The Three Levels of Hearing (according to Ramsdell's model of hearing)
There are 3 levels at which we hear:
1. First Level of Hearing
This is the hearing we have in any familiar environment. The ambient noise in our surroundings are heard if we listen to them. In an office, it might be the tapping of keyboard, the hum of computers and other equipment. In the street, it might be the sound of traffic. For the most part, such sounds recede to outside our conscious awareness. Were we to give attention to what hear in our environment, we would hear those sounds - they would be IN our conscious awareness. Once we're no longer giving them our attention, they are no longer in our conscious awareness.
2. Second Level of Hearing
This is the level of hearing we use when an alerting sound emerges from the ambient noise in our environment. It might be a telephone ringing in the office, or it might be a siren sounding while we are in the street.
3. Third Level of Hearing
The 3rd level of hearing is when we actively listen to a sound. 3rd level hearing is primarily for the purposes of listening to speech, music - what ever we give our conscious awareness (our attention) to.
Tinnitus and its relationship with the three levels
When we first notice tinnitus, it comes in at the 2nd level of hearing. It emerges - just as does any alerting sound. When we react with emotion towards it (fear it, worry about it, imagine how "bad" it might become, predict "terrible times ahead because of it" or similar negative reactions), we unintentionally prime the brain to be conditioned to treat tinnitus as a threat. Because the brain treats it as a threat, we become conscious of not only its presence; we monitor it, over time training ourselves to monitor it sub-consciously. There is an article in the CBT4T Substack about this: Listening to and monitoring tinnitus
Conversely, when we acknowledge it for what it is - an internally generated sound signal that a large percentage of the population (one-in-seven people) can hear - even when it does enter the 3rd level of hearing, it is there for just a short time soon receding to the 1st level of hearing where, for most of the time, it is outside our conscious awareness. However, if we allow the brain to continue attaching significance to it and allow ourselves to "listen" to it, then it is at the third level of hearing.
The aim of CBT4T is for tinnitus to being at the first level of hearing (outside of conscious awareness) for the majority (90%+) of the time.