You want to be polite when you are talking with friends. You want your clients, co-workers, and boss to see that you’re fully involved when you’re at work. You frequently find yourself needing family to repeat themselves because it was less difficult to tune out parts of the discussion that you couldn’t hear very well.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed a lot of the conversation, and you’re struggling to catch up. You might not recognize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and frustrated, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily difficult.
The ability for someone to hear is impacted by situational variables including background sound, contending signals, room acoustics, and how familiar they are with their surroundings, according to research. But for people who have hearing loss these factors are made even more difficult.
There are some revealing habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is affecting your professional life:
- Cupping your hands over your ear or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without noticing it
- Pretending to comprehend, only to follow up with others to get about what was said
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Finding it harder to hear over the phone
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
- Requesting that people repeat themselves over and over again
Hearing loss probably didn’t take place overnight even though it may feel that way. Most people wait 7 years on average before acknowledging the issue and seeking help.
That means if your hearing loss is problematic now, it has most likely been going un-addressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and schedule an appointment now.
