You want to be polite when you’re talking with friends. At work, you want to look engaged, even enthralled with what your supervisor/co-worker/customers are saying. You frequently find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the conversation that you weren’t able to hear very well.
You need to move in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You watch for facial hints, listen for inflection, tune in to body language. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe your in denial. You missed a lot of the conversation, and you’re struggling to keep up. Life at home and tasks at work have become unnecessarily difficult and you are feeling frustrated and cut off due to years of progressive hearing loss.
According to some studies, situational factors like room acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and environmental awareness have a major influence on how we hear. But for people 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 relationships, or whether it’s just the acoustics in their environment:
- Requesting that people repeat themselves over and over again
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
- Leaning in When people are talking and unconsciously cupping your hand over your ear
- Pretending to comprehend, only to follow up with others to get about what was said
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
While it may feel like this crept up on you suddenly, chances are your hearing loss didn’t occur overnight. The majority of people wait an average of 7 years before acknowledging the issue and finding help.
So if you’re noticing symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been going on for some time unnoticed. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and make an appointment right away.