Navigating the Emotional Impact of Hearing Loss: From Grief to Growth
If you’ve experienced hearing loss, you may have found it to be a life-changing experience. Often, learning to live without full sound not only means figuring out the practical implications, such as whether a hearing device might be helpful or the best place to sit in a restaurant to hear the people at your table but also means working through a landscape of emotions. Hearing loss not only affects how you interact with the world but also how you feel about yourself, and for me, the emotional impact of hearing loss was huge.
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Experiencing hearing loss can feel overwhelming and all-consuming. Perhaps you are struggling to envision a full life with hearing loss. You may need to grieve your lost sound, the previous ease of conversation, or the sound of silence in the case of tinnitus. Maybe you are asking yourself, "Why me?" These are normal feelings and your reactions and valid.