You want to be courteous when you are talking with friends. You want your customers, colleagues, and supervisor to recognize that you’re completely engaged when you’re at work. With family, you may find it less difficult to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person next to you to repeat what you missed, just a bit louder, please.
On conference calls you move in closer. You pay attention to body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe you’re in denial. You missed lots of the conversation, and you’re straining to keep up. You might not know it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and frustrated, making projects at work and life at home needlessly overwhelming.
The ability for a person to hear is influenced by situational factors like background noise, contending signals, room acoustics, and how familiar they are with their surroundings, according to research. These factors are always in play, but they can be much worse for individuals who suffer from hearing loss.
Some hearing loss behaviors to look out for
There are some revealing behaviors that will alert you to whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your professional life:
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Leaning in When people are talking and unintentionally cupping your hand over your ear
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Pretending to comprehend, only to later ask others what you missed
- Unable to hear people talking behind you
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
Hearing loss most likely didn’t take place overnight even though it could feel that way. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing impairment is something that takes most individuals 7 years or more.
That means that if your hearing loss is problematic now, it has most likely been going unaddressed and neglected for some time. Start by scheduling an appointment now, and stop kidding yourself, hearing loss is no joke.