In conversation with friends, you like to be polite. You want your customers, co-workers, and supervisor to see that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. With family, you may find it less difficult to just tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to fill in what you missed, just a little louder, please.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, and pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod in understanding as if you heard everything.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re straining to catch up. You might not know it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and frustrated, making tasks at work and life at home needlessly difficult.
According to some studies, situational factors like environmental acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and environmental awareness have a strong influence on how a person hears. But for individuals who have hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Some hearing loss behaviors to watch out for
There are certain tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your social and professional life:
- Leaning in When people are talking and unintentionally cupping your ear with your hand
- Not able to hear people talking from behind you
- Thinking others aren’t speaking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Finding it harder to hear over the phone
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
Hearing loss most likely didn’t happen overnight even though it could feel as if it did. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing loss is something that takes most individuals at least 7 years.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been going on for some time unnoticed. Begin by scheduling an appointment right away, and stop kidding yourself, hearing loss is no joke.
