In conversation with friends, you want to be polite. You want your clients, colleagues, and supervisor to see that you’re completely involved when you’re at work. You frequently find yourself asking family to repeat themselves because it was less difficult to tune out parts of the discussion that you weren’t able to hear very well.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You watch for facial cues, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if that doesn’t work, you nod in understanding as if you heard every word.
Don’t fool yourself. Your struggling to keep up because you missed most of what was said. You may not know it, but years of progressive hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and discouraged, making tasks at work and life at home unnecessarily overwhelming.
According to some studies, situational factors including environmental acoustics, background noise, contending signals, and environmental awareness have a strong influence on how a person hears. But for individuals who suffer from hearing loss these factors are made even more challenging.
Are you in denial about your hearing loss?
There are certain tell-tale habits that will alert you to whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is impacting your professional life:
- Leaning in during conversations and unintentionally cupping your hand over your ear
- Asking others what you missed after pretending to hear what someone was saying
- Having a hard time hearing what others behind you are saying
- Missing what people are saying when on phone conversations
- Requesting that people repeat themselves again and again… and again
- Thinking people aren’t speaking clearly when all you can hear is mumbling
Hearing loss most likely didn’t occur overnight even though it might feel as if it did. 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 an issue now, it has probably been going un-addressed and neglected for some time. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and schedule an appointment now.
