Are you "embarrassed" by your hearing loss?

Yes get very embarrassed now, never used to, now its like i cant buy back 50 damn years, all "mishaps" seemed to be explained to me, all my fault, , now worse off even more, so even more embarrassed. im not just 'deaf', the world out there the hearies are actually behaviourally 'deaf' !! sigh
 
Embarassed, nope, frustrated with people getting angry with me because I can't hear them well, yeah.
 
Rather than being embarassed, I feel very frustrated and afraid to open up. More often than not, i pretend i understand what others say. I was taught from a young age by my mother to hide the fact that I am HOH, because she thinks I'll get belittled and tells me to hide it from employers if i can. I'm still trying to come to terms with being open about it, but its really going to take a long time before i can. When i tell people im close to, they often tell me they don't know because i hide it pretty well.
 
I don't really get embarrassed but every once in a while I'll be in a situation that will be a cause for some embarrassment at not being able to hear what's going on and reacting strangely because of it. My personal favorite is when I say "Oh, I'm sorry, I have hearing loss" Or something along those lines and someone responds with "Huh?" The first few times it happened, I genuinely thought I needed to repeat myself. I now realize it was just people being assholes. Even my best friend does it to me.
 
I dropped off my hubby at the hospital for hernia surgery. I couldn't stay in the waiting room because my son was at his school. Anyway, I had errands and picked him up at the school. I went back to the hospital on the time after Hubby's surgery was over. I planned to pick up my hubby after he felt better and ready to leave in his recovery room. It was about 8 pm. The problem was the office was empty due to business hours. I looked at the phone on the desk. The sign next to the phone said that I have to call in case the patient's surgery was over and where the recovery room is. Oh, really???? Do you expect ME to call on that phone? I had to find a hospital security guard and explained that I couldn't call on the phone and asked her to take me directly to hubby's recovery room.

mr bean wtf GIF
 
I do get embarrassed. I am good at pretending to hear what is being said or walking away from a conversation if i am not able to keep up. This annoys my partner but i have nothing to add to a conversation it is not worth my time standing listening (not able to keep up)
I also find people who dont understand that your deaf or Hoh try to raise there voice.
Or then you have the people who think its funny to whisper or over express words with there mouths and try treat you like a trained monkey.
I am thankful to be isolated. I do not trust people i do not know.
Even when people have to be told i make my husband tell them. I just find it so hard to express myself face to face with people
Are you usually isolated? How is it something you are able to cope with?
 
Was always well guarded with my surroundings and who I knew. I didn't put up with shit about my hearing. People who didn't know me or those too ignorant got set in their place....
 
I get embarrassed when i am with my hearing family. They make fun of me a lot and none of them sign. My wife is my savior a lot of the times.

My family in Australia are the same. My ex-husband here in Finland learned ASL with me but nobody else. I use Skype (with captions) to talk to my family in Australia, as my dad is too afraid to use a computer - and also wants to kill the man who took my hearing away.

I would so love to have another Deaf in my family, even so I just have somebody to talk to at family reuniions. Otherwise it is like sitting through a talking film with no subtitles or closed captions.
 
I don't really get embarrassed but every once in a while I'll be in a situation that will be a cause for some embarrassment at not being able to hear what's going on and reacting strangely because of it. My personal favorite is when I say "Oh, I'm sorry, I have hearing loss" Or something along those lines and someone responds with "Huh?" The first few times it happened, I genuinely thought I needed to repeat myself. I now realize it was just people being assholes. Even my best friend does it to me.
Yah when they say Huh? I say exactly, there trying to be funny not an asshole, or at least I give them the benefit of a doubt, first time it's funny, but becomes a bore:noway:
 
I'm not embarrassed, just so frustrated because I want so bad to hear and communicate again with my family, my friends, the kids, doctors, every aspect of what I use to do I now have to rely on my husband to speak for me at the doctor's and call for appts and deal with important engagements and so on. In this modern day very few places communicate by text message or email? Everything goes on and I am lost without my hearing. Hearing aids don't help anymore..
 
Yaha hearing aids don't help me much, I had a neck problem for over a year before I figured out I was straining to try to hear what I couldn't, it took me at least a year to at least try to quit straining, been what 3-4 years now and sometimes I catch myself doing it again, it's hard to quit hearing when your used to it, it could be easy for me to ? envy? Those born deaf, but then again they have there own challenges :2c:
 
I wouldn't say I get embarrassed, I just feel conscious that every ones looking at my aid, thinking, poor guy must be deaf, I've only been wearing it for 2 years, just still feels really weird wearing it.

My first few months of wearing it, I was wearing a baseball cap just trying to hide it, I really felt awkward having it in, took almost a year to get used it & being able to forget I'm wearing it, I know that sounds crazy, now I can completely forget I have it in, I've just gotta be careful, nearly took a shower with it still in & it's not waterproof. :lol:
 
Last edited:
I showered with mine on/in at least once, putting them in rice draws the moisture out (usually) :fingersx:
 
Thats not the problem.

If you did not possess something its not a issue with the body. When you have gone through life long enough there is very little that is embarrassing. Generally its more of a pain with the younger ones going through puberty which for some is a rough time. Part of that is with the failures of our Parents or the Educational System (Never mind the last 20 years with the insistence on teaching kindergarden kids things that they are not old enough or developed enough physically to process...)

I tell you whats embarrassing. Little failures in real life. Example... Put the trailer into this dock. So happens to be a exel facility for breakbulk in Carlisle PA one day. The place was on two or three acres worth of warehousing with 22 docks wide open. Plenty of room early that morning to put a loaded trailer just arrived overnight from Toledo Ohio with a load of Heinz Tomato Packets (The kind you put on the burger in McDonalds, just tens of thousands of them)

Because I had been half the day loading and standing around counting the thing and driving through the night into mountain storms and so on when I arrived I was very overtired. Put the trailer into the dock they say. Well when you are that tired having been on the job say 50 to 60 hours STRAIGHT with no sleep etc your mind is not capable of the calculations and decisions to put the trailer against the building's dock. And nothing in the way. Literally 40 acres to turn around and back up in but you could not do that precision task.

They laughed. Then one of them hopped in and docked it in a minute so they can get the load. i was allowed to use the sleeper for a few hours. Just so I can be safe to get from there to Gettysburg Yard before going home in my car. To drive that tired is worse than driving drunk.

The reason it was so embarrassing was because as a professional I can put a trailer anywhere you want it in one move and about 40 seconds safely. Make it look easy. I prided myself on that. I can still hear the laughing to this day, the derisive kind. Then again, they were starved for entertainment. Work was too dull some days for them. =)

Yes we had regulations for hours of driving and on duty etc with limits however in those days your dispatcher and company drove you until you passed out some weeks. The laws had no meaning as long you did not get caught. Today it's totally different with the computer enforcement clocks in the trucks now. If you refused a load or to be somewhere because you were sleepy... they simply fired you. Drivers were a dime a dozen back then.
 
Back
Top