You want to be courteous when you are talking to friends. At work, you want to look involved, even enthralled with what your supervisor/peers/customers are talking about. With family, you may find it less difficult to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a little louder, please.
On conference calls you lean in closer. You look closely at body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. You try to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed a lot of what was said, and you’re straining to catch up. You may not recognize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and frustrated, making projects at work and life at home needlessly difficult.
The ability for someone to hear is impacted by situational variables including background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to studies. But for people who suffer from hearing loss, these factors are made even more difficult.
Look out for these behaviors
There are certain tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is impacting your social and professional life:
- Finding it more difficult to hear phone conversations
- Pretending to comprehend, only to later ask others what you missed
- Not able to hear people talking from behind you
- Repeatedly needing to ask people to repeat themselves
- Leaning in during conversations and unconsciously cupping your ear with your hand
- Thinking others aren’t talking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it could feel that way. Acknowledging and getting 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 bet that it’s been occurring for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment now.