If your tinnitus changes timbre when you stress your skull, such as clenching your jaw, it means the ringing is actually physical sound being generated by ringing hair cells in your ears: a sensitive microphone could pick up the sound. By my reading of TFA, that kind of tinnitus is not relieved by this method.
Mine changes both tone and intensity only when I strain my abdomen (as you usually do in a bathroom). What does that mean? Does it depend on a blood pressure? But my bp is pretty normal and lowering it would harm other things, I guess.
I also found out that tinnitus gets worse if I'm listening to it, and almost disappears when I quit giving a fuck about it. Also, if you have one, and you are subject to nervousness do not try that fingers-on-the-nape trick. It will disappear and then may return back two-three times worse for some time. Strangely, I have severe one, but don't care much.
Also, it intesifies in threads like this one, probably because I'm actively thinking about it.
Do you have a source for that? I understand that there _are_ situations where your hair cells can actually start to ring noticeably (due to biofeedback mechanisms going haywire), and I've noticed that type of ring - an extremely loud, piercing sound in one ear that drowns everything out for a few minutes before going away - but I've understood that to be different than normal tinnitus, even though mine definitely responds to jaw clenching.
