In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. At work, you want to appear engaged, even enthralled with what your boss/peers/clients are saying. You regularly find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the discussion that you weren’t able to hear very well.
On conference calls you lean in closer. You look for facial hints, listen for inflection, and tune in to body language. You read lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod in understanding as if you heard everything.
Maybe you’re in denial. You’re straining to keep up because you missed most of the conversation. Life at home and tasks at work have become unnecessarily overwhelming and you are feeling frustrated and cut off due to years of progressive hearing loss.
Some research shows that situational factors including environmental acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and situational awareness have a major influence on the way a person hears. But for people who suffer from hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Watch out for these behaviors
Here are some habits to help you determine whether you are, in fact, convincing yourself that your hearing impairment is not impacting your social and professional relationships, or whether it’s just the acoustics in the environment:
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat what they said
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person talking without realizing it
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
- Unable to hear people talking behind you
- Pretending to understand, only to later ask others about what was said
While it might feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, more than likely your hearing impairment didn’t happen overnight. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing loss is something that takes most individuals 7 years or more.
That means that if your hearing loss is a problem now, it has probably been going unaddressed and neglected for some time. Start by making an appointment right away, and stop fooling yourself, hearing loss is no joke.
