Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five: Planning Ahead

Have 5 minutes? We want to talk about how tiring our holiday season can be with hearing loss.

Planning ahead helps those of us with hearing loss make events a better time. That means putting limits on events as needed. It also means saving your energy by blocking out time on your calendar in advance of events. We share examples of both in this 5 minute podcast.

Show notes:
Learn more about planning ahead in the post:
https://hearinglosslive.com/hearing-loss-strategy/

Save your energy and time learning how to place health limits (boundaries) in the blog post.
https://hearinglosslive.com/hearing-loss-limits/

Take a lipreading class with to learn how to set your stage for better communication. Visit our website for more information: https://hearinglosslive.com/lipreading-classes/

Transcript

Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five. 

Julia: Hello. Welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five. I hope you are joining us for our multiple events in November. We are talking teamwork this month as well. That's why our classes are set up around groups and families for lipreading strategies and communication outcomes. Time planning. How does that work for somebody with hearing loss? Chelle, can you help us about I think we're bad at planning time, and then we think we're doing what we did when we were 20, and now we're not 20, and we have hearing loss. How does planning time help you?

Chelle: I have to figure out the event, how much people, how much noise? What is my max for this event? For example, we have a Thank Goodness for Friends dinner every November. We haven't gone in a few years because the pandemic changed a lot of things up. But this event was in an in a church cafeteria type thing, horrible, horrible acoustics. Over probably 200 people in attendance, and the noise is just horrendous. So I went the first few times. And my husband, he's in add heaven, because he's visiting all these people, and he has better hearing than me. And I think I lasted the whole thing the first time or two, and then after that, I had to tell them, I just can't it. I was taking multiple hearing breaks by walking outside, going to the bathroom, just to escape that noise, that horrendous crowd and talking. So after those first few times I'm like, I gotta be hour, hour and a half max here, because it is so hard on me and it exhausts me and it makes me unhappy. And the more unhappy I am, the worse the whole situation gets, because it's being able to lipreading is a state of mind too, where we're and we have to be relaxed and it's easier. And if it's, if it's kind of chaos and sense, then it's not, it's not good for me. And I'll go. I want to say hi, but I can't stay the whole time.

Julia: So what do you do? Do you say? Do you plan ahead of time and say, okay, Ken, we're staying two hours. I'm leaving at X number of times. You know, it starts at seven, I'm done by nine. Starts at five, I'm done by seven. And I talked about this in the past. This is where you say you can Uber home, or I can Uber home if you want to stay late. Lots of options there, right? Maybe there's somebody else who wants to leave early, and you can catch a ride home with them, type thing. But let me ask you this. You know, you've got that event at whatever time in the evening, which is much harder for people. If you've had a nine to five job and now you've got to go to a party. Do you change your morning schedule? You've got a class on Wednesday nights. What have you been doing to be mindful that you're going to have to be in class at six o'clock and it's a difficult class, right? So, so you don't have to talk about the class, but I've noticed on your calendar, you've made some changes, because to have some self care before you go in there to that class, talk a little bit about that, because I think people don't think about that either we're busy lives, right?

Chelle: I want to do everything. I try to do everything. And last spring, I crashed hard because I did put too much on my plate, so intense in it anticipation of the busyness of the fall where I teach a University of Utah Osher Lifelong Learning Program class on Mondays, which is important to me, and it did. I take this business related class on Wednesday nights that's for three hours. So being aware of how tired and how how I was not at my best. A lot last spring, I marked that blocks of time before this Monday, Monday late morning class and like three hours before this other class on Wednesday night. Is to remind myself I don't want to take on anything heavy. I need to be super light. Don't schedule myself, because I'm the worst one there. Don't schedule myself.

Julia: Yeah, I think that falls into last month's mindfulness as well. To be in the present, you need to start giving yourself a little bit of a break here and there. Maybe you can do a, you know, if it is a nine to five job you've got, maybe you can take a minute and do something simpler for those last couple hours before you head home, that type of thing. We hope you're joining us this fall for our classes on strategies, communication and family. Look for new schedules to keep coming out. We're going to have some new things coming out in December, so make sure you're tuning in. Well, I should say, announcements coming out in December. So have a good day. Bye.