Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five: Imposter Syndrome

Who are we with hearing loss? We aren't hearing and we aren't Deaf. Hearing loss is so sneaky we don't feel like we belong anywhere. We are an imposter in both worlds.

Read our blog post on Imposter Syndrome here:
https://hearinglosslive.com/imposter-syndrome-hearing-loss/

Find a transcript on this podcast at our BuzzSprout site:
https://hearinglosslivepodcast.buzzsprout.com/

#ImposterSyndrome #ImpostorSyndrome #HearingLoss #HardOfHearing #HearingLossLIVE 

Transcript

Welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! In five. 

Julia: Good morning and welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five. Our latest round of podcast is a podcast we tried to do in five minutes. Remember to Share, Like, Subscribe, get the word out there help others find us as needed. We love to share all of our information. This Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five we are going to talk impostor syndrome. We have the Oxford dictionary definition. impostor syndrome is the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved, or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts and skills. Chelle, can you help us understand do people who were hearing aids and cochlear implants or need accommodations or better communication outcomes, do they have impostor syndrome?

Chelle: We do. Too often. We are not told that hearing aids and cochlear implants have limits. So there's unrealistic expectations about them, for everybody. And when people ask us things like, again, this is ableism, which we've just covered, are your ears on, we begin to doubt what we can achieve, what we do. We might even go into bluffing. And then there's a whole nother part of imposter syndrome because in a way where we're pretending to be something we're not, and we are hearing only parts of it. We're afraid to ask for repeats due to people, sarcastic comments, I'm gonna say. And so are we hearing or are we hard of hearing? And if we're hard to hearing and our devices aren't performing? It kind of goes into a hearing loss and identity too and who am I? What can I achieve? There's a lot of self doubt. And we might even overcompensate with with things and I think even bluffing might go into overcompensating because we don't feel real.

Julia: That's an interesting thought. Impostor syndrome is something we teach in our classes, our lipreading classes, because it's very important to to understand-- I'm trying to figure out how to frame this. When somebody says, their lipreading, I use lipreading, can you face me, a lot of times those people that are hearing, don't understand what that means. And they assume you're reading every lip on the word -- every word on the lips, or they try to slow down or over, enunciate, there's a lot of misconception. And that-- doing that you hearing people when you do that, you actually cause impostor syndrome. And and it was interesting, if you've read our blog on identity crisis. It really does cause identity crisis, when you're doubting what it is you can do. It, also, a thing that we teach in our lip reading classes, is that when when you have imposter syndrome, you get stuck on every word. You feel you're supposed to read every word on people's lips, and then you fail at something you're probably doing when you don't realize it and aren't hanging on every word. It truly it is a full class that we teach about. All six weeks, we teach about impostor syndrome, it plays into almost every lesson, and it starts with being proactive. When that imposter syndrome happens, how can you be proactive to say, you know, no, my hearing aids aren't perfect. It does not correct it to perfect hearing. I still have x y, z, that's going to happen and I'm going to need to lipread, hear and be able to process to understand that makes sense. Kind of sorta Yes. No, maybe has something to do with imposter syndrome. Maybe not who knows.

Chelle: it's the unrealistic expectation that we catch every word. So when we say we're lipreading, which every one of us do we just don't know what we're doing because of the term lipreading, so we have all these other strategies behind it. And when people expect us to lipread every word, it's unrealistic. And we're using several other strategies. And when you learn those strategies, you can make the most of communication.

Julia: Thank you. Chelle does a lot less rambling than I do. Anyways, join us for our lipreading classes. We teach communication as well as the lips shapes with any one of our classes. It'll help your impostor syndrome it helps with self doubt. It helps with the perfectionism and overachieving that happens with impostor syndrome. It'll help you to stop comparing yourself to maybe that proficient lipreader you knew as as who's been lipreading all of their life, and it will help lessen your anxiety. Time's up. We hope you join us.

Bye!