You want to be polite when you are talking with friends. You want your customers, colleagues, and boss to recognize that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. With family, you may find it less difficult to just tune out the conversation and ask the person next to you to fill in 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, and pay close attention to body language. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if none of that works, you nod in understanding as if you heard every word.
Maybe you’re in denial. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re straining to keep up. You might not know it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and discouraged, making tasks at work and life at home needlessly difficult.
The ability for someone to hear is impacted by situational variables like background sound, contending signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their setting, according to research. But for people who suffer from hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Some hearing loss behaviors to watch out for
There are certain revealing habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your professional life:
- Having a difficult time hearing what people behind you are saying
- Finding it more difficult to hear phone conversations
- Requesting that repeat themselves over and over again
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what they were saying
- Leaning in When people are talking and unintentionally cupping your hand over your ear
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it might feel that way. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing loss is something that takes most people 7 years or more.
This means that if your hearing loss is a problem now, it has probably been going unaddressed and untreated for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and schedule an appointment right away.