You want to be courteous when you are talking to friends. You want your clients, co-workers, and boss to recognize that you’re completely engaged when you’re at work. You regularly find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the discussion that you weren’t able to hear very well.
On conference calls you move in closer. You watch for facial hints, listen for inflection, and tune in to body language. You try to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe you’re in denial. You’re straining to keep up because you missed most of the conversation. Life at home and projects at work have become unjustifiably difficult and you are feeling frustrated and isolated due to years of cumulative hearing loss.
Some research shows that situational factors like environmental acoustics, background noise, competing signals, and environmental awareness have a major influence on how we hear. But for individuals who have hearing loss, these factors are made even more difficult.
Watch out for these behaviors
Here are some behaviors to help you identify whether you are, in truth, convincing yourself that your hearing loss isn’t affecting your social and professional relationships, or whether it’s simply the acoustics in the environment:
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Repeatedly needing to ask people to repeat what they said
- Leaning in When people are talking and unintentionally cupping your hand over your ear
- Pretending to understand, only to follow up with others to get what you missed
- Having a hard time hearing what others behind you are saying
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it could feel as if it did. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing impairment is something that takes most individuals 7 years or more.
That means that if your hearing loss is problematic now, it has probably been going unaddressed and untreated for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and schedule an appointment now.