If you feel like hearing loss is ruining your life, you're definitely not alone.

Hey guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of audiology and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona. And in this video I'm talking about the five reasons why hearing loss could be negatively impacting your life, and more importantly, what you can do about it.

I often talk about the technical aspects of hearing aid technology and the importance of optimal communication through hearing treatment on my channel, but one thing that I rarely talk about is how hearing loss can negatively impact your social and emotional wellbeing.

Let's face it, hearing loss can negatively impact virtually every aspect of your life. And for some people, this impact can be mild, but for others, this impact can be severe either way. Life can be tough even if you do not have hearing loss, but if you do have hearing loss, it makes it that much more difficult.

That's why I wanna discuss the five ways that hearing loss can negatively impact your life and what you can do about it.

But before I do, do a huge favor, click the like button really helps out the channel, and if you are not yet subscribed to the channel with notifications turned on, go ahead and do that as well. And a huge shout out to Phonak for sponsoring today's video, but more on them in a little bit.

And let me know down in the comment section if you feel like hearing loss is ruining your life.

Okay, so let's go ahead and forget about the treatment side of hearing loss for a second, and let's talk about the five common ways that hearing loss can negatively impact your life.

First is your self-confidence. If you can not understand what someone is saying to you when you're engaged in a conversation with them, it can be really difficult to feel confident about your communication ability over time. If you experience continued difficulty communicating with other people, you eventually are going to get to a point where you're not going to want to engage in communication because you're worried what other people are thinking about you.

This will inevitably lead to the second reason why hearing loss will have a negative impact on your life, which is the impact that it will have on your relationships, whether these are relationships with friends, family members, or significant others, hearing loss can lead to miscommunication as well as communication avoidance, because trying to communicate with you if you have hearing loss becomes so difficult that they might as well just avoid communication at all. And once communication with others becomes limited or stops altogether, that is the beginning of the end of a relationship.

The third reason why hearing loss negatively impacts your life is the mental and physical exhaustion that it creates. If you have hearing loss, then you know how exhausting it can be to try to focus your attention on the person that's talking to you so you have a shot at understanding what they're saying. While this most definitely leads to mental exhaustion, if you do this long enough, it will even lead to physical exhaustion.

When this inevitably happens, it leads to the fourth reason why hearing loss can negatively impact your life, which is social withdrawal. When communication becomes a struggle, it becomes much easier to just sit home and watch Netflix because let's face it, it's much easier just to sit back in your recliner chair, crank up the volume of the TV and turn on closed captions. And even if you do miss something, you just hit the rewind button and watch it again. Unfortunately, when you start process of social isolation, it leads to higher rates of depression.

And the fifth way that hearing loss can negatively impact your life is lower earning potential at work. Now, if you're of working age, studies have shown that individuals with hearing loss have a significantly higher rate of unemployment than normal hearing individuals and individuals with hearing loss makes significantly less money than their normal hearing coworkers. Annual income for individuals with hearing loss is up to $30,000 less per year than individuals that do not have a hearing loss depending on your level of severity.

The good news is not only does treating your hearing loss almost completely remove this disparity in earned income, it also has a significantly positive impact on all these other negative areas that hearing loss can negatively impact your life.

That's why Phonak today's video sponsor not only focuses on developing the best hearing aid technology to help you hear your absolute best, but they also encourage hearing care professionals that fit their hearing aids to focus on your social and emotional wellbeing.

Whether you struggle to hear a child, a soft spoken female, or a friend or family member in a noisy restaurant, having hearing aid technology to remove this difficulty is critical. This includes using features like speech enhancer to provide additional amplification to soft talkers so you can better understand children and females better, or the artificial intelligence with PHonak's dedicated DEEPSONIC chip inside of their Phonak Audeo Sphere Infinio Hearing aids to separate speech from background noise.

Your hearing care professional can ensure that you hear both what you need to hear and what you want to hear. But to truly address the negative impact of hearing loss on your self-confidence, your relationships, your mental and physical status, your social engagement and your income, a person and family centered care approach by your hearing care professional is critical in the clinical recommendations for social emotional wellbeing and adult hearing loss.

Published in the International Journal of Audiology researchers recommended a five step plan, which included:
- Identifying a client's social and emotional wellbeing, which includes using questionnaires like the P HQ four or a a q dash a HL
- Including family members and audiologic rehabilitation throughout the testing and treatment process
- Incorporating social emotional needs and goals in an individualized management plan
- Measuring outcomes and effectiveness of treatment based on these goals relating identified hearing needs and goals to rehabilitation recommendations such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, or other hearing assisted technologies, as well as auditory and social skills training
- Using counseling skills and techniques to explore and monitor social emotional wellbeing by using active listening, encourage patient discussion about experiences and emotions, and maintaining an open and accepting approach to discussing social, emotional and mental health concerns.

As a hearing care professional myself, not only should I be focused on prescribing the best hearing aid technology, but I should also be focused on prescribing social activities so I can get a full understanding of how treatment is impacting your life. And I'm not just talking your ability to communicate, I'm talking about your overall social and emotional wellbeing.

If your hearing care professional does this well, not only should it result in a significant improvement in your ability to hear, but it should also lead to an improvement in your overall quality of life.

I mean, just think about how much more confident you would be if you actually heard what people were saying to you without having to ask them to repeat all the time, and the impact that this would have on your communication ability with family and friends, and the amount of reduction it would create in your stress levels, not to mention your employability and your ability to earn the income that you deserve.

Okay, so what am I really saying here? What I'm saying is that you need to treat your hearing loss if you have hearing loss. If you do not want hearing loss to negatively impact your life.

But you can't just focus on getting the best hearing aids. You have to make sure that your hearing care professional is focused on your overall wellbeing when treating your hearing loss. Otherwise, they're just slapping a hearing aid in your ear and wishing you good luck.

So as long as you find a hearing care professional who has the ability to get you great hearing aids and they're focused on your overall wellbeing, you'll be in really good shape.