More accurately, it appears I have trouble listening.
Right now, I’m fully aware of a conversation across the cubicle aisle, I can hear the keyclicks from my keyboard and my neighbor scratching something. Where I have trouble, however, is sorting out voices from noiser backgrounds.
We have cafeteria meetings sometimes. Between the echo, the background noise, etc. I’m straining to hear a coworker 3 feet away. I’m always repeating myself to counter sales people after I mishear some question like “Do you want fries with that.” The kitchen always seems like a roar behind them.
So, this apparent hearing loss isn’t in the ability to hear as much as it seems the ability to distinguish voices among background sounds. If the background is quiet, like right now in my office area, then I have no troubles.
So - do I need to ask my doctor yet one more thing? BTW, I’m 41 and don’t have much history with chronic loud noices, ie: few loud concerts, no heavy industry background, etc.
I have the same trouble and have attributed it to loss of hearing in a particular frequency range although I have never been evaluated for it. I can hear very quiet sounds but in a noisy restaurant I can’t undestand the person across the table.
My dad has just been evaluated for this exact problem, and he does have hearing loss. He’s currently waiting for veterans affairs to get their shit together and get him a damn hearing aid already. Mom and I are anxiously awaiting it’s arrivial, 'cus we’ve been yelling at him for years.
If you’re having that trouble, it would make sense to get it checked out.
Thing is, people with hearing loss can’t percieve their hearing loss, because hearing isn’t just in the ear, it’s in the brain. Things sound as loud as they always did because your brain interprets the sound to be as loud as before, even if you’re getting a much smaller signal from your ears. So people seem to talk as loud as before, they just seem to mumble more. I’ve seen articles about people who were pretty much completely deaf, but didn’t quite know it, because they could understand and “hear” people as long as they could read their lips.
And hearing loss is typically selective. You don’t have hearing loss evenly, but usually some frequencies more than others. So you might have more loss in the frequencies used by the human voice than other frequencies, or only very low, or only very high, or some combination.
It could be that you have some hearing loss in the frequency range that includes the human voice.
There is also a condition known as “Central Auditory Processing Disorder”. With this condition, you are physically hearing all of the sounds, but your brain is having trouble filtering out some sounds and focusing on others. Now, just because you have this one symptom doesn’t mean you have the disorder - an audiologist can test for the condition. There isn’t a cure, but there are exercises you can do to minimize the affects.
From personal experience, I can say that I have trouble doing two verbal tasks at once.
I cannot, for instance, read a book and listen to the radio; or listen to a song and hold a conversation; or type on the computer and listen to a conversation. If I try to write and speak at the same time, I’ll often end up writing what I said instead of what I’d meant to write.
I don’t know that this is a hearing problem so much as it is a brain overload problem: it can’t multi-task two verbal chores at the same time.
Gah. The OP has made me decide it’s time to investigate my (very similar) hearing issues. I’ve just done an online questionnaire which has told me in no uncertain terms that I need to get my hearing checked, so I’ve made contact with a hearing clinic to arrange some tests. Now I’m scared.
A week ago I went to an audiologist and he did a frequency test with me. Short answer, I have the hearing of a teenager. Good all over. The one frequency I tested a little slight on is still marked as good for the average adult.
The audiologist suggested that my problems hearing in our cafeteria meetings are probably shared by all, I’m just the only one complaining.
