You want to be polite when you are talking with friends. You want your customers, co-workers, and boss to recognize that you’re completely engaged when you’re at work. You regularly find yourself needing family to repeat themselves because it was less difficult to tune out parts of the conversation that you weren’t able to hear very well.
On zoom calls you lean in closer. You watch for facial hints, listen for inflection, pay close attention to body language. You read lips. And if all else fails – you fake it.
Don’t fool yourself. Your struggling to keep up because you missed most of what was said. You might not realize it, but years of cumulative hearing loss can have you feeling isolated and discouraged, making projects at work and life at home unnecessarily difficult.
The ability for someone to hear is influenced by situational variables like background sound, competing signals, room acoustics, and how acquainted they are with their setting, according to research. These factors are always in play, but it can be far more severe for individuals who suffer from hearing loss.
There are certain tell-tale behaviors that will raise your awareness of whether you’re in denial about how your hearing loss is impacting your professional life:
- Not able to hear others talking behind you
- Feeling as if people are mumbling and not speaking clearly
- Asking others what was said after pretending to hear what someone was saying
- Finding it harder to hear phone conversations
- Leaning in When people are talking and instinctively cupping your ear with your hand
- Repeatedly needing to ask people to repeat themselves
While it might feel like this snuck up on you suddenly, chances are your hearing impairment didn’t happen overnight. Most people wait an average of 7 years before acknowledging the problem and finding help.
So if you’re noticing symptoms of hearing loss, you can be sure that it’s been occurring for some time undetected. Hearing loss is no joke so stop fooling yourself and make an appointment right away.