You want to be courteous when you’re talking to friends. You want your customers, co-workers, and boss to recognize that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. You regularly find yourself needing family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the discussion that you weren’t able to hear very well.
On conference calls you move in closer. You watch for facial hints, listen for inflection, tune in to body language. You read lips. And if all else fails – you fake it.
Maybe your in denial. Your struggling to catch up because you missed most of what was said. Life at home and tasks at work have become unjustifiably overwhelming and you are feeling frustrated and cut off due to years of progressive hearing loss.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational variables like background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their surroundings, according to research. But for individuals who have hearing loss these factors are made even more difficult.
Here are a few habits to help you figure out whether you are, in fact, convincing yourself that your hearing impairment is not impacting your social and professional relationships, or whether it’s simply the acoustics in their environment:
- Constantly needing to ask people to repeat what they said
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what someone was saying
- Thinking others aren’t talking clearly when all you can hear is mumbling
- Finding it more difficult to hear phone conversations
- Having a hard time hearing what people behind you are saying
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without noticing it
Hearing loss most likely didn’t occur overnight even though it might feel as if it did. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing loss is something that takes most individuals 7 years or more.
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 kidding yourself and schedule an appointment now.