Personal Reactions to Hearing Loss

As my hearing began to deteriorate, efforts to hear other people created exhausting stress. I'd strain to hear. to concentrate, to capture individual words, to grasp the basic idea of a conversation, to understand. It proved an elusive goal. Exhausted and defeated, I'd withdraw. In the back of my mind was the vision of some distant grandmother isolated from her family because she couldn't hear them. I remembered a co-worker who wore a little black box clipped to his pocket, who seemed forever to be fiddling with the controls. It slowed him down, and eventually, we stopped including him in our discussions.

I began to avoid situations: plays, lectures, evenings out with old friends. I learned to hate the sound of the telephone ringing, for I knew that once I answered it, I would have trouble understanding what was being said on the other end. Everyone seemed to talk so quickly. The experience was maddening.

To compensate I developed an armamentarium of techniques: I became vigilant, watchful, overly attentive. I seemed to stare. I moved closer. I asked for spellings of names I didn't catch (though I embarrassed myself by asking a new acquaintance how to spell his last name. S-m-i-t-h, he said). I would start conversations, unaware that I had interrupted or broken in on an already existing discussion, or raised a topic already discussed . I raised my voice, raised it in order to hear it at the level of loudness that seemed normal to me ... except it was too loud for people with normal hearing. Friends quickly hushed me. I was embarrassed. I had brought unwanted attention to myself.

I became a "yesser" (A defense I still indulge in.) When I don't always catch the gist of a conversation, I just nod my head and hope I've not made a social blunder or made myself look like a fool by agreeing to something absurd. I hate being like that. I feel stupid. But there's a limit to the number of times I feel I can interrupt and ask for repetitions.

People unknowingly say hurtful things: "The trouble with you is that you don't seem to listen." "I keep trying to tell you something, and you don't pay any attention to what I'm saying." "I knew you weren't listening to me!" "But I just said that!" "What's the matter with you, can't you hear?" I imagined that people were trying to distance themselves from me, that I was a "pain in the neck." I became paranoid. I couldn't tell them what was wrong. I couldn't let them know I was hurt by their comments.

To talk about my hearing problem would be to label myself as someone who was handicapped.. I didn't want to be "different." I didn't want people to look at me differently, treat me differently. Unlike other handicaps, hearing loss can come across as a personality problem: the hearing impaired person who does not admit his or her deficit openly may be seen as strange, reclusive, asocial. I didn't want to be seen as any of those things; I wanted to feel socially acceptable. So I denied my problem. By denying it, I unwittingly enlarged it. I appeared in exactly the way I didn't want to seem, as I nodded my head when I didn't understand something, when I laughed at jokes I didn't catch, when I asked for repetitions again and again. I was ashamed of my deficit. I was ashamed and angry that I felt ashamed. I was terrified. Acceptance meant dealing with the reality that nothing could bring back my hearing, that to be hearing-impaired would be forever. We don't respond this way to having visual impairment. We get our eyes checked and we obtain glasses. But hearing loss has a stigma to it.

Outings to the theater with friends were a nightmare. I couldn’t understand the play. I couldn't participate in our discussions during the intermission or afterward. My seat seemed to be miles from the stage. The audience seemed full of people coughing, rustling programs, unwrapping candies, whispering to neighbors.

Going to a restaurant was its own form of torture. If we sat at a table near the busboy's station, near the entrance, near the bar, near the main traffic route of other patrons, it was too noisy. If we sat in a dimly lit section of the restaurant, it was not well enough lit for me to lipread. Flowers on the table might obstruct my view of others at the table. The clinking of forks on china or cups on saucers would hinder my understanding of what was being said. Background music jangled my ears. What seemed to me a terrible din - the regular noise of a restaurant at mealtime - would defeat me, isolate me. I was alone in the midst of all that social activity.

It didn't help to know that people with normal hearing also miss occasional bits of conversation. I seemed to be the only one having real difficulty. When someone else made a simple mistake, it was alright. When I made the same kind of mistake, I was embarrassed, apologetic. I could not help but feel that I was somehow at fault for not hearing what was said: I'm sorry, I missed what you said. I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. I'm sorry, what did you say? I'm sorry...

I finally broke down and went for a hearing test. The result: despite my wanting it not to be true, it was time for that dreaded hearing aid. It's what I had been avoiding. I could escape it no longer. It took many adjustments, months, even years for me to be as proficient with it as I am now. I was lucky to have supportive family, to have found a support group for hearing aid wearers. But today, I am still ashamed of my deficit, of my inability. I still get frustrated and tend to withdraw. No one who hears well, hears normally, will ever know what it is like to hear like this, to feel like this. You don’t know how lucky you are.

My deepest thanks to some anonymous employees (they know who they are) who were willing to share their feelings with me. Thanks also to: Charlotte Himber, author of How to Survive Hearing Loss , whose book was most helpful (Gallaudet University Press, Washington, D.C., 1989).

From the files of THE GERMANTOWN HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL CENTER

Blue Bell Hearing Aid Center, Inc.

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