Learning to manage your stress levels can extend your lifespan and directly impact the relationships around you at home and in the workplace.
Being a person with hearing loss adds more stress causing issues and problems. Whether it’s communication issues, fear of performing tasks without your hearing aids, or embarrassment over your hearing loss, there are ways to cope.
Here are some ways to reduce the problems of living with hearing loss and reduce stress.
Hearing loss and stress
No matter how good hearing technology is, there will always be times when our hearing becomes an issue. Hearing aid wearers have to concentrate more in social situations than their hearing counterparts. This leads to tiredness and with this, stress is never far behind.
Read more: What you should know about concentration fatigue
I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be just trying to differentiate between foreground sounds and background noise. I struggle in crowded places and social events, such as parent-teacher meetings and restaurants. When a number of people talk at once or over each other, this can come through hearing aids like a jumble of sounds, with very little resemblance to normal speech.
When hearing aids have to be taken out, for example when swimming, this leads to anxiety all too easy. Add to this, anytime those with hearing loss happen to have an off day. The brain does not always want to play along with our needs and wishes and every now and then we will experience a day when it feels as though our aids are not working properly. And of course, there will be times when our aids will malfunction or need cleaning and extra care.
Stress Management
The term stress management is a very apt and descriptive one, as we do not look to eliminate, or eradicate stress, but to reduce and manage it. The reason for this is because by living a normal healthy life we experience stress as part of daily existence. To destroy stress is to remove life. What we seek in stress management are harmony and peace.
The most important fact about stress is that like hearing loss, it is invisible. It also happens to be one of the most powerful forces operating in our world. This insidious part of everyday life is a killer and a homewrecker!
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