Jolie77

You know, from time to time, We would get questions from random strangers asking us what is it like to be a deaf person? Naturally, We would explain how we get by being as a deaf person. It's already hard enough to explain to someone when they have not exactly experienced it themselves.

This came to me and I wondered what is it really like to be hearing? As an hearing person, What are your likes and dislikes of being able to hear? How is it different in the atmosphere, environment, things that you've experienced and/or encountered with?

So, with that, It has piqued my curiosity.

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“Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, they're from Georgia. But us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin'. And if we have an opinion, you know you're gonna hear it.” - Ashley Judd

Deafness

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GraysonPeddie

I like listening to thunderstorms and music, but I'm hearing impaired...

When it comes to wearing hearing aids, my experience is that a hearing aid is just a compensator for correcting frequencies due to hearing loss on certain frequencies. I mean, it didn't help to improve how I can listen word-for-word. I tried to get use to it but the soft static with harsh tones (mid-to-high frequencies) just tend to wear me off. I guess I'd rather be deaf (obviously, use sign language) instead of hearing (listening to people talking to each other or to me, for example, especially for making phone calls).

I can hear high frequencies, so a hearing aid is just a band aid for me.

But I know hearing aid is not the subject of thread, but I just felt like mention it...

It's pretty tough to explain about being hearing, though.

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Hermes

I am a hearing person and will answer your question as objective as I can. Hearing is like having a constant relationship with the environment even while you are not paying attention visually. It is being in touch with the world out of your eyesight. Besides that enjoying the sound of this and hating that is all subjective.

Down sides ? You can not shut it off. You can close your eyes but you cant shut off your ears if you want some quite. Unless you live in a remote place there usually is a background noise of appliances, traffic , people and so on.. Brain has a mechanism of filtering off some background noises after a while if you pay no attention to them but you cant just stop hearing the moment you need to leave the rest of the world outside. This is not "disliking the hearing" since its cause is not hearing but our modern day life, but it is a fact that noises in big cities and busy environments are a stress factor on modern day people. Sometimes person just wants to have silence for a while.

I hope it gives a perspective
Hermes

mum2bubba

Well I can't compare the two as I have never been deaf or hoh (I'm pretty sure blocking my ears is not the same thing). I guess the good part about being able to hear is just that, being able to hear. Knowing whats going on around me (not to say that deaf people don't either) and hearing nice sounds like laughing, birds etc, the not-so great part (well for me anyway) is hearing annoying sounds like someone mowing the lawns at 7am on a Sunday morning or my kids (or kids in general) whinging.

Another bad part about being able to hear (someone else mentioned) that you can't just shut if off (noise I mean) if I am trying to think and I have many noises around me (kids, dog barking, washing machine on, tv on etc) I feel like my ears will explode because theres so many noises all at once and I can't think of what I'm supposed to be doing.

Thats the best I can do to try and explain it.

shel90

Yea, I can sort of get it even though I am deaf. I had a bad migraine headache yesterday and the noises filtering thru my hearing aids were aggravating it even further so I took my HAs off to reduce the pain in my head.

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

InnocentOdion

As a HOHer who once had perfect hearing...you aren't missing out on much.

Oceanblue7

I will answer to the best of my ability, being a hearing person is living with environmental noises like cars, trucks, trains, etc.. even though I may not pay attention to my surroundings still , there will be noise no matter like a bus passing by, kids crying, people talking on the cellphone, or people having a conversation without doing any earsdrop, I can still hear the person talking, it comes with the terroritory.

The disadvantage is sleeping and being woken by a sudden noise like my upstair neighbors walking, turning the water on urgh! My bedroom window is next to the resident parking stall sometimes, the engine will wake me up early like 3am or so..

Most hearing people enjoy music to hear maybe remind them of a special moment or a happy event in their life. Sometimes, hearing people use music to relax after a stressful day work. I just prefer complete silence if I have a headache and just want to be lying down without any music , tv or lights all shut off.

I forgot to mention, that oneday my ear infection caught up with me and went completely silent. I was amazed how it felt for a moment to be deaf. I was off balance for awhile, I got up to get cereal poured milk and just saw the motion but not the sound. It was an experience that I will never forget it didn't last long maybe for about 20 minutes.

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Brady's back
"We have unfinished business to take care of" Randy Moss,#81, WR

Jiro

wow interesting story, Ocean! thanks for sharing! I don't really envy hearing people. I cannot imagine living my life hearing CONSTANTLY all these noise pollution, especially when sleeping! However I only envy hearing people for only 1 small thing - being able to hear and communicate thru telephone, radio, conversation - word-by-word....

Jolie77

Wow, There's a lot of interesting aspects/perspectives. This has helped tremendously. I also wanted to see how it is in the "mind" of what it is like to be an hearing being. Thank you guys for sharing the experiences. Please continue to do so, because there would be nothing better to learn from each other.

From what I was told, if there were an headache to occur, some of the hearing people would hear soothing musics to soothe out the headaches whereas for the deaf person, the lights are dimmed to soothe it out. I suppose, it varies for each person and for their preferences.

This part is interesting, As many of you said, there is virtually no way to shut down the noises (if you even wanted to); How is it that you guys are able to bear with it? While it filters the noise, the noise is still there regardless. So, How do you find ways to be able to get to the point where you try to cope with this?

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“Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, they're from Georgia. But us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin'. And if we have an opinion, you know you're gonna hear it.” - Ashley Judd

Music_Life

Wow... I don't know if I could answer that question very well, ha ha.

I'm hearing and I have above average hearing. I don't think I've ever really disliked it, but since I can hear very well there are lots of sounds that I don't like, like the buzzing that TVs or computers give out, and sometimes if there are a lot of electronics it does get annoying, and I can hear pitches up into the dog whistle range, which is really high pitched and slightly annoying.

Well, if you think about it, its pretty amazing to hear, I like it I don't think I would change it, hearing the emotion is totally different than just seeing it, and I agree with everyone else you can't just tune people out, like someone deaf could just by looking away or shutting your eyes, so I guess that sucks.

And to answer your questions about how do you find ways to cope with it, I've been hearing all my life so I've grown up with sound, so its easy to block it out, its not like every conversation flies at you all at once usually you can just focus onto one conversation, same with your eyes.

etalton

Oh, that is a tough one. The things already mentioned are true. If you are born hearing, it becomes routine, those background sounds don't bother you at all. Except the loud ones like planes taking off (I live near the military, so have had jets fly overhead for years), horns honking, alarms and sirens, etc. The other sounds just become a normal part of life. There are the lovely sounds, like your child's first words, a violin solo, your favorite singer, a cat purring: these are things that make you happy, just by hearing them.
Yes, it is true there are times you wish you could just turn it off (I can now.. I just shut off my ha) but you learn to adapt (throw a pillow over your head to drown out the neighbors mowing, wear earplugs so you don't hear hubby snore at night).
There are things you take for granted because you are so used to them and you don't notice till they are no longer there. The fact that the wind blowing has it's own special sound, not just the movement of air you feel. That the vibration (purr) a cat makes has it's own unique, and for me, comforting sound. That the sound of a siren means there is an emergency vehicle coming before you see it, if you see it, since it could be miles away. Or the sound of rain on the roof, which always makes me just want to roll over and go back to sleep. Or the flash of lightening and then counting till you hear the crash of thunder to gauge how far away it was. Being able to listen to the tv while typing on the computer, instead of having to watch the screen to read the CC, and of course, conversation over the phone, being able to just listen and understand.
Sorry this was so long, but having had "normal" hearing until the last two years (half a century) and losing what little I have left quickly, it is something I think about often.

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web730

How interesting! We deaf sometimes wonder what it's like being a hearie although we do have some concept what it must be like but not complete for sure. Thanks for your inputs... few of them I find something new. hmm

A decade ago there were the neighbors next to mine who were fed up with my dogs barking in the night time so often out in the country so I assumed it was due to the wild animals like deer, coyotes, and opposums passing so frequent (nearby). I used to live out in the deep country in the valley with lot, lot of trees and creeks around by the way.

So they asked me to train and shut my dogs up as much as possibly... but the sole problem was that I couldn't hear their barkings at all, of course so I instead suggested them to wear earplugs while sleeping in the nighttime which could solve itself. But guess what did they say? No no no! Ah, they must feel so insecure not hearing at all in the nighttime while sleeping... hey, we deaf people sleep in the nights hearing nothing like peace all the times... even feel secured enough for us this way. wow... rather quite irony!

Later on I eventually had to give away few dogs before moving to Florida. They must have said or thought that's a great riddance for them. haha!

kimpossible

I was a former hearie, and all I can say is that I LOVE having a CI/hearing aid, and being able to shut them off or turn them on whenever the heck I want. Especially when you have one language you can hear and one language you can see.

In a nutshell, the worst part about being hearing is not being able to turn it off. Having worked at summer day camps involving 3-hour bus rides packed with dozens of screaming 6-year-olds, I can't tell you how sorry I feel for hearing bus drivers. The other camp staff and myself always have to get the kids to keep quiet somehow (usually we have contests and reward the kids who are able to stay silent the longest) and I feel sorry for those kids for having to shut it, and for the other staff for having to deal with it. Me, I'll gladly switch off my HA and relax in complete solitude with a book in front of the bus. Then there's sleeping and having to wake up to sound... this only happens for me if I fall asleep with my HA still on, and it's quite annoying, but it's still very possible to sleep with lots of background noise. It only really wakes you up if it is a sudden or very loud noise, or like if it disturbs the pattern of the noise that was already being made...
The thing that hearing people have to do is learn NOT to hear when the noise becomes unbearable. If an adult deafie gets a CI and starts picking up all these new sounds, they flip out at how many noises there are and are unable to ignore them. Young children tend to be more sensitive to noise, similarly. For hearing people, the noise is so constant that it becomes insignificant.
The main aspect of hearing that deaf people don't often grasp though is just the fact that hearing is a whole other sense. It's like it adds another dimension to life. Being deaf is actually a little 2D - I hope others don't see this as offensive. Being hearing sort of rounds it out; you're picking up information without looking at anything. You can do it through walls, in the dark, or from miles away with your eyes closed because sound just surrounds you whereas vision isn't 360. Your eyes work with light and your ears work with sound waves. Parts of the brain aren't being used without hearing, so having vision and hearing feels sort of like multitasking all the time.

Oceanblue7

Jiro, it was an experience that I will NEVER forget. I was in complete silence if someone knocked at my door wouldn't hear it. I am glad that I can sign I do get ear infections quite often and blocks the sound every so often and feeling unbalanced is the worse part of it.

There is no way to shut down our hearing to avoid the environmental noise and noises that surround me outdoor/indoor. It just might be that I was born hearing that my brain is already accustomed to noises since before and after birth. When I am in deep sleep nothing will wake me up.

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Ps.103:12 He washes our sins away into the ocean
Brady's back
"We have unfinished business to take care of" Randy Moss,#81, WR

Jiro

haha I can see in the future already that people will be going cyborg - having an ability to turn on/off any of our five senses

jillio

I have often told deaf friends: "Don't grieve for your lack of hearing. It ain't all its cracked up to be!"

By the same token, despite the reality of deafness, or the reality of hearing, we still have stereotypes that lead to discrimination based on those stereotypes that has absolutely nothing to do with hearing or not hearing. We live within a stratified society, and part of that stratification is based on superificial characteristics such as sensory function and skin color. Just as there is a phenomena in America that is known as "white priviledge", there is also a phenomena known as "hearing priviledge". Most white people reap the benefits of the phenomena on a daily basis without it ever entering intotheir consciousness. In fact, it is so far outside their consciousness that they will usually claim it does not exist, despite the evidence that it most certainly does. However, someone who does not receive this benefit, such as a person of color, is accutely aware of it. The same with hearing and deaf.

imdeafsowhat

Well, I can say few things because I was a deaf kid living in a small town where there's only few deaf adults. I didn't hang with the adults or whatever. I actually hung out with the kids that had no clues about me being deaf, I acted like I was one of them, you know the pride of being part of the group. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is growing up learning about the deaf culture was like learning about another world that I never thought of. I didn't even think that there was a huge group of deaf people getting together just for one night and have a blast. That was an experience I first tasted in a deaf world. As I grew up, I realized that I lost something that could've helped me all my life, which changed my perspective on things, not as a deaf person, or as a hearing person, but as one who has experienced both worlds, deaf and hearing.

I wore a hearing aid, it was digital and I was very good at listening and identifying what those sounds were. Looks like I have the ability that no hearing has, shutting off the sound whenever I can. Like a hybird, I have the best of both worlds and I have the flaw of both worlds.

One thing I couldn't hear was music. I only hear vibrate sounds when I listen to music. But other than that I can hear just about everything with my digital hearing aid.

All of the stories are great, they're all different perspective of people with same abilities and different experience. Awesome thread, I'd have to say.

To coupe up with sounds that are annoying, I'd say, it's part of life that things can be annoying, like grandma or an alarm that deaf people couldn't hear. And I'm a bit annoyed by the sound of silence.

society's_child

To put it in a nutshell: it's pretty awesome.

Yeah okay so it really sucks when the Blue Angels fly over my house every Spring for the annual airshow but hey, i'm used to it. Always sounds like a 747 will land in my living room any minute.

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fredfam1

I have a daughter who has some kind of sensanaurial hearing loss in the base range.
For her base noises cause her acute discomfort. She calls it "almost pain".
When ever we are in the car and some one drives up to beside us who is playing loud music , she will double over and grab her stomach. And she never goes to a concert. Sometimes hearing can be a problem for her

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web730

poor her but at least avoid anywhere very loud, I guess.

Maybe try to pull several nerve hairs inside her ears to reduce her "super" hearing capability. lol (just joking)

fredfam1

yes we were reading about this particular hearing problem and
we even talked about that. From what I can tell the undamaged
nerve hairs try to compensate for the damaged ones and thats
what causes the discomfort. When she was little she used to
drop the ending sounds off of a lot of words. (We thought she
dropped them, she just wasn't hearing them) We never found
out what the problem was till her senior year in high school.
But I had always taught my babies sign language from birth
just for the fun of it. (It keeps kids busy at the doctors office,
the bus, etc, it is a very HANDY language) So her hearing
loss never bothered her since we homeschooled. And her diction
is really good because I used to practice vowel sounds with
her using the manual alphabet. (Again not knowing she had any
hearing loss) Pretty cool huh? She's the one you see signing if
you type in "bilingualdoggy" on you tube. She will show you that
her dog can sign "Pretty Girl". Really! Can you tell I'm proud of
her?

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need_advice

It's impossible to explain, but I'd liken it to seeing colors. Some colors look pretty together but others don't. That's how I describe harmony like in music--harmony is like seeing pretty colors together and discord is like seeing ugly colors together. It's how I would describe a lot of people talking at the same time (those are ugly colors and the louder it is, the 'brighter' the colors are to the point they hurt your eyes (ears)).

The higher the pitch, the 'brighter' and more annoying the voice (color). This can be a person's voice (some females, especially when they yell!) or a loud siren or an instrument or anything that can make a really loud noise.

As for how it's "like", it's like we are more distracted. We notice less. I've noticed this from hanging around my friend who is deaf, sometimes he surprises me by knowing thoughts I believed were private (but maybe my body language gives it away, which is something that hearing people would NEVER EVER be able to pick up on!). It trips me out--I feel like he can read my mind sometimes!

I've just come to think that there is almost like an 'extra sense' that develops just by virtue of BEING deaf--at least with my friend, who has been deaf since birth (I've not known anyone who lost their hearing later in life so I can't compare). It's not like he's MISSING anything; it's more like he has a different, 'extra' sense. People always say that deaf people's other senses are "heightened", but I think there's even more to it than that. I think this "heightening" of other senses almost creates, in a manner of speaking, an entirely new type of sense altogether. It's nothing I will ever understand, but I've recognized the phenomenon, and it's impossible for me to deny that there is something there that hearing people do not have.

jillio

A very thoughtful post. Love your visual description of sound.

Jolie77

I find it interesting that you compared the voices with the colors. While it makes sense to use the analogy, would it still be somewhat different if it were monotone as well? I'm curious.

Since there's the comparison between colors and the voices, That also makes me think about how the visual and hearing level increases or decreases - It's like when one can't see well, they use eyeglasses to see better just as the same as if one can't hear well, they use the hearing aids to hear better.

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“Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, they're from Georgia. But us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin'. And if we have an opinion, you know you're gonna hear it.” - Ashley Judd

pearlgirl

I lost half my hearing 2 years ago, following a viral infection. Prior to that I had normal hearing.

I find being HOH very frustrating. Although I have HA's, I still cannot hear as I used to. Once you are accustomed to something, it is hard to do without.

One drawback to being hearing is that many sounds trigger emotional or stress responses. When I hear sirens, my heart sometimes races. I used to work as a medic and certain tones signaled a call to my unit. Similar sounds trigger a stress response in me now.

I also get that response whenever a large airplane flies overhead, ever since 9/11.

Maybe I'm just more stressed than the average person!

cdaigle430

Wow,
This is quite a loaded question which varies from person to person. I am recently profoundly deaf and for me going deaf is like slowly dying. Hearing aids only compensate for some of the loss. I deeply miss hearing crickets and frogs at night, leaves rustling in the wind. The sound of falling rain or a nearby brook or stream, just about everything nature wise. Allthough I can hear music I miss the different background instruments-kind of like eating a beef stew and only tasting the beef and nothing else.
I miss the sounds during the heat of passion, or the gentle conversations going on around me on a daily basis. There is just so much I couldn't possibly list them all.
70% of what we take in from the world around us is from sight so it isn't completely bad for me. For those of you who have always been deaf or can't remember what it was like to hear you don't have anything to miss and thats where I kinda envy you. It's hard for me to have had hearing and then to lose it. I have heard of a 40 year old woman hearing for the first time ever. Every sound she heard sounded like jbberish because she has to train the brain. For example, when I hear a growling noise in the dark my emmidiate instinct is to run. Why, because my brain has already learned that a gowling noise is associated with a bear-that picture immediatly comes to mind. This woman will take years before she can use hearing effectivley.

shel90

U are right...I have been deaf since birth so it is no big loss to me.

I am sorry that you are struggling. Cant say that I understand how you feel since I dont know what it is like to be hearing. I used to want to be hearing so badly growing up (grew up as the only deaf kid among my peers in a mainstreamed program) that it just consumed my way of thinking. It was very unhealthy obsessing for something that would never happen. When I learned ASL and got involved with the Deaf community, I finally accepted my deafness and life has been great since then. Whew!

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Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

~*Kaelei*~

I like hearing the sounds through CI...even though I'm sure it's not the "same" to hearing people. I enjoy hearing sounds such as Laughter, Ocean waves crashing, soft music such as Beethoven, voices of people chatting.

What I really dislike is the sound of gun going off (it's the worst thing I ever heard) and high pitch scream really bothers my ears, it actually makes me cringe. Another thing I don't like is when I'm in crowded place such as like Red Robin, the noises of people talking drives me insane because I can't hear what my friends/families are saying to me, even though I read their lips, I happen to like to hear their voices.

Without CI, I can't really explain but I can "feel" the dogs barking, airplane flying over the house, things like that...it's really interesting. I'm not sure if I'm actually hearing it or feeling it...but the vibration is pretty strong, stronger than what my hearing friends can pick up.

The strangest thing, I don't know if this is part of the topic but I can not sleep with sounds on. I have tried to sleep with CI to see what it's like to sleep as hearing people and man, I can not sleep at all, no matter what. For me, I have to have absolute silence to be able to fall asleep, meaning no CI on. Even when I'm so tired and exhausted, I can't sleep at all if I'm hearing noises, I either have to turn my CI off or take my CI completely off. I'm amazed that hearing people can sleep through sounds, I'm just amazed because I can't.

But on other hand, I got many of hearing people telling me how lucky I am that I can just turn off my CI when the nosies bothers me and not having to deal with it. They even tell me how lucky I am that I don't have to hear people snoring, lol when they have to deal with their husbands/wives snoring.

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hohDougRN

I don't want to turn it into a "what I miss about hearing thread" because when you hear normal for most of your life you don't think about "woah, I'd really miss this." Every hearie has those sounds they truely appreciate as I did. I loved music and LOVED to sing. The sound of a river while standing in it fishing, or rain. Things I didn't know I appreciated until I lose hearing was talking on phone to whoever, music and symphony, plays. My favorite sound of all is a bat hitting a ball- miss that one.

When hearing normal, I never think about deafness or what a deaf person does not get to hear, its just kind of like life I guess, you take it for granted until its over or near death. I still like music but am quite fear to sing and will not sing in church anymore. I sing to myself as I vividly remember notes and chords, I do not know how many octave I can sing correct now, but I can still read music and do my best effort to "maintain" that feeling of singing. For years I feel sorry for myself that I cannot hear this and that now, but at this point I don't have lingering sorrows for deafness. I have though appreciated the humility and increased drive to be the best I can be. And also I would never known a person or have friends from AD.

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deafskeptic

Interesting thread... I remember asking my audi a similar question the last time I saw her. I noticed that if I'm not really paying attention to the radio that I can make out the many of the words but not always get what the topic is all about. I have to pay close attention to the radio to get the topic.

I wondered if hearing when they listen to the radio have to listen closely to it or if they can get most of what it says even if they're not paying attention.

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