Hear From the Experts

By Shari Eberts & Gael Hannan
Authors of Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss

What is the hearing loss journey and why is understanding it critical to person-centered care?

Each of us with hearing loss is on a journey, although it’s often only hindsight that reveals the course of this life-long trip. What is also clear is that the twists and turns, stalls, blockades, and breakthroughs would have been easier to handle with some foreknowledge. That’s why we recommend hearing care professionals (HCPs) talk to their clients about the big picture of the hearing loss journey. When your patients understand what to expect and how to handle the impact of hearing loss, the road to skillful living will be littered with fewer potholes. And their relationship with you will grow stronger.

Five Stages of the Hearing Loss Journey

In addition to our own lived experiences, we have spent thousands of hours talking with other people who have hearing loss. While every journey is unique, most of us pass through a series of typical, recognizable stages.

1. Debating with yourself

The first stage is an ongoing internal debate. We wonder if we’re having trouble hearing or if everyone else is mumbling. We may struggle with denial, looking for anything or anyone else to blame but our poor hearing. This stage can last many years.

2. Validating

Stage two finally resolves the debate. This is when we go for a hearing screening and where HCPs become participants in our journey. The diagnosis of hearing loss may not be a welcome one, but we now have information that can help us move forward.

3. Taking charge

The most exciting part of the journey is the third stage, where we decide to do something about it. For most people, this means hearing aids, but we quickly realize they are not a stand-alone solution for hearing loss, so we begin to explore other strategies. Our book Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss is a helpful tool detailing the spectrum of helpful strategies outlined in the next stage.

4. Living skillfully

Reaching this stage is the ultimate goal. It may not be smooth sailing every day, but we are equipped to handle the hiccups. In daily life, we use a triad of skills that target better communication. Those are:

• MindShifts: MindShifts are how we change our attitudes about hearing loss. People with hearing loss may think, “I want to hear better, the way I used to.” But we can live more skillfully when we adopt a more actionable take: “I want to communicate better, and it takes more than hearing aids to do this. I must use other skills and additional technology.”


• Technology: This includes not only hearing aids and cochlear implants, but also assistive listening tools such as remote microphones or smartphone speech-to-text apps. Our two must-have technologies are Bluetooth and, until Auracast is available everywhere, telecoil.


• Communication Game Changers: Even small changes in communication behaviors can transform the conversation. These non-technical tools include self-identifying as having hearing loss, speechreading, more self-advocacy, less bluffing, and using communication best practices.

5. Refreshing and restarting

This final stage is where we truly see hearing loss as a journey, rather than a puzzle that can be solved. Something changes. Maybe we experience a drop in our hearing level, or we get new hearing aids, or there are significant changes in our family or working life. Perhaps a pandemic changes every rule of communication because of physical distancing or wearing masks. These shifts present roadblocks that may send us back to an earlier part of the journey, where we regroup and reroute forward to skillful living.

Hearing Loss Journeys Take Time

The stages of the hearing loss journey don't happen overnight, and each of us progresses at our own pace. For some, the stages may happen over the course of a few months, but, for most people with hearing loss, they stretch over years. Some people never move out of stage one. Or the shock of stage two might send us running because we’re not ready, or we’re frozen by stigma. Aspects of stages three and four might happen concurrently, but with support, understanding, and a strong partnership with you, their HCP, we believe living skillfully with hearing loss is possible for almost everyone.

About the Experts:

Shari Eberts is a passionate hearing health advocate, author, and speaker on hearing loss issues. She is the founder of LivingWithHearingLoss.com, a popular blog and online community for people with hearing loss, and an executive producer of We Hear You, an award-winning documentary about the hearing loss experience. Shari has an adult-onset genetic hearing loss and hopes that by sharing her story, she will help others to live more peacefully with their own hearing issues. Her book Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss (co-authored with Gael Hannan) is the ultimate survival guide for living with hearing loss. Shari holds a BS in Psychology from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Gael Hannan is a hearing health advocate, writer, and speaker/performer who lives with profound hearing loss. She creates award-winning awareness projects that help people live more successfully with their hearing challenges, including the acclaimed one-woman show Unheard Voices, the humorous memoir The Way I Hear It: A Life with Hearing Loss, and a regular blog for HearingHealthMatters.org that has a passionate international following. Gael lives on Vancouver Island. Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss (co-authored with Shari Eberts) is the supportive how-to guide she wishes she’d had at the start of her hearing loss journey.