In conversation with friends, you want to be polite. You want your clients, colleagues, and boss to see that you’re completely engaged when you’re at work. 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 bit louder, please.
You have to lean in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You watch for facial cues, listen for inflection, and pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed a lot of the conversation, and you’re straining to catch up. Life at home and projects at work have become unjustifiably 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 noise, contending signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their surroundings, according to research. These factors are relevant, but they can be a lot more extreme for people who suffer from hearing loss.
Watch out for these behaviors
There are some tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is affecting your social and professional life:
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Leaning in When people are talking and instinctively cupping your ear with your hand
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not talking clearly
- Pretending to understand, only to follow up with others to get about what was said
- Having a difficult time hearing what people behind you are saying
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
Hearing loss most likely didn’t take place overnight even though it might feel that way. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing impairment is something that takes most people 7 years or more.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can bet that it’s been occurring for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and make an appointment now.