Hearing loss and neuro-diversity

I have been searching for an answer to a question for a while and not finding it. So I hope it is OK to ask here, to see if anyone else has any similar experiences, or better still, links to information.

I have been struggling for the last four years with a slight hearing loss, so I find it hard at times to understand speach. In the last few months it has begun to be a problem in work.

The background to my question is this:

I do not have a diagnosis of Aspergers, but believe that it describes me very acuratly. I also have a firm belief that lables are best for jam jars. I was diagnosed with autism when I was about 3, but by school age it was changed to dyslexia, clumsy child syndrome (now known as dyspraxia, but that lable didn't exist then) and brain damage.

I am very quirky in some ways, and most of it is around context. In other ways I have a very succesful life, with a succesful career and a strong home life. I have a lot of strenghts and coping strategies and on a day to day basis these outweigh my quirks.

I have now hit my forties, and it might be silly asking these questions again at this point in my life, but my hearing problems are causing some very major obsticals right now. I can't get my GP to take them seriously, or refer me to a proper audiologist or ENT specialist. The problem is this - actually, I think the level of hearing loss I have is very, very mild. I still hear almost everything, almost all the time. The problem I am having is that if any part of the sound isn't clear to me, I can't translate it into what it was supposed to be, because I take sounds, and instantly visualise them very litterally. So I find it almost impossible to imagine any alternative phonetical option, as I get stuck every time on visualising other things that might look the same to try and make nonsense make sense. So I end up wrong. In work in the last week I have been totally unable to participate in meetings, or caused havoc, because I can't hear with others are saying, and my mis-hearings get in the way. One collegue wouldn't stop talking about 'Ear groups' for an hour in a meeting, and after an hour of frustration I stoped him and explained that no one else knew what an 'ear group' was. Turned out he ment 'year group' but had terrible diction.

It also strikes me that muggles don't have this problem, because even if they hear 'ear group' they think '...sounds like year group' wereas I think '...giant ear with group of people standing in it, no, that doesn't make sense. Group of ears hanging on a headhunters belt, definatly not. Listning group, group of students in a classroom listening to a recorded pod cast. Nope, in context, that doesn't seem to be it either... and so on, and so on, until so many images are flashing in my head I'm feeling nausous.

And its reached the stage that situations like this are happening to me in work every day, all the time, so it is really interfering in my ability to do my job.

What I am afraid of is that if I fuss with my GP (something I find impossible to do) and he sends me for a hearing test, it will come back almost normal, and I will look like I am making a scene over nothing, and end up in a worse place than where I started. But if I go in any try to explain what I really think is going on, that it is just low level hearing loss but is clashing with my pre-exsting neuro-diversity, I will look like even more of a crank, due to not having a current diagnosis. I have a large number of complex health complaints and need a positive relationship with my GP. I like my current GP, or at least am comfortable with him. But he won't refer to specilists until after any particular problem results in hospitalisation, and I really don't want to even begin to picture how not understanding what people say might cause that.

If anyone else knows of any research, or resources that I could use, or even knows if this is a problem anyone else has faced, it would be great.

Thanks

Wolf wheels over 12 years ago

Sorry for possibly ignoring your interesting points, am having a very busy week at work. Will come back to this.
longman over 12 years ago

I was hoping this might produce some debate.........
longman over 12 years ago

Don't know if this perspective helps - there are after all issues at to why you've noticed it only recently, but it might be that a slight change in hearing has exacerbated an autistic spectrum issue.
My hearing breaks down where there is background noise. I cannot get clear guidance as to whether this is down to the aspergers or deterioration in hearing as I'm now 63, but it has always been a problem, and I cannot really say whether it is worse now than it was when younger.
Before I got my asperger diagnosis I had explained it in my mind as Selective Hearing Deficit, which I'd picked up was a family problem - turns out it is a joke condition afficting men when their wives, or other women, are talking to them!
My hearing is very good. But I cannot filter out background, and hear everything much the same, which tends to overload me.
However I suffer particularly badly if trying to follow a conversation when other people are talking close by or there are other background noises. My hearing rapidly deteriorates and what people are saying sounds like a foreign language. Apparently some people with dyslexia report this difficulty as well, so it may not be an autism issue at all.
It means if I'm in a social context, people talk to me, and I have to ask them to repeat, but it never seems to make much difference. The words make no sense. I used to say I had a hearing problem, at which others would enunciate slowly and loudly in my ear. That still doesn't improve the intelligibility.
Yet without other sound competition I hear pefectly clearly. Then I get people saying they thought I said I was hard of hearing, am I making it up? It would seem that no-one can conceive of a hearing difficulty other than loss of hearing.
For years at any social engagement I cannot actually avoid, I try to stand or sit at the edge of the room, so the sound comes from one direction. I then get accused of being stand-offish and anti-social for not mingling. The moment I try to mingle everything changes to incoherence, and it also affects my own speech - I start repeating myself and getting confused. I also get tired quickly and seem to shut down, which hasn't helped my image, being perceived to be drunk or something.
I've spent years on committees. If a committee is well managed and everyone takes turns to speak, I do very well. If it is a badly managed rabble with everyone trying to talk at the same time I'm in serious trouble, and often when asked for my opinion I come out with garbage.
Help from GPs - you must be joking......