In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. You want your clients, co-workers, and manager to recognize that you’re totally engaged when you’re at work. You often 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 have to lean in a little closer when you’re on zoom calls. You pay attention to body language and facial cues and listen for verbal inflections. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if all else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re struggling to keep up. You may not realize it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and frustrated, making projects at work and life at home unnecessarily overwhelming.
According to some studies, situational factors including environmental acoustics, background noise, competing signals, and environmental awareness have a strong influence on how we hear. But for people who have hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Watch out for these behaviors
There are some 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
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Thinking others aren’t speaking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
- Leaning in during conversations and instinctively cupping your ear with your hand
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
- Not able to hear others talking from behind you
While it might feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, more than likely your hearing impairment didn’t occur overnight. Most people wait 7 years on average before acknowledging the problem and seeking help.
This means that if your hearing loss is a problem now, it has most likely been going unaddressed and untreated for some time. Start by scheduling an appointment now, and stop fooling yourself, hearing loss is no joke.
