Feeling Anxious? Hearing Loss Might be The Culprit

Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety occasionally, but some people can find themselves feeling anxious more often than others. Identifying the cause of anxiety can be difficult, especially because there isn’t always a clear trigger. However, one of the reasons some people might find themselves feeling anxious more regularly is due to experiencing hearing loss. You might not realize that hearing loss is what you are experiencing, but it could be causing you to feel anxious.

Anxiety can affect you both physically and emotionally. You can feel hyper-alert or overthink everything. A constant sense of worry and dread can make you feel as if you’re in danger or something is about to go wrong at any moment. Anxiety can cause you to feel physical symptoms such as nausea, heart palpitations, sweating, dizziness, pins and needles and insomnia.

Hearing Loss and Anxiety

If your hearing is starting to deteriorate, you could find yourself experiencing increased feelings of anxiety. Hearing loss generally happens slowly, although it can sometimes happen suddenly. As your hearing gradually declines, it can cause you to feel anxiety for a number of reasons.

You may never have experienced any prolonged feelings of anxiety before or you might be someone who has already dealt with anxiety or related mental health problems, such as depression. Either way, feelings of anxiety can be a struggle to deal with when you are losing your hearing.

You might start to feel anxious due to hearing loss because you’re never completely sure what people are saying to you. You can miss important pieces of information or mishear people, leading to misunderstandings that are embarrassing and sometimes even dangerous. Having to ask people to repeat themselves all the time can make you feel anxious too, especially if you feel that they’re getting annoyed with you.

Feeling anxious about being unable to hear, even if you might not be ready to accept that you can’t hear as well as you used to, can cause you to stay home more. You can end up turning down opportunities to socialize or do things at work, choosing instead to isolate yourself at home. But doing so can make anxiety and feelings of depression and loneliness even worse.

Caring for Your Hearing Health and Mental Health

Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems that people can experience. There are many things that can help to treat it and make it more manageable. In some cases, anxiety can have an underlying physical cause, such as in the case of hearing loss. By treating hearing loss, you could improve the anxiety that you feel. Conversely, addressing anxiety could also help to reduce the likelihood of hearing issues. Anxiety has been linked to a higher chance of hearing loss, as well as tinnitus.

If you are feeling anxiety due to suspected hearing loss, you should be sure to get your hearing tested. A hearing test will examine your ears and hearing in several different ways to check for any physical issues and measure what you can hear. If the test reveals that you have hearing loss, you might then be fitted for hearing aids. Hearing aids can greatly improve your quality of life by allowing you to hear all kinds of things again. If your anxiety is related to your hearing loss, wearing hearing aids can help to relieve a lot of that anxiety. You will be able to communicate with others more easily, which can reduce the chance of miscommunications and embarrassing misunderstandings.

Wearing hearing aids may not always solve your anxiety. Some people can feel hesitant and anxious about wearing hearing aids for the first time and having other people notice them. Anxiety can come from other sources too, and may not always be directly linked to hearing loss. If you’re experiencing anxiety, speaking to your doctor or a therapist can also be a good idea. They can help you to explore the causes of your anxiety and the different treatments that are available.

Get a Hearing Test

If you think that you have hearing loss or that your hearing aid has changed, a hearing test will help you to get started with addressing it. An appointment for a hearing test with an audiologist can diagnose any hearing loss and get you started with hearing aids too.

Make an appointment for a hearing test with Arkansas Professional Hearing Care by calling us today at (501) 588-0177. We can answer your questions and discuss your needs, offering hearing tests and hearing aids.