Hearing loss is an issue that impacts over 50 million Americans, and the harsh reality is that those problems will affect sufferers on a daily basis. While those challenges can extend to many aspects of your life, there’s no question that difficulties with communication are the worst culprit by far.
Here are the many different ways that communication will be affected by your limited hearing.
Hearing loss makes it tough to follow group conversations
Many people that suffer from mild to moderate hearing loss will continue to experience one-to-one communications in a fairly normal. The biggest problems surface when trying to follow group conversations, and is particularly troublesome for those with profound hearing loss.
This is especially true when you cannot follow the visual indications of who is talking at any given time. Similarly, it can be very hard to know when the topic of conversation has been changed, which can lead to a lot of confusion even when you only miss the occasional word.
Hearing loss presents challenges when you’re outside
Following conversations through body language and lip reading can make life a little easier. Sadly, though, you might not be in a position to embrace those visual prompts when you’re outside. It is very common for those with hearing loss to miss people shouting their name in the street.
Likewise, when you suffer from hearing loss, it can be a huge struggle to detect the direction of a sound source. As your brain tries to compensate for the lack of natural hearing capabilities, all of the sounds can merge into one. This makes it very hard to communicate with any confidence.
Hearing loss affects chats with women and children
For a lot of people, hearing loss is related to pitch rather than volume. As such, struggles to follow high pitched tones can make it very tough to communicate with women and children. This is a huge problem for parents, teachers, or anyone that regularly speaks with kids.
It’s stressful for you, and frustrating for the person, you’re talking to. Worse still, compensating for pitch issues is harder than acclimatizing to volume problems. The inability to interact with certain groups of people is undoubtedly one of the most difficult outcomes to accept.
Hearing loss encourages you to speak louder
Conversations are a two-way interaction, and the sound of your own voice does have a huge influence on your future communications. After all, you will naturally react on a subconscious level to the way that you think you are speaking. This is particularly relevant for sound.
Speaking louder is a common issue for those with hearing loss as it’s the only way that you can hear yourself talk. In truth, this is one of the most common symptoms that others will notice before your hearing loss has been diagnosed. Unfortunately, there is little you can do to stop this.
Hearing loss will change the content of what you say
In addition to influencing the volume at which you talk, hearing loss may influence what you say. After all, a lack of confidence in social situations and concerns about discussing complex ideas can discourage you from entering territory you would in other situations. This is a very sad factor.
Furthermore, failing to understand everything that is said in conversation (or even on TV) can limit the amount of information you gain. In turn, this can restrict the knowledge that you have on certain subjects unless you read up on them elsewhere, which can also impact the content of your dialogue.
Hearing loss will impact the way others interact with you, too.
The internal changes are one thing, but it’s also important to realize that hearing loss will influence the way that loved ones, colleagues, and strangers interact with you too. It’s only natural given that they will notice the changes in your behavior. Still, it can take a lot of getting used to.
People may try to speak more slowly or with greater lip movement. In truth, it’s likely to cause more problems than good, which does make communication more difficult. Furthermore, as you struggle to follow this new communication, it keeps the vicious cycle running.
Take control of your hearing health today!
Even if you only suffer from mild hearing loss, it’s important to manage the situation at the earliest stage possible, and a hearing test followed by a hearing aid fitting is the only solution worth considering.
To book your hearing test with Pittsburgh Ear Associates today, phone 412-321-2480.
