Is hearing loss exhausting? Share your thoughts here

@Jill7cups

I wouldn't go as far as to say exhausting, but definitely tiring. The tiring part I find isn't as much having to strain to hear all the time, it's more having to ask people to repeat things, often several times. It takes a lot of concentration to listen for people who are hard of hearing. For me, I have to rely partly on my hearing, partly on lip reading, partly on body language and facial expressions, and partly on context. When having a conversation with someone,I hear some of it, and then fill in the blanks of what I don't understand with educated guesses based on what we are talking about. This is all draining, but not nearly as difficult as someone rolling their eyes at you or sighing after you ask for the third or fourth time to repeat themselves. It's not as difficult as them talking very slowly in a mocking manner. As if you are stupid, and not hard of hearing

It's frustrating for you to have to repeat yourself, but just imagine how much more frustrating it is for the hard of hearing person to not be able to understand you. When I first wrote this response I didn't realize how tiring being hard of hearing can be, but now, it actually makes a lot of sense. I guess it's all just second nature. It's all I've known.

Great post Jill! I'm glad the conversation is being started here 💕💕

@Jill7Cups Yes, hearing loss can be very exhausting as you can't hear things hearing people do and some popular tv shows aren't captioned (reality shows in my country, for example).

Hearing loss can be exhausting. I know it from my own experience as I had this issue after the flu (together with tinnitus). Fortunately, it was temporary, and thanks to the audiologist staten island the problem was solved and my hearing recovered. I should say, I realized how difficult it is for people who have a constant hearing loss.

@Jill7Cups As i see, people who were born deaf or severelly hard of hearing don't find it exhausting but part of their identity on which they are proud of. Some of them even don't feel disabled but just culturally different. Deaf people who use sign language regard it as a cultural element, not as a assistive "device", crutch or "substitute language". Too many hearing people tend to regard sign language as a "substitute language", but it in the fact isn't substitute language but natural language of deaf people.

Therefore it is maybe also important information when someone lost hearing and in which social circumstances they live in order to answer the question whether hearing loss is exhausting. Maybe it is more exhausting for older people who started losing hearing in older age and for employees whose careers depend on good hearing. None of these apply for people who are born deaf or hard of hearing or were deaf or hard of hearing from early childhood (they mostly get educations in field where hearing isn't important and thus they work in fields where hearing isn't important and they don't see it as a limitation, just as an adaptation).

@Jill7Cups

If I were to answer this question from before I got my cochlear implant, I would've said that my deafness was constantly exhausting to live with. I heard very little with my hearing aids before I received my cochlear implant and so relied very heavily on British Sign Language to communicate, which my family could and cannot speak. My lipreading skills were also quite poor so any oral English conversations were exhausting for me. Lipreading itself is very exhausting because it's a matter of guesswork based on the context of the conversation. Your brain is working, working, working to fill in tremendous gaps of information whilst trying to extract information from the lipreading itself when only 30% of the English language can be lipread.

Now that I have my cochlear implant, oral conversations are almost practically a breeze. I don't find myself straining to hear in conversations (guaranteed they're in a quiet place and in a small group of people) and lipreading has become far easier for me. However, I do find myself straining to hear when it comes to having to listen to audio and I still use subtitles/closed captions for TV and live captions for my university lectures.

I'm super late to the party here but man that felt good just reading what others with hearing loss had to say about it. Yes it's so exausting, just trying to focus on what people say sometimes is a chore. I'd say especially when the max volume for something is too quiet. Probably when my hearing goes out in one ear or the ringing gets too loud too. I hope aids alleviate that strain soon, but for now it's just stress inducing sometimes and later leaves me feeling defeated.So so so happy I can finally relate to people. I've been the only one with this problem for so long and I feel happy to know it's not just me. (I wish no one else had to go through hearing loss though.)