You want to be polite when you’re talking with friends. At work, you want to appear involved, even enthralled with what your manager/colleagues/clients are talking about. You regularly find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was less difficult to tune out parts of the discussion that you weren’t able to hear very well.
You need to move in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You watch for facial hints, listen for inflection, tune in to body language. You read lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. Your straining to catch up because you missed most of what was said. Life at home and tasks at work have become unjustifiably difficult and you are feeling aggravated and cut off due to years of cumulative hearing loss.
The ability for someone to hear is influenced by situational factors like background sound, contending signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to research. But for individuals who suffer from hearing loss these factors are made even more challenging.
Here are some habits to help you determine whether you are, in fact, fooling yourself into thinking hearing impairment is not impacting your social and professional relationships, or whether it’s just the acoustics in their environment:
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Pretending to understand, only to later ask others what you missed
- Requesting that people repeat themselves over and over again
- Cupping your hands over your ear or leaning in close to the person talking without noticing it
- Having a hard time hearing what people behind you are saying
Hearing loss probably didn’t take place overnight even though it might feel that way. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing impairment is something that takes most people 7 years or more.
So if you’re noticing symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been going on for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and schedule an appointment now.
