I find it stunning at the end of the day when I take out my hearing aids at just how quiet the world gets (well, aside from the tinnitus). I can barely hear myself, I can barely hear my wife. I never really noticed but I sure notice now after ten days with hearing aids. Even though they’re far from perfect it’s still pretty amazing what they give me.
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The quiet is so nice at times.
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I was just outside hanging up the washing. The evening was filled with the sound of cicadas. Took out the hearing aids and there was nothing. Zilch. Eerie and a little bit scary…
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I remember the 1st day wearing my new HA’s several years ago, I was sitting on the front porch and I heard a strange rustling/ratteling sound about 15’ away… I asked my wife is that our palm shrub making that noise and she laughed and said I can’t believe you have never heard it before… then and there I realized just how much difference these HA’s made… it was and still is amazing
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I know. I’ve been wearing hearing aids for more than 40 years and I’m still amazed at the difference when I take mine out at night. Suddenly I’m plunged into a very silent world (yes I have tinnitus too),
It also makes you realise just how isolating deafness is, doesn’t it?
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I personally dislike taking my aids out because then my tinnitus kicks into high gear.
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I have often compared the experience of taking hearing aids out to wrapping a pillow around my head. I feel like that helps non-hearing aid folks to understand the sensation.
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It has advantages when you use a CPAP. They are pretty quiet to start with, but virtually silent when you have a hearing loss.
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I love the silence at the end of the day. Gives me peace and quiet and allows me to sleep well.
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The quiet is nice when you pop the HAs out at first but the downside is that if you are profoundly deaf as I am you can’t hear the phone ring and you can’t hear a smoke alarm go off and so on. If there is a riot going on outside, you would not hear it. The only way I can be roused is if my dog jumps up on the bed. So having a dog is absolutely essential in my case.
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We have a pupper (Australian Cattle Dog “Albie”, he’s not quite 13 mos.) and I can hear him bark without my HAs but none of the other sounds he makes. So, his whimpers wake my wife who can wake me if necessary.
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Red healer with not tail! What happened to that dogs tail? 
We have one too. She’s almost 7 years old now.
They settle down some at 2 years.
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I used the white noise theta waves quite succesfully when I was kept awake by tinitus. Half an hour during the day would also keep the after hours noise somewhat down. Give it a try. Who knows, it might have an impact.
I don’t know what happened, but I think that the tinnitus died down about when I got my Phonak Bolero B90’s. It was already somewhat reduced after I got my first set of HA’s, but still troublesome enough to put the theta waves to work.
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He was born without one, just a lil nubbin. He’s pretty fun. Dealing very well with our temporary apartment living compared to his former very large yard.
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My tinnitus is 24/7/365 it is always there even when I wear my aids, just not as noticeable. I sleep with a sound machine, always. I have also got a sound pillow that the VA gave me, but I do not care for it very much. I guess if I slept on my back it would work okay, but I sleep on one side or the other, so the pillow doesn’t help that much.
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The silence, to realize how much I miss, is astounding!
And what you describe, this is why so often a person sees the ENT, then is walked down the hall to the in-house Audiologist and ends up buying HAs on the spot. It is amazing to hear, to realize how much you are missing. Even though that HA may not be the best one for you. (I also don’t like the set up, folks think they have to buy there, they don’t realize they have options, that a different audiologist will have different makes which do different things, but that is a different topic.)
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Lots of us seem to have tinnitus… Tis a severe pain in the proverbial to never actually experience complete silence ever again!!! But that is life and we all have crosses to bear in some form or other, but we all adapt as best we can … some 30 years or so ago SSNHL; I went deaf literally overnight (Viral Flu) whilst living and working as a manager of a construction company in Shetland, lost my job, lost all confidence, became depressed in a few short months, I now had Bilateral Severe Sensory Neural Hearing Loss, Severe Tinnitus and just to throw a complete cog in the works I also had MD Meniers Disease and Recruitment, Sleeping was very difficult with the Tinnitus… I went from being a company boss to gutting fish, life can be cruel at times, but when you bottom out, the only way is up, it took many years to actually adjust and except my loss… I got my first set of HA’s about 9 months or so after my initial loss, there was no ENT or Audiologists in Shetland so I had to fly back and forth to Aberdeen ENT NHS Department and to be very truthful I didn’t quite know what to expect from these analogue hearing aids, the only advice I got was from the Audi; “you will not be able to ware the hearing aids for longer than an hour at first then just build it up every day” boy he wasn’t joking! Twas fine in the office, but once I hit the street I can only describe it as a wall of sound, snow on the ground, crunch, crunch, crunch!!! Seagulls everywhere screeching, traffic noise all around and I quickly became overwhelmed with what were unbelievably loud distorted sounds, twas a completely upsetting experience and I thought I am never going to cope… but eventually I did. Cheers Kev 
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When I get fed up with the loud noise of the city and I want some peace and quiet. I just let my magnet From my CI dangle, and open my battery door on my HA. Sit in a coffee shop and have a cuppa, relax and forget the noise that’s going on around me. People come and go and I can’t hear them, it’s sheer bliss!!!
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I used to wear earplugs to bed for years because I could hear too much! So strange. At that point it seemed I had my grandmother’s excellent hearing…but no, turned out I had grandpop’s gradual hearing loss. I love taking HAs out at night, the world goes soft, brain stops working so hard. But I sleep with audiobook or podcasts on all night, have done for years, stops me ‘thinking too much’ as well as stops me ’listening’ to tinnitus.
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It’s such a lot of work for the brain at first! (And always). I was rebellious and forced myself to put them on and leave them on. The first night I went to bed ridiculously early, 7.30 or something, brain was completely exhausted!
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