Our tagline is “To hear for life, listen with care.”
According to VeryWell Mind the difference between hearing and listening is: “Hearing is the passive intake of sound while listening is the active, voluntary, and intentional process of making sense of the words and sounds you hear.”
This makes a lot of sense if you can recall times when you might have been in a conversation and the other person might say – please say that again, I wasn’t listening. Often people won’t even acknowledge that they’ve missed part of the conversation and continue forth. It can be obvious when someone has not paid attention and listened actively when we speak. It goes both ways. People will know when you haven’t actively listened to the conversation which can lead to someone being resentful or feeling undervalued because they were not heard. This happens often even with perfect hearing.
Now take the same situation with hearing loss. Someone might act the same and you might have the same feelings about the person or the situation however this person didn’t intentionally miss the message. Sometimes people are either in denial or embarrassed about hearing loss and will not take part in conversations due to their inability to hear the message.
The result of hearing loss can be misunderstandings and isolation. Misunderstanding speak for themselves, and they can lead to a whole set of problems themselves. Isolation can be severely damaging. When we cannot follow a conversation, we feel excluded and like we miss out. If enough of this happens, people just withdraw completely to avoid those feelings entirely. This happens to many of our elderly community.
This blog, written must still be heard and people need to listen.
Many forms of hearing loss cannot be prevented but noise-induced hearing loss can. Why would we not listen to a message when it can protect our hearing? It can help us avoid misunderstanding and feeling excluded. Our programme aims to educate our communities about how they can protect their hearing for longer. It is a health and social issue. To hear for life, listen with care.
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