In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. You want your clients, colleagues, and boss to see that you’re fully involved 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 need to lean in a little closer when you’re on conference calls. You look for facial hints, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe your in denial. Your straining to catch up because you missed most of what was said. Life at home and projects at work have become unnecessarily overwhelming and you are feeling aggravated and isolated due to years of cumulative hearing loss.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors like background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how familiar they are with their surroundings, according to research. These factors are always in play, but it can be far worse for people who have hearing loss.
There are certain revealing habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your social and professional life:
- Leaning in during conversations and instinctively cupping your ear with your hand
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat themselves
- Asking others what was said after pretending you heard what someone was saying
- Having a difficult time hearing what others behind you are saying
- Feeling like people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
Hearing loss probably 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 people at least 7 years.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been going on for some time unnoticed. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment right away.