amc5754

I noticed that many hearing people don't to understand or want to understand our feelings. They think we are being sensitive about something that is sensitive to us. How I can get them be more understanding?

Deafness

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impaired

You can't. But you can change the way you think.

If you have full acceptance of yourself, and always strive to change the things you can, you will no longer feel the need to change other people.

MushyCookies

I tends to try to understand their perspective and help them see mine through examples. I must admit that it doesn't always work... It really depends on what kind of people you are talking about. I find myself frustrated with a lot of my Hearing friends, One of the things that truly bothers me.. is when one of them invites me to a group setting knowing i am deaf and the rest of them are hearing. They don't make any effort to involve me in and then i gets upset, they just don't get it because they have never been in that situation before.

MushyCookies

It is a vicious circle, me getting upset and them getting upset because they don't understand. so what i am saying here is the best way to deal with it is to not take it too personally and try to explain the situation thoroughly , it might help.

drphil

As I recall from the Canadian Hearing Society's course-Toronto-: Dealing/coping with your Hearing Loss- don't bluff and be assertive. Thus if one is in any situation and can't "hear": say so=and don't react.

How others react-a "clue" on what "their thinking" re: your loss.

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Get Real:Implanted Sunnybrook/Toronto -Advanced Bionics-Harmony activated Aug/07

whatdidyousay!

Hearing people will never really understand what it like not being able to hear , you'll have to try and sit where you can see every person face and read their lips and this is not always possible as there will more than one person talking at a time. Could you try and tell your friends to not talk all at once
so you can part of the conversation ?

MushyCookies

Exactly, Trying to explain is the only reasonable solution to it. But the person have to really want to understand and/or try to change to better the situation for everybody. Not everybody around here want to do that. xP

soulchill

I'm with impaired; I think one of the better pieces of advice I got was that you can't control what other people feel or how they act. You can decide what you will do and take charge of your life and decisions. If someone is mean or upset with you, is it really your problem or theirs? If someone isn't respecting your needs, you can only do so much to let them know. Yeah, some things suck, but it's not always your fault or your problem.

MushyCookies

Soulchill, that was well put. I agree with you.

celly37

Im hearing, and I have a couple deaf friends, I feel like i am understanding (or I try to be) but its improtant to keep in mind, that hearing people often feel the same way. A deaf person my feel like hearing people dont understand, but there are times that i feel the same way about deaf people. I am not as good as sign language, i am still learning and often times people forget to sign slow for me, and fingerspell slow (I am sooo bad at fingerspelling lol) The reason why I say this, is because I grew up communicating orally and most deaf people grow up communicating with sign language. Its very difficult to then switch and all the sudden change your communication, there are going to be many times that people will get frustrated, and feel like people dont understand how they feel. its normal, and it does go both ways. But, some people definately do recognize that more then others, I would never invite my deaf friend to hang out with all of my hearing friends who dont know sign language, unless i specifically said everyone else was hearing and that I would do my best to make sure her or she understood what we were saying, and both of us recognized that that might be harder then it seems. does that make sense? I guess In a way I am apologizing that so many deaf people think that hearing people dont care or understand, but also trying to let you know, that sometimes us hearing people feel the same way. Just dont give up on us hearing people

VacationGuy234

By understanding how they feel first and asking yourself why they feel that way.

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Jeremy1982

If they are your friends, they would strive to learn ASL to better speak with you and include you in the things they are doing. Not saying some of them are or aren't, I don't know, but I understand how if can be frustrating if your friend does know, but some of his/her friends don't know asl. Celly said it well also. I have to ask someone to sign slowly because there seems to be a little lag in my brain to translate what is being told to me. I hope that will change over time.