Overly anxious staffy (noises)

My 7 year old staffy has always been quite timid. I live in a lower flat and he has started to get scared of everything! Washing machine, the sound of oven trays when being moved around, if a toy falls to the floor, any noise from my upstairs neighbours (I do think he may have heard arguments ect from neighbours when we are out) he shakes so much to the fact his vibrations are worse than the washing machine. I'm so worried that he takes a heart attack, it' has honestly got that bad it can bring me to tears when it starts. Can anyone please give me any ideas to help him out? It breaks my heart seeing him in such a mess

Has he been checked by the vet in case he has anything wrong with his ears?

As gilly says, a vet check might be a good idea to check that everything is ok (or not ?) on that side.

Then, what I will suggest is much easier to say than to do but you need to try not to react to his reactions. When you mention coming to tears, your boy is feeding off your emotions to validate his reaction and it becomes a vicious circle.

You need to try to act the same when he gets a fright and “change the subject”. It can be to ask him to sit for a treat, to follow you to another room, to fetch a toy. Anything to distract from what he might have scared to without making any reference to it. But heavy praise when he executes what you asked of him.

The idea is really to give no importance to his fright reaction but to encourage and heavily praise what he can comfortably do. It might take time but he will increase his confidence in performing things that he can do and you won’t be validating his frights as you won’t be reacting to them. In time he’ll understand that there’s no reason to worry about that noise because you don’t change anything, you are his reference.