I occasionally have moments where I really struggle with communication and miss more than is usual of what is being said. In these moments, I have sometimes worried that my hearing is worse or something is wrong. But I have learned that actually my listening ability is much worse when I am tired.

My husband and coworkers all concur that when I am tired, I struggle a lot more with my hearing. Because tuning things out is a necessary survival skill to not get completely overwhelmed by auditory stimulation, it seems that after a certain level of tiredness, my brain just checks out on its own without consulting me. Single sided deafness takes extra concentration, and fatigue can strip away my ability to focus on sound.

I find that when I am tired, the amount of energy listening takes is compounded. As my brain tires, it takes more and more energy to focus, and hearing comprehension can begin to snowball and become extremely expensive. It becomes a self-perpetuating loop of the increasing tiredness, which requires more focus, which drains more energy, which makes me so much more tired.

So, I’ve learned to budget my hearing energy. Sometimes, that means that I sacrifice listening to an audiobook while I exercise so that I keep some bandwidth for chatting with my children later in the day. Or maybe I wear noise canceling headphones for noise breaks during a work shift. Somedays, my job has more noise and chatting than others. On those days, I know to plan that I will be more tired by the time I get home, so it would be best not to do a lot of listening in my evening. When I attend a convention, I choose to skip the evening socializing more often than not so that I have enough bandwidth to handle the long days of focused listening in classes. I try to weigh out noise choices and make the right call for how I am feeling, and where I project the day will go.

I also try to optimize conditions for hearing when I know I will be tired. For example, often late in the evening is when my husband and I have an opportunity to sit down and discuss the day. When chatting late in the day, I try to make sure that it is well lit, that I can easily see him, and that there isn’t background noise. Where I would perhaps work hard to muddle through a conversation in a crowded space early in the day,  when I become tired, I more often ask my conversational partner to move to a better hearing location. I do all of these to make listening as easy as possible to give me the best possible odds of understanding. It also helps lessen the cost of listening and the corresponding tiredness.

Ultimately, I can not completely remove the struggles I have with hearing when I am tired. But by recognizing the issue, I can educate my family and coworkers so they know best practices to interact with me in such moments. I can also take steps to hopefully head off some of the exhaustion or to ease the listening burden in those tired moments. Most of all, I can give myself grace. I can remember not to stress if suddenly I am struggling to hear more – my tiredness level likely accounts for the struggle. I can also feel comfortable accepting my difficulties and recognizing my lack of perfection. Tiredness is going to happen, and I will miss things, but it’s ok.