People who do have tinnitus should try the retraining therapy. I sort of did it on my own and I went from being bothered by it to not being bothered by tinnitus rather quickly. The rough idea on how it works is this :
As everyone knows, sensory input is processed by the brain. Various inputs are "labeled" in a way after importance. Some input can be ignored, like the feeling of your clothes against your skin, and some, particularly those that trigger an emotional response, are regarded by the brain as important. If you have a constant ringing sound in your ear and that sound causes a negative emotional response, then that sound may be "labeled" important.
If you familiarize yourself with the tinnitus sound, realize it's not dangerous, it's not gonna drive you crazy and accept it in your life, then it should eventually be labeled as an unimportant sound. Unimportant input is largely ignored by the brain when there are other more important input present. That means that with retraining therapy, it should be possible for most (by far I would think) to not be bothered by tinnitus unless it's completely silent.
At first, I would avoid silence, so if I was going to sleep, I would play some ambient music or even just bird twitters, ocean on beach, thunder storm or some other soundscape on loop. Nowadays, I accept my tinnitus without too much trouble even when it's silent, so I don't need sound to sleep anymore.
