Trying to Explain Hearing Loss
Mar. 20th, 2019 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dogriverImagine a sheet of paper with a lot of writing on it, a "busy" sheet of paper. Now imagine that, with complete disregard for what was already on the sheet of paper, someone else wrote just as much overtop of the existing writing, but about something completely different - same amount of writing, almost identical handwriting, same color ink, same amount of pressure on the paper. Now imagine this process gets repeated another eight times. Now, again with complete disregard for what's already on the paper, a few people draw some pictures on your sheet of paper, including some very ambitious kids with extremely colorful crayons.
Now, someone turns the lights down to about ten percent of normal, comes up to you and asks you to read, fluently, whatever was written by the fourth writer on your little sheet of paper. You are expected to read this as if the writing was neatly typed and the only thing on the page.
Next, someone brings you a magnifying glass and tells you this will solve your problems. The lighting's just as low, the page is just as cluttered, but everything's a bit bigger. Sure enough, you can make out a few more words, but it takes an effort, and the results are far from perfect. But the person who gave you the magnifying glass is convinced that he's solved your problem for you and the rest is up to you.
Now imagine that you are dealing with this all day, day in and day out. Imagine the mental effort that goes into trying to decipher what people are writing; imagine how tired that makes you; imagine the embarrassment and humiliation when you misread a word, line, or paragraph; imagine how hard it is deliberately putting yourself into such a situation because life must go on; imagine dealing with all of the people blaming you for the situation you find yourself in, or for not being able to completely resolve it miraculously; now, imagine that this wasn't just a hypothetical situation, that you would have to do exactly this every waking second of every day, except that things would get worse in crowds. Imagine that this scenario defined, in many ways, the rest of your life. This is a start in explaning hearing loss.
While it's true that hearing aids have come a long way over the last 150 or so years, the reality is still that hearing aids do not cure hearing loss. Hearing aids still, basically, just make things louder. They're better than they once were, thanks to computers, but they still perform that basic function. It's not like eyeglasses, which can actually correct one's vision. Glasses physically change the way light enters your eyes to compensate for problems with those eyes. But hearing aids and their associated accessories can not do the equivalent. they make things louder and, by and large, leave the processing to you. You are also left with the misunderstanding, the embarrassment and humiliation, the horror of deliberately opening yourself up to the above, the criticism and lack of understanding, and the closed doors that result from hearing loss.
Imagine this was you. And next time you want to jump down the throat of someone with a hearing loss, the next time you want to berate him or her for not understanding you, or for being exhausted from trying, or the next time you are angry at that person for not trying to help him- or herself the way you feel it should be done or at the speed you think it should be done, just keep on imagining. Think of that piece of paper, that perpetual, relentless piece of paper.
Now, someone turns the lights down to about ten percent of normal, comes up to you and asks you to read, fluently, whatever was written by the fourth writer on your little sheet of paper. You are expected to read this as if the writing was neatly typed and the only thing on the page.
Next, someone brings you a magnifying glass and tells you this will solve your problems. The lighting's just as low, the page is just as cluttered, but everything's a bit bigger. Sure enough, you can make out a few more words, but it takes an effort, and the results are far from perfect. But the person who gave you the magnifying glass is convinced that he's solved your problem for you and the rest is up to you.
Now imagine that you are dealing with this all day, day in and day out. Imagine the mental effort that goes into trying to decipher what people are writing; imagine how tired that makes you; imagine the embarrassment and humiliation when you misread a word, line, or paragraph; imagine how hard it is deliberately putting yourself into such a situation because life must go on; imagine dealing with all of the people blaming you for the situation you find yourself in, or for not being able to completely resolve it miraculously; now, imagine that this wasn't just a hypothetical situation, that you would have to do exactly this every waking second of every day, except that things would get worse in crowds. Imagine that this scenario defined, in many ways, the rest of your life. This is a start in explaning hearing loss.
While it's true that hearing aids have come a long way over the last 150 or so years, the reality is still that hearing aids do not cure hearing loss. Hearing aids still, basically, just make things louder. They're better than they once were, thanks to computers, but they still perform that basic function. It's not like eyeglasses, which can actually correct one's vision. Glasses physically change the way light enters your eyes to compensate for problems with those eyes. But hearing aids and their associated accessories can not do the equivalent. they make things louder and, by and large, leave the processing to you. You are also left with the misunderstanding, the embarrassment and humiliation, the horror of deliberately opening yourself up to the above, the criticism and lack of understanding, and the closed doors that result from hearing loss.
Imagine this was you. And next time you want to jump down the throat of someone with a hearing loss, the next time you want to berate him or her for not understanding you, or for being exhausted from trying, or the next time you are angry at that person for not trying to help him- or herself the way you feel it should be done or at the speed you think it should be done, just keep on imagining. Think of that piece of paper, that perpetual, relentless piece of paper.
