Hearing loss is extremely common, with a staggering 2.5 billion expected to have experienced some form by 2050. It’s also a lot to deal with, as even moderate loss can cause a significant impairment to daily life.
It’s clear that from a practical perspective, hearing loss can be extremely problematic, but there are also many hidden elements that could affect your life that aren’t mentioned much. These can be just as important as issues associated with volume alone.
To help you gain a more well-rounded understanding of your condition, here are three things no one tells you about hearing loss.
The emotional side of hearing loss is often severely underestimated. This isn’t just a physical condition – it’s also a psychological one.
Hearing is directly connected to interpreting the world around you, so it stands to reason that anything impairing that connection could have a strong carryover to problematic mental health.
Social withdrawal is one of the most common effects. When people feel they can’t properly engage in conversations because they can’t hear, they sometimes stop having them altogether. Humans are social animals, so when people stop seeing their friends and family, it’s easy to spiral downwards into a depressed state.
There’s also the mental fatigue of struggling to hear causes. It can be exhausting trying to interpret speech, similar to how it is when you’re conversing in a foreign language.
Hearing aids help a great deal here, so be sure to discuss having one customized for you at your next audiologist meeting.
While it can be just as debilitating, hearing loss doesn’t have the same outward signs that something is wrong that other disorders have, and this can lead to other people not noticing there’s a problem at all or simply forgetting.
The person experiencing the hearing loss then feels like their plight is being cast aside, or that people don’t truly understand what they’re going through. This is why friends and family members need to come along to appointments with you, and from the start, it should be explained clearly what you’re going to be expected to struggle with, so that everyone is well aware.
People with hearing loss sometimes develop a strained relationship with their husband, wife, partner, family members, or friends as a result of their hearing loss.
Miscommunication is likely to happen more often, especially in the beginning when the person doesn’t have a hearing aid. It’s also common to become very down about hearing loss to the point that the person is at risk of becoming further withdrawn.
It’s important to have an assessment with a psychologist or counselor if you feel any of these issues are affecting you, as it doesn’t have to be that way.
Hearing loss is a truly multifactorial problem, and you and your family need to do your best to treat it as such. Don’t brush issues under the carpet – there’s plenty of professional help available. Good luck
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