genuine, ongoing problem.
With tinnitus, my brain wasn’t reacting to “just a sound.” It was reacting to what it believed the sound meant: an intrusion I’d never escape. And that belief made the experience feel far more intrusive than the sound alone ever could.
3. Belief can shape our experience more than the signal
There’s a prank video where people believe they’ve been splashed with scalding hot water but the water isn’t hot at all. They scream and react as if they’ve been burned.
Their brains believed it should hurt, and that belief shaped their reaction.
That really got me thinking, because early on, I was told things like “this might be permanent,” and “there’s no cure”. Those ideas stuck, and every time my T spiked, I reacted with panic. My brain wasn’t reacting to the sound itself. It was reacting to the belief that it had robbed me of my peace, my silence, and my sense of control.
But it wasn’t hot coffee. It was just cold water I believed would burn.
4. Expectation can literally create perception
There’s this short animated video where a giant metal tower jumps and slams into the ground. The video is completely silent, but many people hear a thud anyway.
That’s how powerful expectation is. Our brains can see something that should make a sound, and add it in automatically, even when it’s not there.
It made me wonder: if the brain can add a sound that isn’t there just because it expects one, how much of my tinnitus might be shaped by that same kind of expectation?
And could that expectation have been created by hearing (and believing) early on ideas like “this might be permanent,” and “there’s no cure”?
What all this meant for me:
These illusions don’t mean tinnitus is fake. The sound is real. The distress is real.
But it isn’t fixed. It isn’t only about what your ears are doing. It’s also about what your brain is predicting, evaluating, and tagging as urgent, unfamiliar, and impossible to tune out.
And that gave me hope, because if perception can change that much based on context, expectation, and meaning, then maybe tinnitus isn’t the immovable intruder I thought it was.
I’m doing a lot better now. Not because the sound is gone, but because it lost its power over me. I learned to focus elsewhere, and now, I rarely notice it unless I go looking for it. These illusions were one of the things that helped me get here.
I know it’s tempting to keep chasing free tips and tricks; I did the same when I was desperate for answers. But what really changed things for me wasn’t just gathering more advice; it was when the guidance became personal. When I had someone helping me apply the right ideas in the right way for my situation, that’s when the illusions stopped being abstract and started becoming real tools for change.
If this helps someone see a way out, even a little more clearly, then I’m glad I shared it.
