You want to be polite when you’re talking with friends. You want your clients, co-workers, and supervisor to recognize that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. With family, you might find it easier to just tune out the conversation and ask the person next to you to fill in what you missed, just a bit louder, please.
You have to move in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You watch for facial cues, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if all else fails – you fake it.
Maybe your in denial. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re struggling to keep up. You might not recognize it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and frustrated, making projects at work and life at home unnecessarily overwhelming.
The ability for a person to hear is influenced by situational variables like background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to studies. But for individuals who suffer from hearing loss these factors are made even more challenging.
Here are some habits to help you identify whether you are, in fact, fooling yourself into thinking hearing loss isn’t affecting your professional and social interactions, or whether it’s simply the acoustics in their environment:
- Repeatedly needing to ask people to repeat what they said
- Having a difficult time hearing what others behind you are saying
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without noticing it
- Finding it more difficult to hear over the phone
- Thinking people aren’t speaking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what someone was saying
While it might feel like this crept up on you suddenly, more than likely your hearing loss didn’t happen overnight. Acknowledging and seeking out 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 be sure that it’s been occurring for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and make an appointment now.
