In conversation with friends, you like to be courteous. You want your clients, co-workers, and supervisor to recognize that you’re fully engaged when you’re at work. With family, you may find it less difficult to simply tune out the conversation and ask the person near you to repeat what you missed, just a bit louder, please.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You look for facial cues, listen for inflection, tune in to body language. You try to read people’s lips. And if everything else fails – you fake it.
Maybe your in denial. You missed lots of what was said, and you’re straining to keep up. Life at home and projects at work have become unnecessarily overwhelming and you are feeling frustrated and cut off due to years of progressive hearing loss.
According to some studies, situational factors like environmental acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and environmental awareness have a major influence on how we hear. These factors are always in play, but it can be a lot worse for people who are suffering from hearing loss.
There are certain revealing behaviors that will alert you to whether you’re in denial about how your hearing impairment is impacting your professional life:
- Thinking others aren’t talking clearly when all you can hear is mumbling
- Asking people to repeat themselves over and over again
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
- Unable to hear others talking from behind you
- Leaning in When people are talking and unconsciously cupping your ear with your hand
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what someone was saying
While it may feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, more than likely your hearing impairment didn’t occur overnight. Acknowledging and seeking out help for hearing impairment is something that takes most individuals 7 years or more.
This means if your hearing loss is problematic now, it has probably been going un-addressed and neglected for some time. So begin by scheduling an appointment right away, and stop fooling yourself, hearing loss is no joke.
