Tips for Living with Hearing Loss

By John Anderson

1. Allow yourself to think about balance between effort and having fun.

Hearing loss never goes away. There will always be adjustment. Part of the adjustment is for the person who has a hearing loss. Part of the adjustment is for the person who has a relationship with the person with hearing loss.

It is important for each person to feel that the other is making an effort to help make communication easier and allow everyone to laugh at the follies of miscommunication.

2. Consider the impact of communication fatigue.

Keeping up with communication through auditory and visual skills requires effort. When we get tired, our ability to keep using those skills deteriorates, and we make more errors in understanding and speaking.

It is important to allow appropriate times for rest. It is helpful to set limits for how long you can work at communication in groups.

3. Hearing loss in many ways is a relationship disability. So adjustment affects at least two people, sometimes the whole family.

When communication breaks down, someone does not understand what was said. It could be the person with hearing loss. It could also be the person with normal hearing.

It helps if both people have strategies and skills to problem solve when misunderstandings begin to occur. No one should be "bluffing" when they don't understand.

4. Hearing loss is always about adjustment.

Normal hearing is generally effortless, but a person with any degree of hearing loss always has to work to understand what they are hearing. The presence of hearing loss means the effortlessness of normal hearing is lost.

There is always more effort required to understand what others are saying especially in noise, with distance, or in a group.

The process of adjustment will mean learning a variety of skills to improve communication, minimize communication fatigue, and help balance effort with rest.

5. Self-advocacy is a lifetime journey.

There are many skills that make up the process of self-advocacy. All of these skills have to do with taking care of oneself while communicating with a hearing loss. Some of these skills have to do with communication, repairing communication, and stress management.

The most complex set of skills have to do with participation in groups.

You will be taking care of yourself with hearing loss for the rest of your life.

6. You are more than your hearing loss.

Hearing loss should not rule your life. You need to learn or relearn how to enjoy the parts of who you are that are unaffected by the presence of your hearing loss.