In conversation with friends, you like to be polite. You want your clients, colleagues, and supervisor to see that you’re totally engaged when you’re at work. With family, you might find it less difficult to simply 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 zoom calls. You pay attention to body language and facial cues and listen for verbal inflections. You attempt to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. Your struggling to keep up because you missed most of what was said. Life at home and tasks at work have become unnecessarily difficult and you are feeling aggravated and isolated due to years of progressive hearing loss.
According to some studies, situational factors such as room acoustics, background noise, competing signals, and situational awareness have a major influence on how a person hears. But for people who have hearing loss these factors are made even more challenging.
There are certain tell-tale habits that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is impacting your professional life:
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not talking clearly
- Having a hard time hearing what people behind you are saying
- Repeatedly having to ask people to repeat themselves
- Cupping your hands over your ear or leaning in close to the person who is speaking without realizing it
- Pretending to comprehend, only to follow up with others to get what you missed
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
While it might feel like this snuck up on you in an all-of-a-sudden way, more than likely your hearing impairment didn’t occur overnight. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing loss is something that takes most individuals at least 7 years.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can bet that it’s been occurring for some time unnoticed. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment now.