You want to be courteous when you’re talking to friends. You want your clients, colleagues, and boss to recognize that you’re totally involved when you’re at work. With family, you may find it easier to just tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a bit louder, please.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You pay attention to body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe your in denial. You missed a lot of what was said, and you’re struggling to keep up. You may not realize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and discouraged, making projects at work and life at home needlessly overwhelming.
The ability for someone to hear is impacted by situational factors including background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their surroundings, according to research. But for individuals who suffer from hearing loss these factors are made even more difficult.
Here are a few habits to help you figure out whether you are, in fact, convincing yourself that your hearing loss isn’t affecting your professional and social interactions, or whether it’s just the acoustics in their environment:
- Missing important parts of phone conversations
- Having a hard time hearing what people behind you are saying
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person talking without realizing it
- Requesting that people repeat themselves over and over again
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what someone was saying
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it might feel as if it did. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing loss is something that takes most individuals 7 years or more.
That means if your hearing loss is problematic now, it has probably been going un-addressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and schedule an appointment now.