By Sarah Sesslar, Au.D. Doctor of Audiology/Ear Nerd
If you’ve just been diagnosed with hearing loss—or your hearing has gotten worse—you may be feeling anxious.
Anxiety is a persistent heightened state of alert. It’s a normal reaction to stressful situations, but for some people it spirals out of control and becomes a disorder in and of itself. Often, that means they can’t stop thinking “what if?”
Hearing loss can trigger or feed into anxious thinking. When you have hearing loss, you may worry about a lot of thing; What if I don’t hear something important? What if I misunderstand someone and embarrass myself? What if my hearing aid batteries run out? What if my tinnitus get worse? And so on.
Why are you anxious?
Mental health professionals generally categorize anxiety into five buckets: obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. If you have a car accident and banged your head, you might experience rapid hearing loss and possibly other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Your symptoms and treatment plan might look very different from someone who has slowly been losing her hearing and is constantly looking for signs that she’s developing dementia (when it’s really just hearing loss).
Complicating the picture is that people with hearing loss may have a related condition that causes tinnitus and dizziness, which can be unsettling and anxiety inducing, as well.
What the research shows
Struggling in everyday situations that aren’t difficult for other people is stressful. Anxiety is one response to chronic stress. In a 12-year study of nearly 4,000 French people age 65 and up, participants diagnosed with hearing loss at the beginning had a greater chance of developing anxiety symptoms over time.
Interestingly, people with vision loss weren’t more likely to become anxious. It’s often observed that people accept wearing glasses more easily than hearing aids—possibly because of the anxiety associated with hearing loss.
In general evidence of a tie is stronger when it corresponds with severity. In a study of more than 1,700 adults aged 75-85 with mild hearing loss had a 32 percent higher risk of reporting anxiety. If you had a moderate or higher loss, your chance of anxiety rose by 59 percent.
Communication tools can help
If your problem is primarily the struggles of socializing with hearing loss, you can learn to love social gatherings again. You can take someone to a quieter room and have a great conversation-once you have hearing aids. Also, learn the key communication skills for people with hearing impairments.
Even with hearing aids, hearing loss requires realistic expectations. For example, you may need to accept that you can’t hear the people at the other end of a long table. As a person with hearing loss, you will learn not to be embarrassed when other people are laughing at a joke you didn’t catch. Simply say, “I didn’t hear that.”
Hearing aids and other devices
And of course, if hearing loss is triggering anxiety, hearing aids could dramatically improve your life.
While they will not restore your hearing to normal, they can help you deal with some of the worrying aspects of hearing loss, such as communication snafus.
But just the thought of hearing aids makes me anxious.
When you’re anxious in general or about hearing, you may be anxious about your hearing aids as well.
Although it’s common to stall and be anxious when you first face your hearing problem, people tend to adjust to hearing aids over weeks or months. Many audiologists observe that men are especially likely to take pride in being healthy, so they resist admitting what seems like a weakness.
Some patients seem to adjust, largely to please other people, but months later, simply stop wearing their aids. Because their anxiety was never confronted or because their anxiety is too overwhelming, their coping mechanisms are unable to rise to the occasion of dealing with the hearing loss or hearing aids. When these people give up on their hearing aids, they end up feeling isolated. Too many dig in their heels and get angry at family and friends who complain that they can’t hear.
Next Steps
Resolve to have a baseline hearing test to determine if you have any hearing loss. At Decibels Audiology our hearing tests are always complimentary. It’s our way of giving back to the community. Call today to schedule your complimentary hearing test. You will be glad you did!
Call today and schedule your complimentary hearing test and consultation.
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