In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. You want your clients, colleagues, and manager to see that you’re totally engaged when you’re at work. With family, you may 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 zoom calls you move in closer. You look closely at body language and facial clues and listen for verbal inflections. You read lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod in understanding as if you heard everything.
Don’t fool yourself. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re struggling to keep up. You might not realize it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and discouraged, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily difficult.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors including background sound, competing signals, room acoustics, and how familiar they are with their surroundings, according to studies. These factors are relevant, but they can be much more severe for people who are suffering from hearing loss.
Some hearing loss behaviors to watch out for
There are some tell-tale behaviors that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is affecting your professional life:
- Having a difficult time hearing what others behind you are saying
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Cupping your ear with your hand or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without noticing it
- Asking others what you missed after pretending you heard what they were saying
- Finding it more difficult to hear phone conversations
- Thinking people aren’t talking clearly when all you seem to hear is mumbling
Hearing loss probably didn’t happen overnight even though it might feel as if it did. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing impairment is something that takes most people 7 years or more.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can bet that it’s been occurring for some time unnoticed. Start by scheduling an appointment now, and stop fooling yourself, hearing loss is no joke.
