By Rachel Wayne, Ph.D., C.Psych.
I spent the first 20 years of my life attempting to hide my congenital hearing loss. Like most kids, I just wanted to fit in and be like everyone else. I didn’t like having to explain to my peers whether or not I was “deaf” or what that “thing behind my ear” was. I also didn’t like having to explain to teachers during the first day of school every year why I needed to be seated in the front row. For these reasons, my younger self could have never predicted that I would have ended up focusing on disability and hearing health within my career.
Growing up as a hard of hearing individual with two hearing aids, I relied heavily on lipreading (speechreading). This made me a keen observer. Oftentimes in conversation, you can’t quite make out what was said. You hear fragments of a sentence and try to decipher the missing words or phrases. When you have to work to fill in the missing pieces of what your ear “hears,” it becomes supremely important to gather and observe as much information about context as you can. Your environment, the topic of the conversation, the person you’re with, and your familiarity with language (such as how sentences are parsed or phrased) all become important clues in the puzzle.
For example, you’re just finishing a drink with a very attractive new friend in a loud and crowded bar. Just as you’re about to leave, your friend leans close to you and says: “I have a green tie, would you like to go eat some pine trees?” Or at least that’s what you think you hear. You are considering asking your friend to repeat the sentence when you start piecing together several clues. You silently repeat the utterance to yourself a couple of times. Based on the lip movements, you infer that the last word you heard looked more like “week.” You deduce that you actually heard your friend say, “I had a great time, would you like to go out again next week?”
Graduate School and a Thesis
This was essentially the work of my doctoral thesis research, which was about the ways in which cognition (e.g., thinking, reasoning) are involved in understanding speech in conditions that are less than ideal. This includes speech in noisy environments and listening to people who speak with accents that are different from our own. It was very rewarding to be able to translate my lived experiences into research.
In another instance, my observations about my own speech comprehension led to the development of an entire research paper. I first started wearing corrective eyeglasses during my Ph.D. studies. Even though I had quite a low prescription, I immediately noticed that I was better able to lipread my colleague who spoke with an accent. After some discussion, we came up with the hypothesis that perhaps good lipreaders are better able to make use of extremely fine-grained details in facial movements. We did, in fact, find support for this, and we eventually published this study in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics in 2016.
Training in Clinical Psychology
In parallel, I’ve always been interested in psychology and trying to understand what makes us human, and why we think or behave the way we do. I also knew that I greatly valued communication and forming strong connections with others. As such, it was a natural decision to pursue graduate training in clinical psychology (while completing my thesis research in cognitive hearing science).
My clinical training was certainly not without its own challenges. I can hear and speak quite well, well enough in fact that many people don’t realize that I am hard of hearing until I mention it. However, I’ve also learned that sometimes this makes it difficult for others to recognize or understand the challenges that I face during communication.
To my surprise, there were times that I felt that my instructors and supervisors questioned my need for accommodations. For example, this happened when I asked for subtitles/closed captioning of training video material, or for real-time transcription or notes from virtual lectures. As a result, instead of blending in, I found myself in a position of having to advocate for the accommodations that I needed.
I also learned that I needed to disclose my hearing challenges up front to all new clients, as inevitably there would be points in which I would require them to repeat themselves in communication. Initially, this made me quite nervous, as I was not sure how clients would react. Would they question my aptitude or get frustrated with me?
Toward an Integrated Identity
At times, these conversations were inevitably uncomfortable. However, looking back, they were instrumental in helping me achieve increased acceptance of my disability. I’ve learned that my initial disclosure of my hearing challenges allowed me to more readily connect with my clients. In some ways, it helps cultivate an honest and forthright environment that encourages my clients to feel comfortable sharing their own challenges or vulnerabilities with me.
Today, my personal experiences and professional training continue to converge in my everyday work, especially as I continue to bring my own lived experience into the foreground. I eventually chose to pursue additional specialization in rehabilitation psychology, which allowed me to gain a better understanding of how to work with individuals adjusting to chronic medical conditions or other forms of disability.
It is extremely rewarding to be able to marry my own lived experience with my clinical skills and research background, particularly in supporting individuals who may be experiencing challenges adjusting to their hearing loss or tinnitus. The process of connecting with others and helping them cope with significant stressors has also been incredibly fulfilling.
And Beyond
I have learned that self-disclosure of my hearing challenges need not be viewed as a liability. We are all living in a world that is increasingly mindful of individual differences, whether it be related to disability, neurodivergence, race, culture, or sexual orientation (to name a few). Each of us has different needs, preferences, as well as lived experiences that we bring to each interaction or conversation with one another.
The process of relating to one another is ultimately a negotiation that occurs between our distinct worldviews, one that aims to arrive at a shared consensus of the “truth.” At its best, educating others on how to best meet our individual needs or desires leads to an increased sense of mutual understanding and respect, and perhaps most profoundly, an enriched society for all.
Rachel Wayne, Ph.D., C.Psych., is a registered clinical and rehabilitation psychologist working in private practice. She has received numerous awards for her published research. For more, see drrachelpsychology.com. This appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of Hearing Health magazine.
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