Pulsing In The Ears (Pulsatile Tinnitus) And Anxiety
Pulsatile Tinnitus: Hearing a pulsing, swooshing, whooshing, swishing, throbbing, or heartbeat beating sound in your ears are common anxiety disorder symptoms, including anxiety and panic attack symptoms.
Many anxious and stressed people get pulsing in the ear symptoms (tinnitus).
This article explains the relationship between anxiety and ear symptoms, including pulsatile tinnitus: hearing a pulsing, swooshing, whooshing, swishing, throbbing, or heartbeat beating sound in your ear or ears
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Anxiety pulsing in the ear common symptom descriptions:
- There is a pulsing, throbbing, swooshing, whooshing, or other type of odd sound pulsing in one ear or both ears.
- For no apparent reason, you hear your heart beating in your ear or both ears.
- This sound is also often described as a swishing, swirling, swooshing, whooshing, vibrating, or beating sound or feeling either in the ear or “behind” the ear.
- Sometimes this pulsating sound can be accompanied by sharp shooting pains or a dull ache or throbbing pain.
- This pulsing sound can also be accompanied by a ticking, clicking, popping, or bubble-popping sound or sensation.
- This pulsing sound can also be accompanied by a “ringing,” “hissing,” or persistent “tone” in your ear or ears.
Pulsatile Tinnitus can:
- Occur occasionally, frequently, or persistently.
- Precede, accompany, or follow an escalation of other anxiety symptoms or occur by itself.
- Precede, accompany, or follow a period of nervousness, anxiety, fear, and stress, or occur "out of the blue" and for no reason.
- Range in intensity from slight, to moderate, to severe.
- Come in waves where it’s strong one moment and subsides the next.
- Change from day to day, moment to moment, or remain as a constant background during your struggle with anxiety disorder.
All combinations and variations of the above are common.
This symptom can seem more disconcerting when undistracted, resting, doing deep relaxation, when trying to go to sleep or when waking up, when lying down, or when the environment is quiet.
To see if anxiety might be playing a role in your symptoms, rate your level of anxiety using our free one-minute instant results Anxiety Test, Anxiety Disorder Test, or Hyperstimulation Test.
The higher the rating, the more likely anxiety could be contributing to or causing your anxiety symptoms, including feeling like impending doom symptoms.
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Why anxiety can cause pulsing in the ear symptoms
Medical Advisory
Talk to your doctor about all new, changing, persistent, and returning symptoms as some medical conditions and medications can cause anxiety-like symptoms.
There can be many reasons why anxiety can cause this pulsing in the ear symptom. Two of the most common are:
1. Stress response
Behaving anxiously activates the stress response, also known as the fight or flight response. The stress response causes body-wide changes that prepare the body for immediate emergency action [1][2].
Visit our “Stress Response” article for more information about the many changes caused by the stress response.
Some of the stress response changes include:
- Increased blood flow: Stress hormones, which are powerful stimulants, cause an increase in heart rate, respiration, metabolism, and blood pressure. These increases, including those in the head and near the ear, can cause all the sounds associated with this symptom, including a pounding heartbeat in the ear.
- Shunts blood: to parts of the body vital to survival, such as the brain, arms, legs, muscles, and vital organs, and away from parts less essential for survival, such as the stomach, digestive system, and skin. It accomplishes this by constricting blood vessels in certain parts of the body and dilating them in others. Increased blood flow to the brain can affect hearing, causing all the sounds associated with this symptom.
- Heightened sensitivity: Stress hormones increase sympathetic nervous system activity, increasing our senses, including being hyper-aware of bodily sensations. The sound of blood flow, which is normally filtered out by the brain, can become more noticeable due to the heightened awareness and sensitivity.
- Tightened muscles: The stress response causes muscles to tighten, including in the neck and head. This tension can constrict blood vessels or the eustachian tube, which connects the ear to the throat, amplifying the perception of sounds in the ear.
- Vascular changes: The vascular changes caused by shunting blood can affect the blood vessels near the ear, causing an increase in sound perception, including all the sounds associated with this symptom.
The higher the degree of the stress response, the more dramatic the changes.
Since stress responses push the body beyond its balance point (equilibrium), stress responses stress the body. A body that becomes stressed can exhibit symptoms of stress.
Therefore, anxiety symptoms are symptoms of stress. They are called anxiety symptoms because anxious behavior is the main source of the stress that stresses the body, causing symptoms.
Any one or combination of the stress response changes can cause a “pulsing” sound or sensation in the ear or ears.
An active stress response is a common cause of “pulsing in the ear” symptoms.
2. Hyperstimulation
When stress responses occur infrequently, the body can recover relatively quickly. However, when stress responses occur too frequently, such as from overly anxious behavior, the body can’t complete its recovery.
Incomplete recovery can cause the body to remain in a state of semi stress response readiness. We call this state “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are powerful stimulants [3][4].
Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “chronic stress,” “hyperarousal” or “HPA axis dysregulation.”
Visit our “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many changes caused by hyperstimulation.
Hyperstimulation can cause body-wide changes similar to an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated.
Hyperstimulation is a common cause of re-occurring or persistent pulsing in the ear (pulsatile tinnitus) symptoms.
Many people notice this symptom when they are chronically stressed. Consequently, "pulsing in the ear" symptoms are common symptoms of chronic stress.
3. Other Factors
Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:
- Medication
- Recreational drugs
- Stimulants
- Sleep deprivation
- Fatigue
- Hyper and hypoventilation
- Low blood sugar
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Dehydration
- Hormone changes
- Pain
Select the relevant link for more information.
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How to get rid of pulsatile tinnitus (pulsing in the ears) anxiety symptoms?
When this symptom is caused or aggravated by other factors, addressing those factors can reduce and eliminate it.
1. End the stress response
When this anxiety pulsing in the ear symptom is caused by apprehensive behavior and the accompanying stress response changes, calming yourself down will bring an end to the active stress response and its changes. As your body recovers from the active stress response, this anxiety symptom should subside.
Keep in mind, it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. This is normal and shouldn’t be a cause for concern.
If you are having difficulty ending anxiety or the stress response, chapters 5, 6, and 7 in the Recovery Support area have many sections on how to do this.
2. Eliminate hyperstimulation
When hyperstimulation (chronic stress) causes pulsatile tinnitus, eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.
You can eliminate hyperstimulation by:
- Reducing stress.
- Containing anxious behavior (since anxiety creates stress).
- Regular deep relaxation.
- Avoiding stimulants.
- Regular light to moderate exercise.
- Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
- Passively accepting your symptoms until they subside.
- Being patient as your body recovers.
Visit our “60 Natural Ways To Reduce Stress” article for more ways to reduce stress.
Recovery Support members can view chapters 5, 6, 7, 14 and more for more detailed information about recovering from hyperstimulation and anxiety disorder.
As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms, including this one.
Symptoms of chronic stress subside as the body regains its normal, non-hyperstimulated health.
However, eliminating hyperstimulation can take much longer than most people think, causing symptoms to linger longer than expected.
As long as the body is even slightly hyperstimulated, it can present symptoms of any type, number, intensity, duration, frequency, and at any time, including this one.
Even so, since pulsatile tinnitus is a common symptom of stress, including anxiety-caused stress, it's harmless and needn't be a cause for concern. It will subside when unhealthy stress has been eliminated and the body has had sufficient time to recover. Therefore, there is no reason to worry about it.
Anxiety symptoms often linger because:
- The body is still being stressed (from stressful circumstances or anxious behavior).
- Your stress hasn't diminished enough or for long enough.
- Your body hasn't completed its recovery work.
Addressing the reason for lingering symptoms will allow the body to recover.
Most often, lingering anxiety symptoms ONLY remain because of the above reasons. They AREN'T a sign of a medical problem. This is especially true if you have had your symptoms evaluated by your doctor and they have been solely attributed to anxiety or stress.
Chronic anxiety symptoms subside when hyperstimulation is eliminated. As the body recovers and stabilizes, all chronic anxiety symptoms will slowly diminish and eventually disappear.
Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with recovery.
Passively accepting your symptoms – allowing them to persist without reacting to, resisting, worrying about, or fighting them – while doing your recovery work will cause their cessation in time.
Acceptance, practice, and patience are key to recovery.
Keep in mind that it can take a long time for the body to recover from hyperstimulation. It's best to faithfully work at your recovery despite the lack of apparent progress.
However, if you persevere with your recovery work, you will succeed.
You also have to do your recovery work FIRST before your body can recover. The cumulative effects of your recovery work will produce results down the road. And the body's stimulation has to diminish before symptoms can subside.
- Reducing stress.
- Increasing rest.
- Faithfully practicing your recovery strategies.
- Passively accepting your symptoms.
- Containing anxious behavior.
- Being patient.
These will bring results in time.
When you do the right work, the body must recover!
Remember: Focusing on your sensations and symptoms makes them more pronounced. If you'd like to lessen their impact, learn to focus your attention elsewhere through distraction, enjoying your hobbies, undertaking pleasing and calming activities, regular deep relaxation, and by recalling pleasant memories or experiences.
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3. Therapy
Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors that cause issues with anxiety is the number one reason why anxiety disorder and its symptoms persist.
This is why dealing with your anxiety issues is the most important work overall if you desire lasting freedom from anxiety disorder and its symptoms.
Keep in mind that eliminating anxiety symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve overcome issues with anxiety. Anxiety symptoms are symptoms of stress. Eliminating anxiety symptoms means you’ve eliminated the unhealthy stress that is causing your symptoms.
However, if the underlying factors that cause issues with anxiety disorder aren’t addressed, it’s often just a matter of time until the body is chronically stressed and symptomatic again.
Rebounds of symptoms and a return to a struggle with anxiety disorder are caused for this very reason: the core issues that cause anxiety disorder haven’t been successfully addressed.
To eliminate issues with anxiety and symptoms once and for all, we need to eliminate the cause of problematic anxiety – the underlying factors that cause issues with anxiety.
When you eliminate the cause of the problem, you eliminate the problem and its symptoms.
Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to addresses anxiety’s underlying factors.
All our recommended therapists are professionally trained, and have experienced anxiety disorder, have successfully overcome it, and are medication-free. Their years of personal and professional experience make them an excellent choice to work with on the road to recovery.
Common Anxiety Symptoms
Additional Resources
- For a comprehensive list of Anxiety Disorders Symptoms Signs, Types, Causes, Diagnosis, and Treatment.
- Anxiety and panic attacks symptoms can be powerful experiences. Find out what they are and how to stop them.
- How to stop an anxiety attack and panic.
- Free online anxiety tests to screen for anxiety. Two minute tests with instant results. Such as:
- Anxiety 101 is a summarized description of anxiety, anxiety disorder, and how to overcome it.
Return to our anxiety disorders signs and symptoms page.
anxietycentre.com: Information, support, and therapy for anxiety disorder and its symptoms, including Pulsatile Tinnitus: Pulsing In The Ears anxiety symptoms.
References
1. Chu, Brianna, et al. “Physiology, Stress Reaction.” StatPearls, 7 May 2024.
2. Godoy, Livea, et al. "A Comprehensive Overview on Stress Neurobiology: Basic Concepts and Clinical Implications." Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, July 2018.
3. Folk, Jim and Folk, Marilyn. "Stress-response Hyperstimulation." anxietycentre.com, Nov. 2019.
4. Teixeira, Renata Roland, et al. “Chronic Stress Induces a Hyporeactivity of the Autonomic Nervous System in Response to Acute Mental Stressor and Impairs Cognitive Performance in Business Executives.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2015.