Hearing Better Is Only the Beginning

By Lawrence Cardano, Au.D., CDP®

If you wear hearing aids, you may recognize a frustrating experience: you hear well during a quiet, one-on-one conversation, yet struggle at a restaurant, family gathering, meeting, or group activity. You may ask people to repeat themselves, miss pieces of sentences, or smile and pretend you understood.

This does not necessarily mean your hearing aids are failing. Hearing aids are an essential part of treatment, but better communication involves more than making sounds louder. Your ears and brain work together to make sense of speech, and attention, listening skills, the environment, and communication habits all influence how successfully you connect with others.

Hearing and listening are not the same

Hearing involves detecting sound. Listening requires the brain to decide what deserves attention and make meaning from what it receives. In a busy setting, your brain must separate one voice from competing sounds, follow changing speakers, fill in missing information, and remember what was just said.

Hearing loss can reduce not only volume but also the clarity and completeness of the information reaching the brain. Modern hearing aids improve access to speech and help manage noise, but they cannot fully restore a damaged auditory system to normal. Simply increasing the volume may make competing noise louder too.

The goal, then, is not merely to hear more sound. It is to communicate and participate more fully.

Hearing rehabilitation can continue

Well-fitted hearing technology is the foundation of care, but it does not have to be the final step. A comprehensive approach may also include realistic expectations, changes to the listening environment, communication strategies, and structured auditory training.

Structured auditory training gives the brain practice with difficult listening tasks, such as understanding speech in background noise, following faster speech, using context when words are missed, and holding information in working memory. Research involving adults with hearing loss and hearing-aid users has found improvements in speech-in-noise understanding after training. Results vary, and training does not eliminate hearing loss, but it can help some people use auditory information more effectively.

Five strategies you can use today

Get closer. Reduce the distance between you and the person speaking.

Face the speaker. Seeing facial expressions and lip movements adds helpful visual information.

Reduce competing noise. Choose a quieter table, move away from speakers or the kitchen, or turn down the television.

Be specific. Instead of saying, “I can’t hear you,” try, “Please face me,” or, “Could you speak a little more slowly?”

Repair only what you missed. Ask for the missing detail rather than the entire sentence: “What time did you say?”

Also ask your audiologist whether your hearing aids include programs, remote microphones, accessories, or other features that could help in your most challenging environments.

Confidence matters too. Pretending to understand, staying quiet, or avoiding difficult settings can gradually lead to withdrawal. Assertive communication means calmly acknowledging when you missed something and explaining what would help. It makes you an active partner in communication without blaming yourself or others.

Ask yourself: Am I communicating as well as I would like, and am I participating in the relationships and activities that matter to me? If not, there may be more you can do.

Take the next step

If you would like help identifying ways to improve your listening, communication, and quality of life, schedule a complimentary Listen with Confidence Call with Dr. Lawrence Cardano. You will discuss the situations that are difficult for you, what you have already tried, and practical options that may help.

Schedule your complimentary call at https://schedule.meaningful-pursuits.com. 

Research referenced

Lawrence et al. (2018). Trends in Hearing, 22.

Olson, Preminger, and Shinn (2013). Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 24(3), 214–230.

Song et al. (2012). Cerebral Cortex, 22(5), 1180–1190.

Sweetow and Henderson Sabes (2006). Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 17(8), 538–558.