You want to be polite when you’re talking with friends. At work, you want to look engaged, even enthralled with what your manager/co-worker/clients are talking about. With family, you may find it less difficult to just tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a little louder, please.
You need to move in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You watch for facial cues, listen for inflection, tune in to body language. You try to read people’s lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod in understanding as if you heard everything.
Maybe your in denial. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re straining to catch up. You might not recognize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and discouraged, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily difficult.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors like background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their surroundings, according to research. These factors are relevant, but it can be a lot worse for people who suffer from hearing loss.
Here are a few behaviors to help you figure out whether you are, in fact, fooling yourself into thinking hearing impairment is not affecting your professional and social interactions, or whether it’s simply the acoustics in their environment:
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Unable to hear others talking behind you
- Thinking people aren’t talking clearly when all you can hear is mumbling
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what someone was saying
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without realizing it
Hearing loss most likely didn’t occur overnight even though it might feel that way. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing loss is something that takes most people at least 7 years.
So if you’re noticing 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 kidding yourself and make an appointment now.