I share this from my own experience of the condition we call tinnitus. What I say may relate to you and make sense but if it doesn't please feel free to ask me to elaborate more. It may also be that you see something that I have misunderstood and I would be grateful to know the truth that I missed.
Getting started. Since my early teens I believe that I had this condition as I remember waking up one day for school and not being able to think clearly (the night before I was listening to music on a walkman). Since that day everything seemed foggy, it felt like something wasn't right, I thought nothing of it and put it down to tiredness. I explained to people it felt like I couldn't turn my brain off, as if there was something continually whirring away. (Forgive me for the short-hand version I'm telling). For years it was like this and it got worse, my concentration and attention were awful, but then on the odd day it would be amazing. Skip ahead many years to my mid-30s and I'm now living in the countryside, half-way up a hill in pure silence. I had been through a rough patch but something in me said to get away from the noise (at this point I still didn't know it was tinnitus).
After a couple of months living in the middle-of- nowhere I noticed that the "buzzing foggy sensation" was a sound and thought hmmm maybe it's tinnitus. I'm assuming that by slowing down I could actually start noticing what was going on inside me and being in the quiet I could start to introspect. Then I began to notice that the tinnitus over the next weeks and months started to go away. It was definitely not as intense and my concentration and attention got better. Now some of this I put down to a better quality of life (less stress, anxiety, etc) but there was something else that played a part but I couldn't figure out what.
Skip ahead a year later and I'm back living in the city and boom!, all of a sudden the sounds of the city aggravated something in me and it became almost unbearable. I began to experiment with this and noticed what was causing the discomfort:
1. Background hum; the hum of the roads (I can hear the motorway), the hum of the extractor fan in the kitchen, the fridge, the heating system
2. Stress/anxiety
All of the above I noticed with the help of a meditation practice which I have been doing for many years, the practice involves keeping your attention on one object (my breath). The meditation didn't directly make an in impact (sometimes made it worse) but helped me notice things.
The insight I share is that the constant humming sounds (traffic/roads, fridge, extractor fan, heating system), are what keep the tinnitus activated. When removed from those noises there is a noticeable impact. When living in the countryside there was no noise from the roads, it was silent and my tinnitus almost stopped.
tinnitus so loud I can’t hear in my right ear 
my Tinnitus sounds like a chorus of crickets some nights. 
Why is my tinnitus intermittent?
My brief Tinnitus story
