You want to be polite when you’re talking to friends. At work, you want to appear engaged, even enthralled with what your supervisor/colleagues/customers are saying. With family, you may find it easier to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a bit louder, please.
You need to lean in a little closer when you’re on conference calls. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You try to read people’s lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod as if you heard everything.
Maybe your in denial. You missed a lot of what was said, and you’re straining to keep up. You may not realize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and discouraged, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily difficult.
According to some studies, situational factors like room acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and situational awareness have a strong influence on the way a person hears. But for people who suffer from hearing loss these factors are made even more difficult.
There are some tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is affecting your social and professional life:
- Pretending to comprehend, only to later ask others what you missed
- Leaning in When people are talking and instinctively cupping your ear with your hand
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not talking clearly
- Finding it harder to hear over the phone
- Constantly having to ask people to repeat what they said
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
Hearing loss most likely didn’t occur overnight even though it could feel that way. Most people wait an average of 7 years before accepting the issue and finding help.
This means if your hearing loss is problematic now, it has probably been going un-addressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and schedule an appointment now.