Trouble understanding what people are saying?

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Here's a nice little tip- record your conversations on your mobile phone,
then you can replay them at your leisure.

You're not alone, OP. There are so many difficult steps to this:
1. Focusing on the person who's addressing me
2. Understanding their words
3. Figuring out what they want
4. Giving an answer that will satisfy them
5. Remembering what they told me

It comes so easily to NT's, but it's so frustrating for me. I've always struggled with taking direction verbally. My own manner of speaking just increases the difficulty. I tend to mumble and sound monotonous, and I say as little as possible, which throws people off.

I can talk to myself with the eloquence of Shakespeare, but I'm mush with other people. It sucks.

I told my wife about this thread yesterday. She often thinks I'm not listening when I get something she said wrong. Thank you all for this thread! It's kind of a relief to realize others have the same issue.

A thought just occurred to me. How many of these threads would we struggle with if they were only audible?

I think I have the same problem, too.

Even in my mother tongue (not English), I always got lost in a meeting/discussion and hoped that I wouldn't be asked to give my opinion because I had no idea what they were talking about. I was always wondering why I was like that.

Now living in Australia, it's made worse as I often don't know whether it's an ESL problem or a more general problem with my brain in processing verbal input. Probably both. Some people don't have the awareness of their bad accent and repeat themselves (if ever) in exactly the same bad accent and in a frustrated way, as the OP said.

I think it probably seems to others that you are either stupid, rude and/or not caring.

*raises hand*

I was recently diagnosed with this:
Meniere's Disease - Wikipedia

For a while, I thought it was APD, and my ENT hasn't entirely ruled that out as a comorbid, but since I get dizzy and have clogged ears fairly frequently, this diagnosis is about as "certain" as it can get (not quite 100%, but close). Also, hearing aids have helped.

All of you: I feel your frustration. Some days still aren't that great, when it's particularly noisy at work, I'm feeling more tired and stressed than usual, etc.--all of those factors seem to make it worse, and it feels like the hearing aids need to be working at MAXIMUM CAPACITY to be effective (and, sadly, it can get to the point where it's not enough).

I have this problem most of the time. In meetings at work I miss most of the meeting because I can't separate multiple people talking at the same time. Or when they start taking turns. I lose track of who said what. I also find it hard to know when I can join the conversation. Allot of the time I start talking when someone else starts. I end up not saying anything then I'm told that I don't participate in team discussions.

It takes a lot of concentration for me to get what people are saying sometimes.

^ I'm similar, I only watch recorded tv as I like to use subtitles in case I miss something and have to go back to catch things people said. IRL I rely on lipreading, yet my hearing is excellent and I hear things in the distance no one else can until it is nearer.

How about catching the lyrics to songs?
I had a lot of trouble with this as a kid, and sometimes still do.
At least now I can pull up the lyrics online and read them.

This (trouble understanding what others are saying) happens to me often. I can think of two distinct scenarios:

#1 ? When I am in a situation when someone is talking to me and there is other background noise. Sometimes, I have difficulty ?filtering? out the background noise.
#2 ? When I am in a situation when someone is talking to me and there is no background noise. Sometimes, the other person talks so fast, that I cannot process the information (and need to hear them say it a second time, to verify what I heard).