You want to be polite when you’re talking to friends. You want your clients, co-workers, and boss to see that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. You often find yourself asking 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 conference calls. You watch for facial cues, listen for inflection, tune in to body language. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if all else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed a lot of the conversation, and you’re struggling to catch up. Life at home and tasks at work have become unnecessarily overwhelming and you are feeling aggravated and isolated due to years of progressive hearing loss.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors including background sound, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their environment, according to research. These factors are relevant, but it can be much worse for people who have hearing loss.
There are certain tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your professional life:
- Leaning in during conversations and unintentionally cupping your hand over your ear
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what someone was saying
- Thinking people aren’t talking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
- Finding it more difficult to hear over the phone
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat what they said
Hearing loss most likely didn’t occur overnight even though it could feel that way. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing impairment is something that takes most individuals at least 7 years.
That means if your hearing loss is a problem now, it has most likely been going un-addressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment now.