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The Reality of Hearing Loss

By Daniel Becker

Dr. Chater HES-1-48894

15 December, 2020
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An often-overlooked disability that many may not think much about at first is hearing

loss. Hearing loss is an issue that nobody else can truly experience but yourself, you cannot

tangibly share what helps you, and can often feel isolating. Visual impairment is such a

commonly known disorder, and the fact that glasses are so visible to the people around allows for

that awareness. To many, including myself, hearing loss is a lot scarier and deeper than visual

impairment. I am talking about partial impairment specifically, not loss, a permanent loss of

either sense is terrifying to think about. However, when it comes to partial impairments, I believe

hearing loss is something that can be thought of as “worse”.

My onset of hearing loss began in the fourth grade. At nine years old I faced the struggles

of not understanding those around me, not being able to fully communicate the way I wished to.

I struggled with speaking to others, and even more so with listening. A classroom environment

was horrible, the feeling of being overwhelmed by noise I can’t understand or take apart. Hearing

jumbles of sound that was unintelligible was stressful, and the long, slurred speech from the

teachers during lessons and explanations was too much to handle when it came to stressing over

classwork and keeping up with the pace. At a young age I did not fully understand what was

going on, and I figured everything was normal and I was just simply out of it. John Mpofu and

Sylod Chimhenga perfectly summarize the ideal needs of a hearing disabled person in the

classroom environment: “There is a need to face the person while talking (avoid facing away) . . .

there is need to speak clearly and naturally . . . there is also a need to avoid standing in front of a

light source like a window or glare that makes it difficult to read lips.” These conditions are

perfectly ideal for a student who is hard of hearing, but it is also the ideal conditions for any

person who is hearing impaired in any situation. Whether at home, work, or at school, I would

always prefer these conditions at any time. People often underestimate, or not even give a

thought to the projection of their own voice. People don’t regularly think questions like “Where
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is my voice going? How clear do I sound to this person? Nor are people expected to think these

questions, but rather it is hoped that there is a higher awareness of the condition of those with

hearing impairments.

When it comes to visual impairment, glasses are clear as day to see. What about hearing

aids? Do many people know what they look like? Even I, someone who is hearing impaired and

wears hearing aids, did not know truly what hearing aids looked like, what kind of effect they

have or had in the past, and what troubles they have. Hearing aids often look different from each

other; some are blockier feeling and looking, and others are much less invasive and genuinely

hard to notice from the outside looking in. My own hearing aids are very discreet and come with

some neat modern functions such as Bluetooth and a mic setting on my Bluetooth remote. As far

as hearing aids are to me compared to the ones I have seen on my grandpa in the past, they have

come very far in their years of development. That being said, hearing aids are far from perfect.

Typically, with something like glasses, your vision can seem inorganic because you may see the

smudges on the glass, the oil, the dirt, and constantly need to take them on and off. With hearing

aids, sometimes hearing can be slightly robotic when you first put them on, and when you take

them off, you realize once again how impaired you are. My own hearing aids have a very slight

tuning that is slightly either sharp or flat by the slightest few cents, that makes whistling and high

pitches in songs waver and sound inorganic. When they come off though, my hearing goes from

slightly robotic and out of tune to suffocating and choked up with no relief. On top of the

conditions of relief for this disability, the disability itself brings about social troubles too. When

someone cannot see, whether they have glasses or not, it is normally acceptable and normal.

However, I do not believe the said can be same with hearing. In my own experience, when

expressing to another that I cannot hear them and having the same phrase repeated multiple

times, I often leave the conversation with the other person feeling annoyed, frustrated, and
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somewhat ignored due to not being heard or listened to. The stigma of hearing loss is the feeling

of overaccommodation and sometimes, avoidance. When someone knows they will not be heard

without a struggle, there is oftentimes a chance that a conversation will not even be attempted to

avoid the hassle of having it. On the opposite end, someone may feel the need to over express

their voice and hearing causing conversation to feel inorganic and forced, on top of being

embarrassing in public. In a study recorded by Margaret Wallhagen in her journal, “The Stigma

of Hearing Loss”, one participant in the study stated “He’d get angry and there’s no reason to

make him angry too. One of us being angry is enough. He doesn’t wanna be reminded . . . that

he’s not hearing something. Nobody wants to be reminded of that kind of thing.” I personally

emphasize with this feeling, this thought process. My partner tries not to remind me of my

hearing impairment as she is fully aware of how I hate not being able to understand what people

are saying around me. I do not enjoy being in a room full of my close family and being the only

one unable to follow the conversations. Hearing loss is a disability of solitude and involves a lot

of feelings of isolation and seclusion.

Now, more than ever, are people with hearing impairments struggling. The inability to

hear is now amplified through the struggle of masks, and lack of lips to read destroys what our

compensation for lack of volume and clarity was in place to begin with. Personally, I struggle

with higher frequencies, I can’t hear sounds like s’s f’s t’s c’s and other similar sounds that

involve the tip of the tongue or whistle breaths. With masks, sounds in speaking are suffocating,

taking out even more of those higher pitches, and then also the middle ranges get mixed in with

the bass ranges that are completely dampened out due to the mask. I grew up learning lip reading

kind of as an additional habit that came from the inability to hear others. Instead of listening, I

would sometimes be finding myself reading people instead. I felt awkward doing so and

oftentimes had felt the need to over-explain and brief them as to why I was staring at their lips. A
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group of authors in their journal, “Face masks can be devastating for people with hearing loss”,

explain the importance of a lack of communication between patient and doctor in the medical

field and how masks influence them even more today due to the Covid-19 pandemic:

“Communication between patient and clinician is at the heart of medical care. Even before masks

became ubiquitous, people with hearing loss struggled to communicate in healthcare settings,

and poor communication was the likely cause of their documented worse health outcomes.”

Without awareness of hearing loss, and the proper way to come about it, there will be a barrier

between those who suffer from it, and those who deal with it around them. Communication and

awareness are best for issues involving disability, especially for the ones at stake today.

Hearing loss is an issue that nobody else can truly experience but yourself, you cannot

tangibly share what helps you, and can often feel isolating. From being ignored and pushed to the

side, to overbearing people who make it their mission to make sure you hear every breath they

breathe, the experience of having hearing loss and learning to live with it with the people around

you is an adventure, each unique to its own person. While the other often seen condition such as

visual impairment is something often dealt with alone, hearing loss is a condition that not only

the disabled must deal with, but everyone they encounter as well. Today, we need

communication more than ever, especially for those who need to be able to hear and follow what

they’re now completely missing out on. Hearing impaired people need support like any other

disability, it too is a struggle, it is more than just wearing a device and being fixed. Hearing

impairment is a life challenge.

Works Cited
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Chodosh, Joshua, Barbara E. Weinstein, and Jan Blustein. "Face Masks Can Be Devastating for

People with Hearing Loss." Https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/370/bmj.m2683.full.pdf.

The Bmj, 9 July 2020. Web.

Mpofu, John, and Sylod Chimhenga. "Challenges Faced by Hearing Impaired Pupils in Learning:

A Case Study of King George VI Memorial School." Www.iosrjournals.org. Aug. 2013.

Web.

Wallhagen, Margaret I. "Stigma of Hearing Loss." 10 July 2009. Web.