Hearing Imaired, but also oversensitive?

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So I have unilateral hearing loss, 40% in my right ear. I always know when someone is speaking, but I can't always understand what they are saying. I wear a hearing aid on my right side so I can understand conversation more clearly. However, with and without my aid, I find some things to be WAY too loud, such as my mom talking (something about the frequency of her voice), fire alarms, trains, background chatter, and just about any sound that occurs when I am stressed. It's like my hearing turns way up when I am stressed. So, I guess my question is, is my hearing impairment real (only diagnosed in 2011) or part of a weird sensory system? Why does everything get louder when I'm stressed? I am looking for ear plugs, but I can't find anything that would work with my hearing aid (behind the ear, but still goes into the canal).

I don't know if I actually have a question anymore, it kind of floated away...

i'm not hearing impaired though I am hearing sensitive, If you only lost it in one or lopsided amounts that sounds like real hearing loss. I have issues with certin sounds, mainly with the filtering of unwanted/harmful sounds, not so much shear volume as long as the sound is soothing to a degree. Can you go without the hearing aid in these situations? As for me aside from ear plugs and my hands I use my hair and hooded clothes, blankets if available or whatevers available ect. Worst case I walk away from the sound.

I can hear, but I have had deaf friends for 1/2 my life, so I kinda "get," where you're coming from.

I think if you consistently test w/ 40% hearing loss in your right ear on separate tests months apart while under different stress levels, then you'd be able to determine that the hearing loss is in fact very real and not just a symptom of anything.

And I'm sure it's possible to have hearing loss of some frequencies (It's pretty well always the higher frequencies that go first.) & then have heightened hearing/audio sensory issues due to AS that will amplify various sounds, background noise, or specific frequencies.

I have audio sensitivity issues w/ loud busy background noise as well as changes in my hearing depending on stress and other factors, including the possibility that it's at random. Sometimes I could sleep through anything, others my hearing is so hypersensitive that even w/ the window closed, earplugs in, and ear-warmers over the earplugs.. I still lay awake listening to traffic drive by All Night Long. :/

While reading up on different earplugs and noise cancelling headphones and noise cancelling hearing protection, I read about an experimental type of hearing treatment that sounded like it miiiight work for some - but it's expensive. Basically, they take digital hearing aids and modify them to act like active noise cancelling headphones by programming them to filter out specific frequencies that people have difficulties with. So, if your oversensitivity to some sounds can be narrowed down to specific frequencies via trial & error and testing.. then maybe it's possible to have your hearing aids programmed to amplify the sounds you need amplified to assist with hearing things you might not otherwise catch, while filtering out the sounds that cause you problems. I have no idea if there's a single hearing aid product on the market that's capable of doing this, as I would imagine that the market for people who need both amplification as well as nullification of certain frequencies is very very small. However, who knows, it may just be a matter of programming & could be entirely technically possible. Contact your audiologist and ask. Even if it turns out to be beyond your budget, at least you'd know if it's something that could be done.. and if not, maybe in the near future - you never know. Back in ~1999/2000 my best friend since high school switched from analog hearing aids to new digital ones as they were first coming out and it made a massive difference in his abilities to both hear and speak, since he could hear his own voice better. So, you never know, the next breakthrough in hearing aid technology could be just around the corner and may include custom programming options like I described if it can't be done right now today.

^^^ That would be useful.

My husband is completely deaf to certain frequencies (he cant hear some loud alarms for example), he is hard of hearing on other frequencies (female voices are difficult) but...
When he was 40 I convinced him to try hearing aids to improve communication abilities and it didn't go over well at all.
The sound of hamburger wrappers, on the first day, sent him into some sort of...I don't know what to call it but never seen him like that before or after. Similar to how I would react if someone threw a snake on me.

Since then he rarely puts them in if I tell him I think they are cute, but I suspect he doesn't actually turn them on.

I don't think my spouse would utilize something as your describing now because he has lived so long in his quieter world and is comfortable there but I could imagine that if it were available when he was much younger that it could have been quite a bit different and helpful for him/ us.

I know very little about hearing loss and what I'm about to say may not make sense:
Is it possible that if you have hearing loss in one ear, (however much) your other ear compensates for this, therefore, is more sensitive?

While it does compensate to a point, I still test as having a slight loss in that ear as well. Since my hearing is uneven, it makes it difficult to find what direction a sound came from.
'unrelated, but does this forum make anyone else's computer freeze? I have to press "Stop Script" constantly.

Nope, doesn't freeze & I don't get a stop script prompt from it.. but I do get annoying popups suggesting I share the page w/ facebook etc. The forum does tend to crash the browser on my blackberry for being too large to load, though.