In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. At work, you want to appear involved, even enthralled with what your boss/peers/clients are saying. With family, you may find it easier to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to fill in what you missed, just a little louder, please.
You need to lean in a little closer when you’re on conference calls. You pay attention to body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. You try to read people’s lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod as if you heard every word.
Maybe you’re in denial. You’re struggling 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 cut off due to years of cumulative hearing loss.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors such as background sound, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to research. But for individuals who have hearing loss, these factors are made even more difficult.
Some hearing loss behaviors to look out for
There are some 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:
- Thinking others aren’t speaking clearly when all you can hear is mumbling
- Unable to hear others talking from behind you
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat what they said
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
- Missing important parts of phone conversations
- Leaning in When people are talking and instinctively cupping your ear with your hand
Hearing loss probably didn’t take place overnight even though it might feel as if it did. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing impairment is something that takes most individuals at least 7 years.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been going on for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment now.