Gatherings. More, and more family gatherings.
It probably feels like you’re meeting or reuniting with every relative you have, every weekend, during the holidays. That’s the charm (and, some might say, the bane) of the holiday season. Normally, it’s easy to look forward to this annual catching up. You get to reunite with everybody and see what they’ve been doing!
But when you have hearing loss, those family gatherings might feel a little less welcoming. Why is that? How will your hearing loss impact you when you’re at family gatherings?
Hearing loss can hinder your ability to communicate, and with others’ ability to communicate with you. The resulting feelings of alienation can be especially discouraging and stressful around the holidays. Your holiday season can be more rewarding and pleasant by using a few go-to tips developed by hearing specialists.
Tips to help you enjoy the holiday season
Around the holidays, there’s so much to see, like decorations, gifts, food and so much more. But there are not only things to see, but also things to hear: how your nephew is doing in school, how your cousin’s pick-up basketball team is doing, and on, and on.
These tips are meant to help make sure you keep having all of those moments of reconnection over the course of holiday get-togethers.
Use video chat instead of phone calls
Zoom calls can be a fantastic way to stay in touch with family and friends. If you’re dealing with hearing loss, this is particularly true. Try utilizing video calls instead of phone calls if you have hearing loss and want to reach out to loved ones during the holidays.
When it comes to communicating with hearing loss, phones present a particular obstacle. The voice that comes through the phone speaker can feel muffled and difficult to understand, and that makes what should be an enjoyable phone call vexing indeed. You won’t have better audio quality from a video call, but you will at least have visual cues to help determine what’s being said. Conversations will flow better on video calls because you can read lips and use facial expressions.
Be honest with people
Hearing loss is extremely common. It’s essential to let people know if you need help. It doesn’t hurt to ask for:
- People to paraphrase and repeat what they said.
- Your family and friends to talk a little slower.
- A quieter place to talk.
When people are aware that you have hearing loss, they’re less likely to become aggravated if you need something repeated more than once. Communication will flow better as a result.
Select your locations of conversation carefully
Throughout the holidays, there are always topics of conversation you want to avoid. So you’re careful not to say anything that would offend people, but instead, wait for them to bring up any delicate subject matter. When you have hearing loss, this goes double, only instead of scooting around certain topics of conversation, you should carefully avoid specific areas in a home which make hearing conversations more challenging.
Here’s how to deal with it:
- For this reason, keep your discussions in places that are well-lit. Contextual clues, such as body language and facial expressions, can get lost in darker spaces.
- You’re seeking spaces with less commotion. This’ll make it easier to concentrate on the lips of the people talking to you (and help you lip read as a result).
- When you find a spot to sit, try to put a back to a wall. That way, there’ll be less background noise for you to have to filter through.
- Try to pick an area of the gathering that’s a little bit quieter. Perhaps that means sneaking away from the noisy furnace or excusing yourself from locations of overlapping conversations.
Okay, okay, but what if your niece begins talking to you in the noisy kitchen, where you’re topping off your mug with holiday cocoa? There are a couple of things you can do in situations like these:
- Ask your niece to continue the conversation somewhere where it’s a bit quieter.
- Quietly lead your niece to a place that has less going on. Be sure to explain that’s what you’re doing.
- You can politely ask the host, if there is music playing, to reduce the volume so you can hear what your niece is saying.
Speak to the flight crew
So, you’re thinking: what are the effects of hearing loss at family get-togethers that are less obvious? You know, the ones you don’t see coming?
Many people fly around during the holidays, it’s particularly essential for families that are fairly spread out. When you fly, it’s important to comprehend all the directions and communication coming from the flight crew. So you need to be sure to let them know about your hearing loss. In this way, the flight crew can provide you with visual instructions if needed. When you’re flying, it’s essential not to miss anything!
Take breaks
It can be lots of work trying to communicate with hearing loss. You may find yourself getting more tired or exhausted than you once did. So taking frequent breaks is important. This will give your ears, and, perhaps more significantly, your brain, a little bit of time to catch a breath.
Consider getting hearing aids
How are relationships impacted by hearing loss? Well, as should be clear at this point, in many ways!
One of the greatest advantages of hearing aids is that they will make almost every interaction with your family through the holidays smoother and more fulfilling. And, the best part, you won’t have to keep asking people to repeat themselves.
Hearing aids will let you reconnect with your family, in other words.
Bear in mind that it may take you some time to become accustomed to your hearing aids. So you shouldn’t wait until just before the holidays to pick them up. Everybody will have a different experience. So talk to us about the timing.
You can get help getting through the holidays
It can seem as if you’re alone sometimes, and that nobody understands what you’re dealing with when you have hearing loss. In this way, it’s almost like hearing loss impacts your personality. But you’re not alone. We can help you navigate many of these dilemmas.
Holidays can be hard enough even under typical circumstances and you don’t need hearing loss to make it even more difficult. During this holiday season, you can look forward to seeing, and hearing your friends and family. All you need is the right strategy.