You want to be courteous when you are talking to friends. At work, you want to look engaged, even enthralled with what your supervisor/colleagues/customers are saying. You regularly find yourself needing family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the conversation that you weren’t able to hear very well.
You have to lean in a little closer when you’re on conference calls. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, and tune in to body language. You try to read people’s lips. And if all else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You’re straining to keep up because you missed most of what was said. Life at home and tasks at work have become unnecessarily overwhelming and you are feeling frustrated and isolated due to years of progressive hearing loss.
The ability for a person to hear is influenced by situational factors including background sound, competing signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their environment, according to research. These factors are relevant, but they can be far more extreme for people who suffer from hearing loss.
Watch out for these behaviors
There are certain revealing behaviors that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is impacting your social and professional life:
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Unable to hear others talking behind you
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Repeatedly needing to ask people to repeat what they said
- Leaning in When people are talking and unintentionally cupping your ear with your hand
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
Hearing loss probably didn’t take place overnight even though it might feel as if it did. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing loss is something that takes most individuals at least 7 years.
So if you’re noticing symptoms of hearing loss, you can bet that it’s been occurring for some time undetected. Start by scheduling an appointment right away, and stop kidding yourself, hearing loss is no joke.
