How about this for Understatement of the Year : Hearing loss messes with your social life and your relationships.
When you frown at people, struggling to understand, they think you’re grumpy. When you paste on a dorky Mona Lisa smile because you’ve totally lost the convo, they think something’s wrong with you. When you snarl at people because they mumble, they think that you’re, well, snarly.
For decades, I felt ashamed of repeatedly asked for repeats. Embarrassed at being shushed because someone was already talking. Humiliated at giving a confident answer to a question that hadn’t been asked.
Person: What’s your name?
Me: Thank you very much!
Communication barriers popped up everywhere, every day, and I didn’t always handle them well. I simply didn’t know how to handle them better. I was well into adulthood before a series of life-changing aha moments made me realize that my biggest hearing loss barrier was me! I’d been doing things the hard way, over and over again. Well, hello – there’s an easier way! With a few attitude shifts, reasonable technology and some behavioral tweaks, we can become more skilled at making listening situations more accessible, enjoyable.
We can take charge of our hearing loss journey.
In our book Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss, Shari Eberts and I share workarounds, tips and attitudes called Hearing Hacks, that helped each of us on our respective hearing loss journeys.
Here are three Hearing Hacks of the mind and spirit that I wish I’d absorbed and lived decades before I finally “saw the light”.
#1 The Big Goal Shift: When we shift our goal from wanting to hear better to wanting to communicate better, everything changes for the better. It takes more than hearing aids to understand other people and the world around us.
#2 Trying to hide my hearing loss leads to misunderstandings. Being open about my hearing loss leads to conversations. This is a self-evident truth.
#3 The label we choose to describe ourselves – deaf, hard of hearing, Deaf, hearing aid user – is personal and non-debatable. What’s important is the next step – telling people what we need to communicate well together. That’s where the magic happens.
Hearing Hacks – and there are a lot of them – make the hearing loss journey a smoother ride. Enjoy!
