In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. At work, you want to appear involved, even enthralled with what your supervisor/colleagues/clients are saying. You regularly find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the discussion that you couldn’t hear very well.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You look closely at body language and facial cues and listen for verbal inflections. You try to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe you’re in denial. You’re struggling to catch up because you missed most of what was said. You may not know it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and frustrated, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily difficult.
The ability for a person to hear is influenced by situational factors like background noise, contending signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their setting, according to studies. But for individuals who suffer from hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Some hearing loss behaviors to look out for
Here are some behaviors to help you figure out whether you are, in truth, fooling yourself into thinking hearing loss isn’t impacting your social and professional relationships, or whether it’s just the acoustics in the environment:
- Having a difficult time hearing what others behind you are saying
- Finding it more difficult to hear phone conversations
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat themselves
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not talking clearly
- Cupping your hands over your ear or leaning in close to the person talking without noticing it
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
While it might feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, more than likely your hearing loss didn’t occur overnight. 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 fooling yourself and schedule an appointment right away.