
Being deaf is: constant baseline soundmaking anxiety - blackhole
http://blog.melchua.com/2014/11/27/being-deaf-is-constant-baseline-soundmaking-anxiety/
======
veb
This article hits home for me. I was born with a severe hearing loss, and I
have recently got a Med-EL Opus2 / RONDO Cochlear Implant -- which changed my
life for the better.

How?

It reduced so much stress, I was surprised that I was carrying so much. It was
simply things like going to the toilet (you think, "am I going to make a
really awful rude noise that everyone will hate me for?") or drinking your
coffee ("is this awful?!")... even typing at work, or taking to a colleague
and hoping that I wasn't interrupting someone else.

Then I realised: everyone else is simply bloody loud, they generally don't
care about how loud they are when they're eating, shutting doors or chatting
to someone. They don't. Only I did, I was the only one who constantly worried.

It wasn't the fact that I could suddenly hear things, which I could, it was
realising that I was overthinking, overanalysing every situation with that
sound was involved. That included _breathing_. I would literally slow my
breathing if someone were to sit next to me on a bus. Severe anxiety due to
sound.

I'm still very anxious if I am to watch a movie, in my own house, by myself...
in fear I'd wake the neighbours on an adjourned property. (to put this in
perspective, my wife came home and she couldn't even hear the movie in the
next bedroom.)

THIS was seriously the hardest thong I've had to face but it's been worth it
for the reduced stress and anxiety.

Thanks for posting this!

~~~
grownseed
I'm thankful for your comment and the original's author article, it helped me
realize I'm not (utterly) mad.

Even though I haven't been completely deaf in a fairly long time (some form of
congenital defect, sorta fixed, on and off, will get worse again), I still
have a very hard time judging loudness. The way I do most things - even
mindlessly simple like walking, grabbing a pen on a table or eating - I
minimize sound as much as possible, like not/barely touching the floor with my
heels.

I know it's kind of ridiculous to most people, but I'm also not sure the same
people quite realize how continuously stressful it is to have little to no
feedback from a sense you should normally be able to rely on.

These behaviors have become second nature for the most part, but I still feel
like I'm letting down everybody when I do make noise, on the few occasions
where I'm not mindful of my actions.

As a bit of an aside, I find it interesting that the loss of a sense generally
seems to bring about a completely different level of introspection and self-
awareness, not better or worse, just profoundly different (or I'm completely
biased).

------
jmillikin
Related: "Dorm of the Deaf"
[http://dustinland.com/archives/archives319.html](http://dustinland.com/archives/archives319.html)

    
    
      > When the world around you doesn’t give you feedback,
      > and the best gauge you have of your own noise level is
      > frustration on the faces of the people near you
    

People laugh at HN suggesting technical solutions to every problem, but this
really does seem like something that could be solved (or at least mitigated)
by a microphone, some small LEDs, and a gutted wristwatch. Light up more LEDs
depending on how loud the sound is relative to the average level of the
previous N seconds of recorded audio.

A web search for [wrist sound sensor] didn't find anything relevant, but this
is probably because I don't know what such a device would be named.

edit: Following the trackback at the bottom reveals the author is a hardware
hacker. I wonder if she has tried to build such a device -- if not, maybe it's
much more complicated than it seems.

~~~
gst
A LED would require to look at the device in order to notice the sound. An
alternative might be haptic feedback as available in the Apple Watch.

~~~
joshu
My thought as well.

------
tempestn
Great post. I had _never_ considered that aspect of deafness, but it's so
obvious in retrospect. Thanks.

~~~
hereonbusiness
I agree, just reading the title already gave me that feeling as if a little
puzzle piece had just settled into my _Weltanschauung_.

> I type loudly during quiet thinking breaks in class, constantly rustle books
> and papers in the chapel, and make munchy-slurp noises when I eat with
> gusto. Until my twenties, I didn’t know those things made noises.

It's a constant thing isn't it, adjusting your own _loudness_ depending on the
environment you're currently in, it happens almost unconsciously. Having the
need to pay attention to this all the time with the only way of getting
feedback being reading other people's reactions or explicitly being told would
probably make me anxious too.

This also makes me think about how essential feedback loops are for efficient
learning, both in humans and machines.

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shard
I remember reading this article about a person who had no sense of smell, and
how they had to always make sure that they have no BO, have to worry about not
being able to smell gas or rotten food, and various other things that the rest
of us didn't have to struggle with. It's these subtle things that makes the
lack of a sense more challenging than one would expect from the common
perception of these disabilities.

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stsp
My dad has very bad hearing, and can be quite noisy sometimes to the point of
being annoying. I remember complaining to him about this occasionally. I never
considered he might be worried about annoying others, and may be trying to
hide his anxiety on top of that. I'll have to ask him. Thanks Mel.

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eknkc
Smart watches can be valuable for things like this I guess.

Something like having an app on iPhone monitoring the mic, showing a gauge or
vibrating at a threshold on the Apple Watch (might be easier on Android).
Would be useful feedback. Are there any apps / devices for such purposes on
the market?

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afarrell
This sounds similar to the sort of social anxiety I've felt around trying to
figure out how to avoid creeping people out.

------
robgibbons
Very, very interesting. This gave me some useful perspective, also the post
about the Basketball player (interrupt-driven).

