In conversation with friends, you want to be courteous. You want your clients, co-workers, and supervisor to see that you’re totally engaged when you’re at work. With family, you may find it easier to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person next to you to fill in what you missed, just a little louder, please.
You have to lean in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, and tune in to body language. You try to read people’s lips. And if none of that works, you nod in understanding as if you heard every word.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re struggling to keep up. Life at home and tasks at work have become unnecessarily overwhelming and you are feeling aggravated and isolated due to years of progressive hearing loss.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors including background sound, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to studies. These factors are relevant, but they can be much worse for people who are suffering from hearing loss.
Some hearing loss behaviors to look out for
There are some tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is impacting your social and professional life:
- Unable to hear others talking behind you
- Leaning in during conversations and unconsciously cupping your hand over your ear
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Pretending to comprehend, only to follow up with others to get what you missed
- Constantly needing to ask people to repeat themselves
- Thinking people aren’t talking clearly when all you can hear is mumbling
Hearing loss probably didn’t take place overnight even though it might feel as if it did. Most people wait an average of 7 years before acknowledging the problem and finding help.
This means that if your hearing loss is an issue now, it has most likely been going unaddressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment now.
