Hearing loss is a big, bottomless bowl of emotional soup.
The constant challenges of hearing loss keep our emotions in play: sometimes softer and manageable, often more painful and exhausting. And we don’t do one emotion at a time! Hearing loss is more complicated than that; emotions are close to the surface, always ready to erupt.
Let’s say I’m at a small gathering of friends and communication-wise, it’s not going smoothly for me.
I’m not just frustrated because I can’t understand.
I’m frustrated because they keep covering their mouths while talking all at once and,
I’m angry because I had to remind them five times already and,
I’m sad because no one seems to care enough to remember from one second to the next and,
I’m lonely because everyone else is having fun and,
I’m grieving because it never used to be this way but,
I’m also hopeful that if I stop the conversation and explain, one more time, they’ll finally get it, and then I’ll be grateful and happy when the conversation becomes easier for me. For a little while. Maybe.
At the HLAA National Convention in June, I participated in the annual Research Symposium which, this year, addressed The Emotions of Hearing Loss. After the panel of researchers and hearing care professionals presented studies on the subject, I performed a series of monologues that put a raw, human face on what we live with, emotionally.
One of my pieces spoke to the crushing effect when someone blows off our request to repeat something, thinking perhaps that the comment is not important enough for another go. But the resounding message we receive is that we are not important enough to waste their time in repeating it.
So, what do we do? Sometimes we let it go, or we deal with it graciously as a teachable moment. But our inner reaction is often more turbulent, and I gave voice to it.
I yelled it.
Yelling is not a good way to handle conflict. It’s not polite. It’s disruptive. It creates more tension. But the great thing about theater is that it amplifies emotions and situations. Onstage I could make the message bigger, louder, angrier – very close to our real, internal rage. You may hear my voice as you read this. If you don’t know me or my work and you have hearing loss try ‘hearing’ these words in your own voice. If you’re a hearing person, read these words in your loved one’s voice.
But that voice you hear? That voice is yelling!
There’s one thing that makes me clench – my fists, my jaw, my brain! And today, I’m not letting it go. This isn’t a teachable moment. Because sometimes, it just boils up and over and I”m letting it rip!
So – DON’T! Don’t say ‘never mind’ or ‘don’t worry about it’.
Don’t you dare push me aside! Don’t you dare dismiss me!
You don’t get to do that. You can’t use those words TO ME!
I get that maybe you think what you said wasn’t important, or meaningful. Maybe it was so trivial that to keep going with it would be a waste of everybody’s time.
But you don’t have the right make that unilateral decision, to cut me off, to end it – LIKE THAT!
We are talking, together! We’re engaging and I’m giving you my energy – I see you! I hear you! I read you! We keep talking until we both agree that this conversation is done, finished.
You know this, so don’t make ‘never mind’ the hill that our conversation dies on.
BECAUSE I MIND!
And now, please repeat whatever it was you said, although truly? I no longer care, so just get me a glass of wine. Thank you.
In real life, I don’t yell this. Occasionally, perhaps, a slight raising of the outer voice, even as my inner voice is shouting Don’t You ‘Never Mind’ Me!
