The best audiologists will provide a road map and set of tools that patients can use to manage their hearing loss successfully. These will not be the same for every person, but must be tailored to each patient’s priorities and communication challenges. I share my hearing loss story and tips in this article published in the November/December Issue of Audiology Today. Reprinted with their permission.
Regular readers of this blog know I am almost as passionate about yoga as I am about hearing loss advocacy. Yoga and meditation keep my body and mind strong and help me handle the daily frustrations of living with hearing loss. Often, the techniques I explore in my yoga and meditation practices can be directly applied to managing my hearing loss. My experience at a recent meditation seminar was no different.
The seminar entitled “Staying Sane in a Crazy World” featured Joseph Goldstein, a renowned meditation teacher, and Dan Harris, an ABC anchorman and author of the New York Times bestseller “10% Happier.” The talk was sponsored by New York Insight Meditation Center and it was packed! I had not expected a meditation lecture to be such a popular way to spend a cold winter’s evening during the holiday season, but I was pleased to see all the interest.
What I had expected was a lot of details on the specifics of meditation — the best way to sit, what to do with your hands, the perfect place to meditate, how to choose guided or silent, etc., but I was once again surprised. The main takeaway — do whatever works for you. It reminded me a lot of living with hearing loss.
Hearing loss can make workplace communication challenging. In my recent talk on hearing loss in the workplace at Goldman Sachs, I shared tips for what we, as people with hearing loss, can do to enhance communication success. These include things like understanding our own hearing loss and making sure our requests for assistance are very specific. My latest article for Hearing Tracker summarizes these suggestions. Please share your ideas in the comments.
An excerpt from the article is below. To read the full post click here.
It was pouring! Despite the coverage from our umbrellas, we reached the car soaked. Luckily it was a warm summer day so we were not too cold. We slammed the doors shut and sat in the car recovering. The rain clattered on the roof, banged on the windows, smashing all around us. The sound was deafening. Difficult driving conditions for anyone, but when you have hearing loss, the added battle with the noise can be exhausting. How was I to drive home safely with all this racket?
I considered turning my hearing aids off, but I don’t usually do this while driving, in hopes that my hearing aids will help me pick up ambient noise or at a minimum, a siren from an approaching emergency vehicle. I kept my hearing aids on, plugged my home address into the GPS and headed onto the road. Luckily, it was slow going as the deepening puddles made navigating a challenge for everyone.
Do you feel like hearing aids are everywhere in the press these days? First it was the groundbreaking launch by American Girl Doll of Joss, its 2020 girl of the year that not only enjoys surfing, but also wears a hearing aid. Then it was the Queen of England spotted in public for the first time wearing a hearing aid. It is exciting and inspired me to share my thoughts on the subject for HuffPost Personal.
Hopefully one day soon, someone wearing a hearing aid, no matter their age or occupation will no longer be newsworthy, but until then, the more press coverage the better. Building awareness is the best way to break down stigma, promote hearing aid and assistive listening device usage and build awareness about the ways people with hearing loss are breaking down communication barriers.
Click here to read the story on HuffPost. If it resonates with you, please share it widely to help build momentum for articles about hearing loss in the mainstream media.
