The Nature of Selective Hearing

The only one thing that you requested was for the trash to be taken out. But, unfortunately, it never got done. When you ask why they didn’t do it, your partner says “I never heard you ask me”. Why are you not surprised that your partner failed to hear the one thing they wanted done? This “selective hearing” is a normal sign that communication is failing.

This “selective hearing” is often viewed as a kind of character defect. Accusing someone of selective hearing is implying they weren’t listening to you. But it’s possible that the real cause behind your selective hearing may not be a short attention span, it might be the early stages of hearing loss.

Selective hearing – what is it?

You’ve probably been accused of selective hearing at some point in your life, even if nobody used that particular name. When you miss all the stuff you don’t want to hear but hear everything else, that’s selective hearing. You hear the part about the chocolate ice cream, but you don’t hear the part about the calories. That kind of thing.

It’s really common for people to have selective hearing behavior. But this behavior is more prevalent in men than women, according to some studies.

How individuals are socialized does give some context and it may be tempting to draw some social conclusions from this. But the other part of the picture may have something to do with hearing health. If your “selective hearing” begins to become more common, it could be a hint that you may have undiagnosed hearing loss.

Hearing loss can cause gaps in communication

Communication will certainly be harder with undiagnosed hearing loss. That’s probably not that shocking.

But here’s the thing: oftentimes, communication problems are an indication of hearing loss.

Symptoms can be very hard to notice when hearing loss is in the early phases. Your tv might get a little louder. You can’t quite hear what your friend is saying when you go out for a beverage at your local tavern. It’s likely because the music is so loud, right? And so, other than that, you could go through the majority of your daily life without giving much notice to the volume of the world around you. Your hearing can slowly decline because of this. Up to the time you’re having trouble following along with daily conversations, you almost don’t notice.

Your partner is becoming concerned about the health of your hearing

The people close to you will likely be concerned. Your family and friends will likely be frustrated when they think you’re intentionally missing what they say. But that frustration often turns to concern when they realize that hearing loss might be the actual culprit.

And your partner may want you to find out what’s going on by having you schedule a hearing test.

It’s significant to pay attention to your partner’s concerns. Talk openly with them and accept their help because they care about your well-being and aren’t simply aggravated with you.

Early hearing loss has a few other signs

You should watch out for some of the other early warning signs of hearing loss if your selective hearing appears to be getting worse. Here are a few of those signs:

• Requesting that people speak slower and speak up
• Consonants are hard to make out
• Difficulty hearing in crowds
• When people talk it sounds distant or muffled
• Turning the volume up on your devices

You should contact us for a hearing test if you experience any of these symptoms.

Always protect your hearing

It’s essential that you take steps to safeguard your ears so that you can prevent hearing loss. Minimize your exposure to noisy environments (or at least wear earmuffs or earplugs when you have to be around noise). Hearing aids can also help you have more effective communication, which can smooth over many rough patches that your hearing loss may have caused in the first place.

A diminishing attention span will be to blame for the majority of selective hearing situations in your life. But you may want to take it as an indication that it’s time for a hearing test when people around you begin to observe your selective hearing getting worse.