You want to be polite when you’re talking to friends. You want your clients, colleagues, and supervisor to see that you’re completely involved 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.
You need to lean in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You look closely at body language and facial cues and listen for verbal inflections. You read lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe you’re in denial. You’re struggling to keep up because you missed most of what was said. You may not realize it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and frustrated, making tasks at work and life at home needlessly difficult.
Some research shows that situational factors including environmental acoustics, background noise, competing signals, and environmental awareness have a major influence on the way we hear. These factors are relevant, but they can be far worse for individuals who suffer from hearing loss.
Some hearing loss behaviors to watch out for
Here are a few habits to help you determine whether you are, in fact, fooling yourself into thinking hearing impairment isn’t impacting your professional and social relationships, or whether it’s simply the acoustics in the environment:
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
- Not able to hear people talking from behind you
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not talking clearly
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat themselves
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Cupping your hands over your ear or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without realizing it
While it may feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, more than likely your hearing impairment didn’t occur overnight. Most people wait an average of 7 years before acknowledging the issue and finding help.
So if you’re detecting 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 make an appointment now.