Hearing in Complex Situations

Hi, I'm Denise Kopecki with Texan Renew Hearing Center. Today we're going to talk about some tips for how to hear better when we're in noisy or complex hearing situations.

A big complaint we hear from a lot of people, regardless of if they have hearing difficulties or not, is that there are certain places they may go that they may not hear as well. Restaurants, parties, weddings, places where live music is playing can all be some of those places that you have more difficulties.

We're going to go over a few tips on how we can help ourselves with or without hearing devices for being able to understand speech better in those environments. 

The first tip is to put the person you're wanting to hear in front of you. Sometimes people think lipreading or looking at a person's face can be bad, but in place where you've got a lot of background noise that can actually help with being able to understand what the words are by having some content.

The second tip is to try to have conversations in a well-lit area. That way again, whether it's lipreading or picking up on non-verbal cues are able to help. By looking at their body language of whether they're happy and excited or more serious and understanding that this is a serious conversation, in a well-lit environment you'll be able to pick up on those cues and the conversation will be easier to follow.

Another thing can sometimes be done depending on the environment were going to, such a restaurant, is to consider the time and place we're going to it. For example, if we're going to the Cracker Barrel on Sunday at noon, we might not be able to have as good of a conversation as going at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. You might want to consider what restaurants you're picking and what time of the day you're going to them before wanting to go and have a big family discussion.

Something else that can help when your out and about in a noisy place is to try to put as much of the background noise in front of you as you can. Instead of trying to have the most noisy part of the restaurant to your rear, you would want to put the most noisy part of the restaurant to rear of the people talking to you. This helps your brain focus on those nearest to you as opposed to trying to divert its attention to the noise behind you as well as the speech in front of you and the noise behind them.

The last tip for whenever we're in a noisy environment and trying to have a conversation is to be honest and direct. If you missed out on hearing something, ask someone to repeat. There's no shame in having to ask someone to repeat in a loud, noisy environment. Others around you may have missed that same comment that you've missed. 

Again, I'm Denise Kopecki with Texas Renew Hearing Center. We're always happy to help you with all of your hearing needs.