Does Anyone Else Not Like Total Silence?

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I hate too much noise but at the same time, I cannot stand complete silence. I think the silence puts all of my senses on high alert because I have nothing to focus on. I need some sort of background noise like a TV or music. They just have to be loud enough to break the silence.

I don't like silence when in a group of people, unless we're all distracted by something like our phones or something. But when a silence occurs between conversations I always feel awkward, or I can feel the awkwardness of others, waiting for someone to comment on the awkward silence.

In general I do not mind silence. At least in general. I built an underground shelter and when I go inside, there is complete utter silence. TOTAL SILENCE. Total, total silence, might bother me.

It is surprising how much noise is out there. It is all over the place but because it is mild, we ignore it.

With the tinnitus wailing I'm thinking, "total silence"? Never heard of it. What is this sorcery of which you speak!?

I hate ear plugs for that but sometimes it beats the alternative. The kind of silence I really like is when I am deep in the woods alone and I can hear the wind in the trees, the lap of the waves on the shore, the bird calls, no motors, people, electronic devices, etc. I prefer chosen music in a headset to complete silence but would choose silence over many of the things that make noise here every day. Best wishes

I don't know, I've never been in a totally silent environment. Mostly I've lived in cities, and even out in the countryside there's always some ambient sounds - usually chainsaws and mowing machines these days.

But I imagine I'd like it. I already like it when the background noise is very low. It allows me to concentrate. Intermittent noises of most kinds tend to shatter my focus. Continuous noise of some kinds don't do that, and can often serve as masking for the more intrusive intermittent stuff. Some of them I like for their own sake - surf, rain, wind, birdsong (as long as it's not too loud), babbling brooks. When my son was very young and he couldn't sleep, I tried switching on a small hair drier with the heating elements off. It seemed to relax him, so I set up a time switch so it would turn off after he'd gone back to sleep.

I have something like tinnitus, but it's usually so quiet that I suspect it's just the normal noise floor of the human hearing system. When it's at its most noticeable at night I've sometimes felt uncomfortable about it - sometimes it's sounded like an old-fashioned computer loading data from a tape, and I've worried that it might become permanent, but it comes and goes, and hasn't got any worse or more frequent overall for years. Often I'm not sure if the noise I can hear is from the inside or from the environment. Right now I can hear what sounds like a quiet sine wave, and I don't know if it's my computer fan or my ears. I try not to worry about these things, usually successfully.

I personally cannot stand total silence. I have to be listening to music or a podcast or something at all times whenever it’s appropriate to do so. I think it’s one of the few sensory issues I actually do have.

Total silence... . That'll be one of the few things I'll communicate to others that I want. I'll have it back, thanks.

Far too many gunshots indoors without hearing protection on has given me that quite loud forever ringing (among other things).

Complete silence makes my ears hurt and gives me a headache. I always feel like I'm on "high alert", so it's like my brain and ears are uncontrollably straining and waiting to pick up on some sort of sound.

I would've want that. As a child, I kept wondering when's the next time the city becomes a ghost town.

Except I have tinnitus. Before I had some in both my ears.
Now my left side had been screaming louder since this year.

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living out in the sticks affords me periods of total silence, sufficiently quiet that the odd raindrops falls with a percussive tattoo. quiet enough to where i can hear the blood rushing in my cranial capillaries and the din of my tinnitus. now and then my tinnitus parts and i do get total luxurious silence. when i am trying to sleep however, i need the dense brown noise from my large HEPA filter to drown out those aforementioned physical noises my body produces [along with my beating heart which i can also feel], as well as the odd neighbor noises such as cars pulling in and taking off, the mailman, yahoos with their obnoxious 2-strokes, barking dogs and such.

I've forgotten what total silence is because I live in an apartment with neighbours too close by that love making a noise. What I'd give just to have at least one day of total silence without having to use earplugs or headphones. Fed up with people and their ugly noise.

I don't mind hearing the lovely sounds of nature, as it isn't annoyingly distracting as the sound of people.