You want to be courteous when you are talking to friends. You want your customers, colleagues, and supervisor to see that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. With family, you might find it easier to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a little louder, please.
You have to lean in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, and tune in to body language. You read lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed lots of the conversation, and you’re straining to catch up. You might not realize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and discouraged, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily overwhelming.
The ability for someone to hear is influenced by situational variables like background sound, contending signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to studies. These factors are always in play, but they can be far more severe for individuals who suffer from hearing loss.
Some hearing loss behaviors to watch out for
Here are some behaviors to help you identify whether you are, in truth, convincing yourself that your hearing impairment isn’t affecting your social and professional relationships, or whether it’s just the acoustics in the environment:
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what they were saying
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
- Finding it harder to hear over the phone
- Constantly needing to ask people to repeat what they said
- Leaning in When people are talking and unconsciously cupping your hand over your ear
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it may feel as if it did. Most people wait 7 years on average before acknowledging the issue and seeking help.
So if you’re noticing symptoms of hearing loss, you can bet that it’s been going on for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and schedule an appointment right away.