You want to be courteous when you’re talking with friends. You want your clients, co-workers, and supervisor to recognize that you’re completely involved when you’re at work. With family, you might find it less difficult to just tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a little louder, please.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You look for facial hints, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if none of that works, you nod in understanding as if you heard everything.
Maybe your in denial. Your straining to keep up because you missed most of the conversation. You might not know it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and frustrated, making projects at work and life at home unnecessarily overwhelming.
Some research shows that situational factors such as environmental acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and situational awareness have a major influence on how we hear. These factors are relevant, but it can be far more severe for people who have hearing loss.
There are certain revealing habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is impacting your social and professional life:
- Having a difficult time hearing what people behind you are saying
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what someone was saying
- Leaning in during conversations and unconsciously cupping your hand over your ear
- Constantly having to ask people to repeat themselves
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not talking clearly
While it may feel like this crept up on you in an all-of-a-sudden way, more than likely your hearing impairment didn’t happen overnight. The majority of people wait 7 years on average before accepting the problem and seeking help.
That means if your hearing loss is a problem now, it has most likely been going un-addressed and untreated for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and schedule an appointment now.