In conversation with friends, you want to be courteous. At work, you want to appear engaged, even enthralled with what your boss/co-worker/customers are talking about. With family, you might find it easier to just 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 lean in closer. You look closely at body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. You try to read people’s lips. And if none of that works, you nod as if you heard every word.
Don’t fool yourself. You’re struggling to keep up because you missed most of the conversation. You may not realize it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and frustrated, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily overwhelming.
According to some studies, situational factors such as room acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and environmental awareness have a major influence on how we hear. But for individuals who suffer from hearing loss, these factors are made even more challenging.
Some hearing loss behaviors to look out for
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:
- Pretending to comprehend, only to follow up with others to get what you missed
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
- Finding it more difficult to hear phone conversations
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat themselves
- Thinking people aren’t talking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person talking without realizing it
While it may feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, chances are your hearing loss didn’t happen overnight. Most people wait 7 years on average before acknowledging the problem and finding help.
So if you’re noticing symptoms of hearing loss, you can bet that it’s been occurring for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and schedule an appointment right away.
