Hearing Loss Archives - Hearing Loss LIVE!

Join our LIVE! Workshop on Grief: Hearing Loss & Healing with Gloria Pelletier on February 7th, 6:00 – 7:30 PM Mountain time online via Zoom. (Adjust for your time zone.)

Registration is required, here is the link. This is a Let’s Talk Tuesday Workshop.

This post is written by Gloria Pelletier (M.S.W., L.C.S.W., L.I.S.A.C.) unless otherwise noted. This is the foundation for the workshop, which explores other aspects of grief.

“The ability to hear connects us to our world in many ways. From treasured contact with friends and family to maximum performance in the workplace to physical safety. Hearing provides deep and important connections that no other sense can replace.” (Hearing.org)

“Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people,” is a moving quote often attributed to the famed 20th-century activist and educator Helen Keller, who achieved a remarkable career championing the deaf and blind. Those with serious hearing loss often cite this quote. (AARP)

Hearing loss as a stressor in many people’s lives?

Let’s explore where hearing loss occurs in the ratings of stress in society. Below is an older chart of stress which is still the foundation of many other charts for loss. As you can see, hearing loss rates with number 6 as a “Personal Injury or Illness” with 53 points. We could also add in number 11, with change in health of family members, which is another 44 points. (You can add other stressors together.)

For more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_scale

That is a huge amount of stress that is unchangeable. One cannot go back to hearing normal again and most likely will lose more hearing as we age.

That level of loss often creates grief. Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of grief are well known (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). Now a person has gone from multiple stressors in their lives to grief. How did they get there?

Grief isn’t always about death.

It can be the loss of communication as we know it. The inability to communicate, the very foundation of relationships, changes our lives profoundly without warning. Meaning without our permission, sometimes without an illness, without our knowledge – our ability to communicate is permanently altered. There is a sense of loss, uncertainty, isolation, not feeling safe and other overwhelming emotions.

One of the key functions of hearing is a response to speech, the primary way we connect and communicate, emotionally and intellectually with each other.

A discontinuation of communication:

Can’t understand speech with background noise
Need more volume to understand
Requests for repeat
Requests to speak slowly
Withdrawal from conversations
Avoidance of social situations, isolation
Uncertainty of our understanding of speech
Disruption of speech continuity
Muffling of speech and other sounds
Relationship changes

Hearing Loss is more profound and far reaching than our society has recognized. Communication is our means to our relationships and family. Once interrupted, how do we heal?

Healing:

“…. acceptance takes many forms for different people, but it usually indicates some integration of the loss into one’s life. In this circumstance, acceptance may mean having all the negative feelings about one’s hearing loss while not letting those feelings interfere with relationships and daily life. When going through the stages of mourning, functioning may be affected over the short term, but the person usually will move toward some degree of acceptance. If they do not, they may need emotional support from either a therapist or a support group.” Kaland, Mary and Salvatore, Kate The Psychology of Hearing Loss | The ASHA Leader

Some tips that Hearing Loss LIVE! (HLL) has already expressed for healing:

Find your tribe. Meaning find people with hearing loss that understand your situation and can relate to your experiences.

Information:

Discover information that helps you understand your hearing loss.

Take “Living Well with Hearing Loss”, an upcoming class with Dr. Ingrid McBride AuD and Gloria Pelletier, LCSW.
Lip Reading Concepts & Lip Shapes LIVE! classes with Hearing Loss LIVE! (more info)
Upcoming Seminars/Workshops geared to the mental health field for hearing loss. (Chelle Wyatt, HLL and Gloria Pelletier, LCSW)
Hearing Loss Live Series of collaboration of topics by Gloria Pelletier, LCSW
Support groups: Hearing Loss Association of America, SayWhatClub and Association of Late Deafened Adults.
Know how hearing loss affects your communication, relationships and ways to mediate them.

Role Models:

Find an organization or person who role models for you how to live with hearing loss and have integrated their hearing loss with their lives.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):

Know your rights under IDEA, Section 504 and Section 505. Become informed about your disability and how to request accommodations. Request loops in church, city hall, theaters. Make sure you have your audiologist turn on your telecoil in hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Vocational Rehabilitation Agency

If you qualify, insist on equipment for communication, classes in rehabilitation for hearing loss, knowledgeable Rehabilitation Counselors.

Psychological Assistance

Insist your therapist or counselor has minimal requirements of knowledge for hearing loss and its effects on your communication and relationships. There is no shame in asking for help in rehabilitation of your communication with family and society. It is your right!!!

Art

Express your feelings and emotions through any form of art. Self expression through painting, crochet/knitting, mosaics and so much more. Creation eases some of the pain of grief a.

Hearing Loss LIVE! comments…

Chelle: Since my hearing loss didn’t come from an injury or illness (that I know of), I forget it falls into the personal injury and illness category. Living most of my life with hearing loss, I know how it affects family dynamics. After my hearing test last month, I am experiencing some grief. (I’ll have another blog for that soon.)

Julia: Hearing loss grief affects the entire family. Open the communication channel from the get go. Tell each other what your grief looks like. Healing takes time for both of you, and that’s okay. (This too is an upcoming topic.)

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Via the Hard of Hearing Person’s Perspective

By Chelle Wyatt

Good afternoon and welcome to a session of Hearing Loss LIVE!’s Tour Guide to the Hearing World. Join us as we travel through the land of the hearing, where English sounds like a foriegn language and people don’t look at you while talking. There are also those curious people who mumble and others who talk 100 mph. Together, we will journey through the land of masks, dodge communication disasters and create more awareness together. Pull up a seat and enjoy our tour through the land of the Hearies, who don’t always speak our language.

My name is Chelle and I’ll be your tour guide. This tour is intended for our Hard of Hearing community but our hearing friends will learn things too. Everyone can join us!

Image: Woman with short brown hair and cat eye glasses on. She's holding a blanck and white wand with pink and black ribbons, the end is a fuzzy pink feather. She's wearing a sweatshirt and holding the wand to her shoulder, eyes wide and smiling.

Today’s guided tour is the grocery store. Gather round and stay close, this environment is deceiving. It looks friendly and inviting at first glance but it’s not that friendly for some. Grocery stores are noisy places for hearing aid and CI users.

Step back and take a look. It’s one big, gigantic room. It’s all the hard surfaces: stone or tiled floors, high ceilings and rows of metal shelves. Sound bounces around with reverberation that drives hearing devices crazy! Are you wincing yet? I am.

Note the music, do you hear that? Elton John is on the PA system singing Rocketman. Can you hear checkstands beeping as several clerks run items across the scanner? Why does that sound rule hearing aids? On top of that there’s the couple just down the way arguing over what’s better, Gritty Kitty Litter or Tidy Cats.

It’s Noisy!

Those of you with hearing devices, you can go ahead turn the volume down to low now. While on tour, we don’t want you clenching your teeth. Mute, or turn down, your device if you’re comfotable doing so.

(We have noticed the noise there doesn’t affect our hearing friends much, but for those who do, we feel you! You can’t turn down your hearing like we can.)

The long aisles remind me of the Big Wheel scene in The Shining. We peer down the aisle and oh my god! There’s a familiar body or two way down there and they have waved at you. Can you see their faces well enough to lipread? No? At that point, the aisle length doubles in size.

Image: Looking down a long grocery store aisle toward front doors. It's the pet aisle. — Use your imagination, insert someone you know at the end. You know who they are

Your heart rate just picked up speed, right? You know they want to start talking from way, way, way down there.

Here we have several options…

Look down real quick to study that bucket of kitty litter and pretend you don’t see them because you just know you aren’t going to hear from that far away?
Turn around and go down another aisle?
Put on that polite smile and nod. Let them talk at you from miles away pretending you heard them.
Have a panic attack, leave your cart and leave the store.
Other

Here’s a little tale from yours truly, your fabulous tour guide of the day…

Many years ago, I lived in a small town with one grocery store. I couldn’t get down 3 aisles without seeing someone who wanted to chat, from way down there. This was before I was honest about my hearing loss. I chose the first option from above. Avoiding eye contact, I’d study the shelves and hoped because I looked away they wouldn’t start talking. It gave me the title aloof, a nicer way of saying stuck up.

One day I saw a fun lady at the grocery store, a long way down the aisle, talking at me, but not really to me yet. I decided to be honest with her and I saw things click in her mind. Telling her I had a hearing loss turned out to be no big deal! After that, I made my own option. I held up my hand telling the other person to wait until we were closer.

Let’s move out of the pet aisle, avoiding the laundry soap aisle. It makes my nose itch. The coffee aisle smells so much better. Nothing is wrong with our nose! Caffeine makes the world go round.

Special Events

Speaking of specials, Hearing Loss LIVE! offers a free monthly chat on the first Tuesdays of each month. It’s an open chat, people can bring up their thoughts, woes and rants about hearing loss. Even our hearing friends are welcome, we want them to understand why we do the things we do. Our video podcasts with captions are a good way for people to learn too!

Checking Out

Have you picked up all you needed at the store? Here comes the last hurdle, the checkout stand. Do you have few enough items for the self checkout?

Image: front of the grocery store, looking past gift cards to a few checkout lanes. — Self checkout area

This is the checkout that offers the least amount of hearing. Do you ever understand those talking machines though? I sure don’t. Turn off the volume or ignore it totally. Annoying things. I do feel a tad bit of guilt going through as it supposedly takes away jobs but it’s oh so nice not to hear and answer questions.

Or do you have too many items and need to go through the regular checkout? Drats.

Standing a checkoutline. Woman looking back in black shorts, gray shirt, blue mask on, shoulder length dark blond air.

Using the “Script”

The cashier is wearing a mask too, but I got this! Follow me. I use a little anticipation because they ask the same things, right?

“Did you find everything okay?
“Paper or plastic?”
And sometimes, “Stamps or ice?”

I sometimes get away with following this ‘script’ because it gets old constantly identifying ourselves and Hard of Hearing…which is why we use self checkout when we can.

Other times the checker gets friendly and starts talking. That’s when I say, “I hear enough to know you are talking but unless I’m looking at you, I won’t understand anything because I use lipreading.” Try it sometime! Or find something similar you like saying, it works like a charm most of the time. I’ve learned being proactive with my hearing loss makes checkout a smoother process.

If they are wearing a mask, I let them know the same thing. Sometimes they take their mask down, other times they start using gestures. If they don’t use gestures, suggest it.

There’s a cashier over there who I absolutely avoid at all costs. (Cost, checkout line, get it?) Though he means well, when he finds out I have a hearing loss he starts finger spelling EVERYTHING, he doesn’t know sign language. I never tell him I use sign language, he just assumes. While I do know a small amount of sign language, reading fingerspelling is a huge challenge for me. It’s a horror to be honest. That’s why I go to anyone else.

This concludes today’s tour. Visit our YouTube channel for more information on hearing loss. Take a weekly peek at our upcoming events to find out what LIVE! event is coming next. It was a pleasure being your guide today, feel free to ask me any questions or share any story.

Coffee helps make the world go around!

Did you like our current tour? You can buy us a cup of coffee! Or use the QR link below.

Speaking of coffee, our next virtual tour will be the coffee shop, that’s a crazy noisy environment to maneuver in! Even our hearie friends have trouble here. After our virtual tour, you can meet us in person as I travel with Julia to the SayWhatClub convention in Nashville.

Stay tuned for more info soon!

There is no campanion podcast to this blog.