Tiredness and not hearing well

[Neia]

So, I've noticed that by the end of a day, and when I'm really tired or in pain, I can't hear properly.
I have to turn up the volume on my phone/tablet/PC, etc.
To the point where, I'm wishing I could turn the sound louder on my tablet, but others are complaining that they can hear it perfectly at the other end of the house.

It just clicked that this might be another trait of autism.

 

[Rodafina]

I wonder if you might want to get checked out for hearing loss. Even though it seems connected to how you are feeling, it may be worth getting a medical opinion.

 

[FayetheAspie]

Ear Health - How stress can affect your hearing - The Ear Clinic.

 

[Peter Morrison]

I will use headphones (classic puffy headphones) so I don't disturb anyone and that they don't disturb me. I agree with Rodafina that you might explore getting a hearing test if you think your hearing is impaired. What's funny is that your hearing issues might be related to fatigue and pain. I've never heard of such a condition, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. I know I can get grumpy and quiet if I am overworked or dealing with pain. There can be many neurological conditions that we don't understand well. My eyesight gets blurry if I am stressed. I don't know what it is called - I just live with it. I had trouble reading when I was a child and many thought the problem was my eyesight. I was diagnosed as dyslexic, but I also needed glasses. I have no idea who I should have trusted. I had no choice but to live with whatever condition it was called. Needing a little extra volume is nothing out of the ordinary, but you can monitor it to make sure it isn't something that might lead to hearing loss. At least for now, it is a temporary condition. Let's hope it is nothing more than that. Self-monitoring is not a bad thing.

 

[Neri]

I have auditory processing issues. It's my brain though. My actual hearing is fine. I can hear the words but my brain needs time to convert them to meaningful data. It could just as well be a foreign language, but, it's not, it's english. I think that it is definitely part and parcel with my neurospicy brain.

 

[Outdated]

I have auditory processing issues. It's my brain though. My actual hearing is fine. I can hear the words but my brain needs time to convert them to meaningful data. It could just as well be a foreign language, but, it's not, it's english. I think that it is definitely part and parcel with my neurospicy brain.

This is also true for me, and I know it is for a few others on this forum too.

It's to do with the way in which our brains handle abstraction, the act of finding meaning in sounds. It takes us longer than most NTs to do that processing which is why many of us can carry on conversations with one or two people well enough but start to struggle and get left behind in larger groups.

Background noise makes a huge difference, our brains seem to assign equal importance to every sound we hear instead of being able to single out a single voice to listen to. So if there's lots of other noise around it requires a lot more concentration on our part to understand what people are saying. That can be very tiring.

A lot of electronic media is unintelligible to me, if the sound is too compressed or of low quality (low bit rate) I can't be bothered even attempting to watch. I struggle with understanding people over the phone too but have no trouble speaking to people face to face. By comparison, when talking over the phone it's like I'm going deaf.

Quality noise cancelling headphones will really help you to watch your TV shows, background noise makes a huge difference. They help with phone calls too.

 

[SusanLR]

Ear Health - How stress can affect your hearing - The Ear Clinic.

This article really states the problems I have with hearing, stress and tinnitus.
I think I can understand @Neia the problem when tired and in pain.
These are both stressors and stress equals auditory issues.

I have tinnitus of a high- pitched ringing sound. And when I'm stressed, tired and/or in pain, it is much worse. I also get vertigo, and it usually happens when I've been stressed or feeling more anxiety for several days.

The cortisol and stress hormones make perfect sense. My ENT also says anxiety/stress induces vertigo and tinnitus. As far as not hearing as well, whatever is bothering me physically and emotionally can distract my attention and maybe I don't pay as much attention to sounds, but usually it is just the opposite.
When anxious, my sensory issues with sound kick in and mixed noise actually starts to sound louder. More bothersome. It may be different with different people though.

 

[All-Rounder]

have to turn up the volume on my phone/tablet/PC, etc.

I get used to sound and it can damage hearing receptors in the ear after a while especially if it's loud. After listening for a while I become adjusted to the volume and keep needing to increase.

Although from stress or sound stimulus overwhelm I get hearing sensitivity and it feels sometimes like the volume hurts me and I need a slow tame music change and low low volumes otherwise my ears are ringing with the music tones. It's so mysterious I don't know why it happens or why it only sometimes happens but it happened when I became sick and exhausted again.

 

[vergil96]

It might be the case that you can compensate for the hearing loss when you're not tired. With no spare brain power, it's just hard to deal with it.

 

[Rodafina]

It might be the case that you can compensate for the hearing loss when you're not tired. With no spare brain power, it's just hard to deal with it.

 

[AndyFBlues]

I have auditory processing issues. It's my brain though. My actual hearing is fine. I can hear the words but my brain needs time to convert them to meaningful data. It could just as well be a foreign language, but, it's not, it's english. I think that it is definitely part and parcel with my neurospicy brain.

I have a similar problem, especially in noisy environments. I often need to ask people to repeat themselves. According to tests performed by my doctor, my hearing is fine.

Sometimes I also struggle to tune my guitar by ear while other times it's easy.

 

[DrBadStrings]

I have auditory processing issues. It's my brain though. My actual hearing is fine. I can hear the words but my brain needs time to convert them to meaningful data. It could just as well be a foreign language, but, it's not, it's english. I think that it is definitely part and parcel with my neurospicy brain.

I have the similar issues. For a long time I thought I had hearing loss from concerts/festivals but then got tested and my ears were fine. It's the brain that has difficulty picking out a single person talking if there is too much background noise or other groups of people talking in earshot. And I've always noticed that the more tired I am the worse it gets. If I'm watching something I have to have subtitles or I miss dialogue. When I'm with people I need to be able to see the persons mouth unless we are in a quiet environment. Yet with all those issues I'm still the one that picks up on those miniscule individual background noises everyone else misses like a ceiling fan having a slightly loose bearing in an air duct outside your office.

 

[Pats]

I have spent evenings with my grown kids and kids in law without knowing a single thing they were saying. I've always had trouble distinguishing individual sounds when their is a lot of different sounds. It got worse with age and I went for hearing test and ended up with hearing aids. I had no hearing LOSS, just distinguishing sounds. I got hearing aids and the first time I walked out of the place with my hearing aids I was amazed at all the different sounds. I could distinguish traffic from my keys jingling, door opening, etc. It was completely new to me. I know part of the autism is all the sounds coming together to make just one big noise.
Try the hearing test and see what they say.

 

[Pats]

Yet with all those issues I'm still the one that picks up on those miniscule individual background noises everyone else misses like a ceiling fan having a slightly loose bearing in an air duct outside your office.

Isn't that funny how that works. Totally same here.

 

[Jeff T]

Hopefully it's just ear wax.
In my own instance, I can usually hear ok other than the deformed inner ear bones on the left side. But every once in a good while ear wax production goes nuts. Usually both ears. Then I can barely hear anything. It doesn't self-resolve.
Then I have to use a dropper with my head tilted to get the mineral oil in each ear to dissolve it down.
Hydrogen peroxide simply converted the wax to a concrete-like substance, so it's mineral oil from now on.

 

[Outdated]

Then I have to use a dropper with my head tilted to get the mineral oil in each ear to dissolve it down.
Hydrogen peroxide simply converted the wax to a concrete-like substance, so it's mineral oil from now on.

I had a friend that had that problem many years ago, narrow ear canals. He had a device that connected to the bathroom basin tap and hooked on to his ears to gently flush them with warm water. I watched him do it one day and was shocked at how much gunk came out.

I have very wide ear canals, can almost fit my little finger in there, so I just use cotton buds to clean mine.

 

[vergil96]

Adequate hearing aids can help a lot, btw. They bring the difficulty level down from "legendary hero" to "noob". Totally worth it. Things like that can add to mental fatigue all the time in addition to making it impossible to hear when tired.