You want to be courteous when you’re talking with friends. You want your customers, colleagues, and manager to see that you’re totally involved when you’re at work. You frequently find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was easier to tune out parts of the conversation that you couldn’t hear very well.
You have to move 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 try to read people’s lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod as if you heard everything.
Maybe your in denial. Your struggling to catch up because you missed most of the conversation. You may not know it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling cut off and frustrated, making projects at work and life at home needlessly overwhelming.
The ability for a person to hear is impacted by situational factors including background noise, competing signals, room acoustics, and how comfortable they are with their setting, according to studies. These factors are relevant, but it can be much more extreme for people who are suffering from hearing loss.
There are some tell-tale habits that will alert you to whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is affecting your professional life:
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what someone was saying
- Unable to hear people talking from behind you
- Leaning in during conversations and unconsciously cupping your ear with your hand
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Repeatedly needing to ask people to repeat what they said
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
Hearing loss most likely didn’t occur overnight even though it could feel that way. Acknowledging and getting help for hearing impairment is something that takes most individuals at least 7 years.
So if you’re detecting symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been occurring for some time unnoticed. Hearing loss is no joke so stop kidding yourself and schedule an appointment right away.