An audiogram measures detection. It doesn’t measure effort.
The words on a recent LinkedIn post stopped me cold. The concept wasn’t news to me, a person with profound hearing loss, but during this holiday weekend packed with family, children, food, games and noise, it was a powerful and almost painful reminder of how hard I must work to connect and understand, especially in group situations.
- Listening hard, trying to keep up with speakers, my head ping-ponging from face to face
- Asking for repeats, a lot of repeats, a LOT of REPEATS!
- Trying to make sense of individual voices, so that I don’t talk over someone – which I do anyway
- Dealing with micro-moments of frustration
- Lapsing into bluffing, which is pretending to understand (I’m a master bluffer)
- Trying to make sense of individual voices, so that I don’t talk over someone – which I do anyway
- Dealing with noise exhaustion
- Asking for repeats, a lot of repeats, a LOT of REPEATS!
- Trying to keep enjoying myself
While an audiogram is a picture of what we can hear, it’s harder to measure the effort we expend on the many communication steps that make up conversations. Hearing care professionals have tools to gauge the listening and behavioral effort levels of their clients, but do they always use them? And what could they advise us to do, to complement our hearing technology, that would reduce the unique exhaustion many feel at the end of a long day of interpersonal interactions?
At first, I felt deflated at this jarring reminder of the constant energy output that comes with being hard of hearing. My hearing aid and cochlear implant do much of the heavy lifting, but I still need visual information from lipreading and captioning. But then I felt a tingly moment of pride.
Over time, I have learned to be a better communicator. When I replaced wanting to hear better with wanting to communicate better, my life improved. Among the last lessons I learned was that hearing loss has a profound impact on both my mental health and energy levels – and that I’m not going to hear or understand everything. When I finally grasped these realities, I learned to forgive myself (and others) when communication isn’t perfect. It’s not that I’m not trying, but I can understand only so much without a huge input of energy. Sometimes I get grumpy, exhausted and start bluffing because my energy tank has run out of gas.
If we want to ‘do hearing loss’ better, we need to understand how our hearing loss affects us, what triggers our tiredness and how we can communicate with a lower energy burden.
- Quit fighting our hearing loss. It’s ours to keep and it’s not going away by ignoring it. Embrace it.
- Get rid of the communication guesswork – tell people about our hearing loss and what we need them to do.
- Read hearing loss books. Take a speechreading course. Talk to other people with hearing loss.
- Ask our hearing professionals about strategies that our audiogram doesn’t reveal. Tell them how we feel and ask them for help. (It’s allowed.)
- Treat ourselves kindly – eat well, exercise more, sleep better, drink lots of water.
Whew! Having hearing loss can be hard work– let’s make it easier on ourselves.
