In conversation with friends, you like to be polite. At work, you want to appear involved, even enthralled with what your supervisor/co-worker/customers are talking about. You regularly find yourself needing family to repeat themselves because it was less difficult to tune out parts of the conversation that you weren’t able to hear very well.
You have to move in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You pay attention to body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. 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 tasks at work have become unnecessarily 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 such as background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how familiar they are with their environment, according to studies. But for people who suffer from hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Look out for these behaviors
There are certain revealing habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your professional life:
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
- Missing important parts of phone conversations
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without noticing it
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Having a hard time hearing what people behind you are saying
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it may feel that way. The majority of people wait an average of 7 years before accepting the issue and seeking help.
This means that if your hearing loss is an issue now, it has most likely been going unaddressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and make an appointment right away.