Does Anyone Else Tell People You Are Hard of Hearing?

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Hi usagibryan,
Go get a hearing test. I too had similar experiences in my 30's, several years later it started affecting my job, I couldn't hear what people were saying in meetings and was I missing crucial information. I was diagnosed with acute hearing loss and was given hearing aids. I got cool black ones which are really quite small.

I couldn't do without them when out at work or watching the TV at home. If I go out for a walk or to the shop I sometimes leave them in my pocket. Once you get used to them you sometimes have to physically check that you are wearing them as you can forget. Mostly, they are a good thing however, they are not good in a crowded room near multiple conversations as you cant tell which direction the sound is coming from. I am generally hypersensitive to intrusive bleeps and poor quality audio such as that from a mobile phone. I have to pull them out in a hurry when I hear this, even in public. I dont have any sounds, vibration or any visual notifications on my phone, it's brilliant.

Best of luck

kuze

Thank you for the reply, and I may consider getting a hearing test (who knows even if my hearing is perfectly fine the ear doctor will have advice for me) but I really only have issues when there is background noise. When it's otherwise quiet I can hear understand people just fine.

Yes, some people’s words seem to come out very garbled for me.
I used to try to just nod and hope the words eventually resolved themselves but this rarely if ever worked out.

I try to avoid any noisy or group situation for multiple reasons- the garbling effect, inability to process conversation quickly in higher anxiety situations, anxiety preventing being in the moment, the way some people just ignore your contributions to the convo, and chit chat is a mind killer.

Would love to learn if these devices work for others with this issue.

IMHO hearing acuity tests have not kept up with the state of the art, they need to upgrade them to include complex hearing situations that involve picking out directional details from crowd noise.

Maybe I SHOULDN'T tell people I'm hard of hearing. Someone took it seriously and started shouting and that was just awful. It didn't make it easier to understand her either. I couldn't understand her because of announcements over the intercom (I would have preferred to wait until that was done).

I definitely have this problem. I don’t tell people I am hard of hearing per se. I do have a student who tells people he is hard of hearing, which is funny, because he wears noise cancelling headphones whenever he doesn’t need to hear a teacher, and only moves one side when he does. He is in a class where we do group work and there was often a lot of chaos. I finally told the class “look guys, (classmate) has an auditory processing issue when everybody is yelling and talking at once, so when you do that, you are leaving him out on purpose. Besides being rude and unkind, that is not helpful for getting things done as a group.” They have been way better since (they are good kids - it is important to know your audience and also get permission from the individual - which I did - before revealing something like that). It has helped me a lot too.

I usually tell the kids “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you, there is too much noise” or I blame it on being “old” (I am 54 so they think I am practically ancient.) with family I am more straightforward. It annoys Dh that I can’t have a conversation when music is on. Also, at school I tell them I can’t do recess duty, because sometimes recess is in the gym, and with the echo in there I can’t make out a single word anybody says.

I have watched people’s lips my whole life. I had a hearing issue (corrected) as a toddler, and it is a good alternative for eye contact. Masking was hell.